The Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre

Urban Class Structure in Post-Apartheid South Africa: Case Studies from Johannesburg and Tshwane
2026-03-31 17:45 - 18:45 (Europe/Helsinki) | Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, 1 Duncombe Rd, Johannesburg, Gauteng, 2193, South Africa
Ph.D Dissertation presentation by DaQuan Lawrence (Howard University)

In honour of Human Rights Month, Howard University Ph.D. candidate DaQuan Lawrence, presents research findings from his dissertation entitled, “Urban Class Structure in Post-Apartheid South Africa: Case Studies from Johannesburg and Tshwane”.

Amid the 32nd anniversary of South Africa’s transition to a democratic and post-apartheid society, Lawrence research consists of an investigation of the class structure in post-apartheid South Africa’s municipalities of Johannesburg and Pretoria. The study seeks to discover how race continues to shape urban class constructions in South Africa, and how the middle class defined in urban South Africa.

Lawrence seeks to construct rudimentary but sophisticated class categories that are informed by South Africans. Utilizing class analysis tools provided by African diaspora scholars the theoretical bases of class in advanced industrialized societies of Western civilization are revised in order to allow application to 21st century, urban South African conditions.

DaQuan Lawrence is an international human rights activist and Sasakawa Young Leaders Foundation Fellow who hails from Harlem, New York. Lawrence currently works as a middle school educator, international freelance journalist and an African Studies Ph.D. candidate at Howard University. With a background in NYC foster homes and experience in urban poverty, he uses public policy research and human rights advocacy to equip young people, marginalized communities, nonprofit practitioners, as well as public and private sector representatives with the tools to change social and economic conditions.

His current research focuses on public policy in Africa, and his dissertation is a qualitative mixed methods study that investigates class and urban segregation through a Marxist, Weberian, and pro- and pan-African conceptual framework. Lawrence seeks to develop new post-Marxist, international class categories based on an African perspective of the global political economy, that can be utilized in both developed and underdeveloped nations. He utilizes his experience to lead the nonprofit he cofounded, Strong Men Overcoming Obstacles Through Hard-work, (SMOOTH) Inc., which is a mentoring, professional development and community service organization for Black males. He is also the founder and CEO of the business consulting firm Lawrence International, and creator of GlobalBlackForum.com, a network that connects the African diaspora across nations, sectors and generations.

Lawrence has worked for Washington D.C.-based nonprofits and international nongovernment organizations such as the Urban Institute and the Center for African Studies at Howard University on policy programs, research, and human rights advocacy. He has experience working on public policy research in Haiti, Indonesia, the Dominican Republic, Liberia, South Africa and in the United States. Lawrence is a graduate of Morgan State University and the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, and a delegate for the United Nations Permanent Forum on People of African Descent.

The event will also be livestreamed here and here

Move with intention
2026-04-13 07:45 - 10:45 | Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, 1 Duncombe Rd, Johannesburg, Gauteng, 2193, South Africa
Pilates | 7:45–8:30am Chair Pilates | 10:00–10:45am

Eltiar Wellness in partnership with the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre and Issy’s Coffee & Gift Shop invite you to join us for a complimentary trial session.

Issy’s Coffee & Gift Shop will be offering a free cappuccino and bulka to each participant!

Pilates | 7:45–8:30am

A guided movement practice focused on strength, control, and awareness of the body.

Improves posture and alignment

Builds deep, functional strength, especially in core and stability muscles

Reduces stiffness and physical tension

Supports injury prevention and long-term mobility

Chair Pilates | 10:00–10:45am

A gentle version of pilates done while seated or with support.

Designed for anyone who would benefit from a slower, more supported pace

Suitable for all mobility levels including older individuals and anyone with mobility concerns

Focus on balance and joint movement

Builds confidence in the body

Spaces are limited to 20 people per session. RSVP is essential.

No experience necessary. Wear comfortable, loose-fitting clothing. All are welcome.

Art, Memory, and Responsibility: Working Through the Afterlives of the Holocaust
2026-04-16 17:00 - 18:30 | Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, 1 Duncombe Rd, Johannesburg, Gauteng, 2193, South Africa
5 for 5:30pm

Please join the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, in partnership with the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Pretoria and the British High Commission in Pretoria, for a panel discussion with art historian and curator Dr Dorothea Schöne and artist Jessica Ostrowicz.

The discussion will explore how curatorial and artistic practice engages with the afterlives of the Holocaust, examining questions of memory, responsibility, and the ways histories marked by persecution and rupture continue to shape contemporary cultural and artistic discourse.

Dr Dorothea Schöne is a Berlin-based art historian and curator, currently serving as Director and CEO of Kunsthaus Dahlem. Under her leadership, Kunsthaus Dahlem – located in the former studio of Nazi-era sculptor Arno Breker – has become an important space for critically engaging with the complex legacies of art and ideology in twentieth-century Germany. Her research focuses on modern and contemporary art and curatorial practice. Schöne has received numerous international research grants and fellowships and was awarded the Hans-and Lea-Grundig Prize for her work on artists targeted under National Socialism.

Jessica Ostrowicz is a British artist whose practice explores ideas of home, (be)longing, diasporic displacement, and transgenerational trauma. Working from the perspective of own Jewish family history, her work reflects on the ways experiences of persecution and migration shape personal and collective identities across generations. Her recent exhibition Remaining Without Returning reflects on her family’s history of flight, concealment, and survival during and after the Holocaust, and the lasting presence of this history in contemporary life. Ostrowicz has exhibited internationally, including at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Oaxaca, Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, the Jewish Museum in Frankfurt, and the Nirox Foundation in South Africa.

Through a conversation between curator and artist, this event will consider how contemporary art and exhibition practices engage with difficult histories, and how memory of the Holocaust continues to be interpreted, represented, and worked through today.

Book Launch: Darker Shade of Pale by Deborah Posel
2026-04-19 15:00 - 16:30 | Issy’s Coffee & Gift Shop, 1 Duncombe Road, Forest Town, 2193, South Africa
The Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre and Issy’s Coffee & Gift Shop invite you to a book launch for Darker Shade of Pale: Shtetl to Colony by Deborah Posel.

Darker Shade of Pale traces the journey of Jewish families from the Russian Empire to colonial South Africa. Through the story of her grandfather Maurice Posel – an ordinary man whose struggles and disappointments mirror those of countless others – Deborah Posel challenges the common narrative of Jewish immigrant success in South Africa, revealing a more complex and painful reality.

Part memoir, part global history, part meditation on inherited trauma, the book uncovers how preoccupations with status and success travelled from shtetl to colony, and the psychological costs they incurred: the traumas of dislocation, the weight of ambition, and the shame of failure. It explores the ironies of this journeying for literate, working women from the shtetl; the version of whiteness that South Africa assigned to Jews from Eastern Europe, the various ways in which Jews interacted with Black people, and some of the unexpected economic routes they chose, as well as the prejudicial punches that Jewish immigrants had to take – from both the British and the already-assimilated English-speaking Jewish community in South Africa.

Through one man’s unfulfilled hopes, Darker Shade of Pale asks what was truly given and what was taken in the making of new lives.

Deborah Posel is a sociologist and Professor Emeritus at the University of Cape Town, founding director of the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WiSER) and UCT’s Institute for Humanities in Africa (HUMA). She has written extensively on South Africa’s past and present, and on the making of its racial order.

Deborah will be in conversation with Tali Nates, Founder and Executive Director of the JHGC, and Courtneigh Cloud Bernstein.

Talking Memory Programme: Letters from the Afterlife
2026-05-03 20:00 - 21:00 | Online
The Post-Holocaust Correspondence of Chava Rosenfarb and Zenia Larsson

The Ghetto Fighters’ House invites you to a special Talking Memory conversation with acclaimed writer and translator Goldie Morgentaler as she presents her novel Letters from the Afterlife: The Post-Holocaust Correspondence of Chava Rosenfarb and Zenia Larsson.

Letters from the Afterlife tells the story of two women who survived the Holocaust and rebuilt their lives in countries whose language and culture were not their own – one in Canada, one in Sweden. Through the correspondence between them, the book traces what it meant to carry that past forward: the trauma, the alienation, and the quiet, persistent work of making a life.

Extraordinarily little has been written about how women survivors navigated the aftermath. This book is a rare exception.

The programme will feature:

Rochelle Saidel will open the conversation with reflections on the book as an intimate window into postwar women’s experience.

Goldie Morgentaler, writer, translator, and daughter of celebrated author and Holocaust survivor Chava Rosenfarb, will discuss the book, the correspondence at its heart, and what it means to write from inside inherited memory.

This event is presented in partnership with the Remember the Women Institute, the Rabin Chair Forum, the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, and Classrooms Without Borders.

Sweet Home Sweet: exhibition opening workshop
2026-05-14 17:30 - 19:00 | Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, 1 Duncombe Rd, Johannesburg, Gauteng, 2193, South Africa
The Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre invites you to a participatory workshop to open the exhibition Sweet Home Sweet.

In 1942, Richard Ores buried a jar of photographs in the ground at Płaszów Concentration Camp. After the war, he dug it up. The photographs had survived. The exhibition traces the Ores family across generations, geographies, and loss – exploring what home means when it is something you carry, construct, and sometimes bury for safekeeping.

In this workshop, you are invited to think about your own jar. What would you place in it? What people, places, or objects hold your sense of home? Bring a photocopy of one or two photographs – of a person, a place, an object – anything that feels like home to you. It doesn’t need to be precious or perfect. Together, we will map, reflect, and explore what home means and how we hold it.

Please note: the workshop is limited to 30 people so RSVP is essential

About the exhibition:

Richard Ores was born to a Jewish family in the centre of Kraków. He was fifteen years old when the war broke out. He survived and spent most of the rest of his life in the United States. Even though he lived there for more than fifty years, he continued to feel deeply connected to Poland. He made dozens of trips back to his hometown, often bringing his family with him.

This exhibition tells the story of Richard, his family, and their relationship to Poland over nearly a century. Richard was fascinated with photography and filmmaking his entire life, endlessly documenting his experiences and the people around him. In creating this exhibition, we relied on many of the photos and videos Richard created, as well as interviews with members of his family.

Talking Memory Book Launch Event: Out of the Sky
2026-05-17 19:00 - 20:00 | Online
Heroism and Rebirth in Nazi Europe with the Author Matti Friedman

The Ghetto Fighters’ House invites you to a special Talking Memory conversation marking the launch of Out of the Sky: Heroism and Rebirth in Nazi Europe.

In 1944, a group of young Jewish men and women – having escaped Europe – made the decision to return. Parachuting into Nazi-occupied territory under a British mission, they went back to the continent that had tried to destroy them. Out of the Sky tells their story: the gap between the mission’s tragic reality and its powerful afterlife in Israeli memory, and the question of what heroism means when it ends in failure.

The programme will feature:

Matti Friedman, author of Out of the Sky, in conversation on the Jewish parachutists of 1944, the archival research behind the book, and the role of narrative in shaping collective memory.

Dr Rochelle Saidel will speak on Haviva Reick (1914–1944), one of three women among the parachutists, who operated in Slovakia during the Slovak National Uprising – aiding Allied airmen, working to rescue Jews, and ultimately captured and murdered by Nazi collaborators.

Shlomit Dagan, CEO of the Hannah Senesh House, will reflect on Hannah Senesh and the ongoing work of remembrance and education.

This event is presented in partnership with the Remember the Women Institute, the Hannah Senesh House, Classrooms Without Borders, the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, and the Rabin Chair Forum at George Washington University.

Partner event: Breathwork session with ELTIAR Wellness
2026-06-03 07:45 - 08:30 | Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, 1 Duncombe Rd, Johannesburg, Gauteng, 2193, South Africa
Join a free community Breathwork session in partnership with ELTIAR Wellness and the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre.

The Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre holds space for remembrance, reflection and dialogue around histories of genocide and human rights. Grounded in reflection, the breathwork session invites participants to pause and reconnect – with themselves and with the present moment.

Join us for a restorative experience that combines Conscious Connected Breathing with grounding, down-regulating techniques. This practice helps release tension, restore balance, and reconnect with a sense of calm and clarity.

Spaces are limited so RSVP is essential.

No experience needed. Open to all.

Talking Memory Commemorative Event: The 80th Anniversary of the “Zivia Conference"
2026-06-07 20:00 - 21:00 | Online
The Ghetto Fighters’ House invites you to a special Talking Memory programme marking the 80th anniversary of the “Zivia Conference” at Kibbutz Yagur: Testimony, Resistance, and Remembrance.

In June 1946, Zivia Lubetkin stood before the United Kibbutz Movement at Kibbutz Yagur and delivered her testimony. A leader of the Jewish underground in Nazi-occupied Warsaw and a central figure in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Lubetkin gave voice to the destruction of Polish Jewry – the struggle for resistance, the human realities behind a history the world was only beginning to reckon with. Eighty years on, her words remain a document of extraordinary moral force.

This programme returns to that moment and to its enduring significance.

The programme opens with remarks from Yigal Cohen, CEO of the Ghetto Fighters’ House.

Prof. Lori Weintrob, Professor of History and Director of the Holocaust Center at Wagner College, will draw on three decades of scholarship to explore how Lubetkin and other women who shaped resistance have been taught – and, too often, overlooked. Her talk considers testimony as both historical record and moral legacy, and what it asks of educators, historians, and the broader public today.

Dr. Batya Brutin of Beit Berl Academic College and WHISC will examine how Lubetkin has been represented visually across the decades: in paintings, murals, stamps, and memorial works in Israel and Poland, sometimes beside her husband Yitzhak Zuckerman, sometimes as part of a collective, and sometimes alone. Across these varied depictions, a consistent portrait emerges – of determination, resilience, and inner strength to which artists across generations have returned.

Ruth Kupperberg of the NYC Commission on Human Rights and the Wagner College Holocaust Center will read from Lubetkin’s own testimony, bringing her voice directly into the room.

This event is presented in partnership with the Holocaust Center of Wagner College, WHISC (Women in the Holocaust International Study Center), Remember the Women Institute, Classrooms Without Borders, the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, and the Rabin Chair Forum at George Washington University.

Register Here

Online Film Screening: Après Coup (Afterwards)
2026-06-11 18:00 - 19:30 | Online
To commemorate the 100 days of remembrance of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre and the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung invite you to an online screening of Après Coup (Afterwards), followed by a with director Susan Solomon.

Après Coup explores the persistence of trauma among adults who survived genocide as children. It centres on the experiences of orphans of two genocides separated by fifty years – the Holocaust in France and the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda – and asks: what might the orphans of these genocides have to say to each other today?

In November 2019, Solomon and Mutarabayire-Schafer brought together three orphans of the 1942 deportation of Jews from France and three orphans of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda for a dialogue at the Mémorial de la Shoah in Paris, arguably the first encounter of its kind. Their conversation was not about genocide itself, but about what came afterwards: growing up without parents, without roots, and the deep loneliness that persists long after the events that shaped their lives. A table in a small room at the Mémorial serves as the film’s focal point – the place from which participants move outward into their daily lives in Paris, and the place to which they return, again and again, to pick up the threads of a conversation that has no easy ending. Without warning, the past pierces the present.

Susan Solomon is a producer and co-director of Après Coup and Professor Emerita at the University of Toronto. Born in Montreal, she attended a school in which half the children came from families partially destroyed in the Holocaust. A historian of medicine, her work focuses on the trauma of child victims of genocide. She co-directed the documentary In Search of Roubakine, shown at the Solzhenitsyn Festival in 2012.

Amélie Mutarabayire-Schafer is a psychotherapist and co-director of Après Coup who lost the majority of her family in the Genocide against the Tutsi. She is the founder of Subirusuke, an association supporting widows and orphans of genocide, and coordinated psychological support programmes for genocide survivors during the Gacaca trials. She directed Les Dames de la Colline (2014) and co-authored L’Appel de L’Inanga (2023).

Online Book Launch: The Hour of Revenge
2026-06-17 19:00 - 20:00 | Online
Join us for a thought-provoking book talk on The Hour of Revenge, a powerful historical study that re-examines the immediate aftermath of the Second World War through the lived experiences of Polish Jewish survivors of the Holocaust.

In this session, we will explore how the emotional landscape of post-war Europe was shaped not only by trauma and loss, but also by complex responses such as retribution and the desire for justice. While much historical writing has focused on large-scale post-war violence, this book brings attention to the overlooked individual experiences of Polish Jews navigating survival, memory, and rebuilding their lives.

Author Katarzyna Person offers a deeply researched account of how survivors confronted their traumatic pasts while actively participating in the reconstruction of their communities. The discussion will highlight how Polish Jews moved across the shifting boundaries of “East” and “West” Europe before the Iron Curtain, how they negotiated memories of both war and pre-war life, and how they formed emotional and social networks in the aftermath of destruction.

We will also reflect on the book’s broader contribution to understanding post-conflict societies, migration, and identity—showing how connections to lost homelands can express both belonging and exclusion in times of profound change.

Lunch & Learn: Where Memory Lives with Tali Nates
2026-06-24 13:00 - 15:00 | Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, 1 Duncombe Rd, Johannesburg, Gauteng, 2193, South Africa
Join us for an inside view of the new European Union project, European Sites of Holocaust Memory (ESHEM), with Tali Nates – who serves on its steering committee. ESHEM is the network safeguarding the Holocaust’s historical sites for research, education and commemoration. Attendees will also be given unique insights into our two temporary exhibitions, and are invited to stay for lunch at Issy’s Coffee & Gift Shop to continue the conversation with Tali Nates and the JHGC team.

Talk – free

Lunch (soup, bread & a drink) – R100

Online Commemorative event: Elie Wiesel: Witness, Writer, Moral Voice Marking the 10th Anniversary of His Passing
2026-06-28 20:00 - 21:30 | Online
Ten years after the passing of Elie Wiesel (1928–2016), one of the most influential Holocaust survivors and moral voices of the twentieth century, the Talking Memory International Lecture Series invites you to a special programme exploring his life, legacy, and enduring impact on Holocaust memory and contemporary moral discourse.

The programme will open with remarks by Ambassador Radu Ioanid. It will feature Joel Rappel on the many dimensions of Wiesel’s life and public role; Prof. Michael Berenbaum on Wiesel as writer, public intellectual, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate; Prof. Dina Porat on the questions of identity, mission, and legacy that shaped Wiesel’s postwar life; and Dr. Ana Bărbulescu on how the Elie Wiesel National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania carries forward his vision of memory as an active ethical responsibility.

Join us for a timely conversation honoring a voice that continues to challenge, inspire, and guide us today.

In partnership with the Elie Wiesel National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania, A.M.I.R. Organization in Israel, the Romanian Cultural Institute in Tel Aviv, the Wilhelm Filderman Centre for the Study of Jewish History in Romania, Classrooms Without Borders, the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, and the Rabin Chair Forum at George Washington University.

Talking Memory Book Launch: The Ravine of Memory
2026-07-12 20:00 - 21:30 | Online
The Ghetto Fighters’ House invites you to a special Talking Memory programme marking the launch of Dr. Shay Pilnik’s book, The Ravine of Memory: Babyn Yar Between the Holocaust and the Great Patriotic War.

Our first speaker is Prof. Elissa Bemporad. Drawing on the long history of Jewish life in the lands of present-day Ukraine, she invites us to look beyond familiar narratives of persecution and to consider a more complex historical reality. In her presentation, she claims that any examination of Jewish life in the lands of present-day Ukraine must begin with an important caveat: it would be a mistake to impose a teleology of violence on a long and rich history that generated remarkable religious, political, and cultural contributions to Jewish civilization. While episodes of violence undeniably formed part of this history, relations between Jews and non-Jews were shaped far more often by coexistence, interaction, and mutual entanglement. This caution is particularly relevant in the context of Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine, which has relied in part on historical distortions. More broadly, it serves as a reminder against reading the Jewish experience in the region retrospectively, as though it were destined from the outset to culminate in persecution and catastrophe.

Our next speaker, Dr. Shay Pilnik, joins us on the occasion of the publication of his new book, Ravine of Memory, which examines the place of Babyn Yar in Soviet literary and cultural memory. In his talk, he examines how Babyn Yar – where more than 100,000 people, the vast majority Jews, were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators – has been remembered and forgotten in Soviet literature and culture, in both Russian and Yiddish. Revisiting well-known works alongside lesser-known texts, he reveals how Babyn Yar became a powerful symbolic site that illuminates both the fragility and the courage of those who bear witness to atrocity.

Our final speaker, Inna Kalenska, will bring us from the historical and cultural landscape explored in Ravine of Memory to the ongoing work of preserving and reconstructing the history of Babyn Yar today. Her presentation examines the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center’s approach to memory work through archival research, digitization, and public engagement. It will focus on the “Names” project and the role of archives in reconstructing individual histories of Holocaust victims. The talk will also reflect on how the ongoing war shapes contemporary memorial practices and influences the ways historical memory is preserved and communicated.

In partnership with the Emil A. and Jenny Fish Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Yeshiva University, The Zekelman Holocaust Centre, Classrooms Without Borders, the Rabin Chair Forum at George Washington University, and the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre.

Online Book Launch: The Three Graves of Anna Szenes
2026-07-16 19:00 - 20:00 | Online
To mark the 105th anniversary of the birth of Anikó (Anna) Szenes, please join us for the international online book launch of

The Three Graves of Anna Szenes: Memory and Body Politics in Hungary and Israel

This volume seeks answers to the question of why Anikó Szenes (1921–1944), a Jewish girl born and assimilated in Budapest who was murdered at the age of twenty-three, has three graves. What is the story behind these three places? Who were the people involved in this process, and what role did they play? On 7 November 1944, Anikó Szenes was executed in Budapest. In March 1950, during the Cold War, her body was taken from the Jewish cemetery on Kozma Street in Budapest to Italy via Austria under adventurous circumstances. In Naples, the coffin was loaded onto a ship and then transported to Haifa on another, more ceremonial-looking ship, from where, after a national mourning tour, it was buried in Jerusalem alongside Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism and the visionary of the State of Israel. The volume traces the decades-long journey of Szenes’s body and grave across Europe. Through this story, it recounts not only the history of the Holocaust in Hungary and Israel as remembered by different social groups, but also the history of Jewish resistance, full of silence and conflict.

The launch will be in conversation with the authors Andrea Petö (historian, CEU Vienna) and Krisztina Politzer Maymon (lawyer; editor, Izraelinfo)

Lunch & Learn: What Makes a Neighbour? with Lyonell Fliss
2026-07-27 12:00 - 14:00 | Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, 1 Duncombe Rd, Johannesburg, Gauteng, 2193, South Africa
Join us for an afternoon with Holocaust survivor Lyonell Fliss, who will share his story and reflect on the theme of neighbours. This Lunch & Learn marks the closing of our temporary exhibition Some Were Neighbours, which features Lyonell’s own story and photographs.

Afterwards, you are warmly invited to stay for lunch at Issy’s Coffee & Gift Shop, where the conversation with Lyonell can continue.

Talk – free

Lunch (soup, bread & a drink) – R100

AI and Holocaust Testimony: Possibilities, Perils, and Principles
2026-07-30 17:30 - 19:00 | Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, 1 Duncombe Rd, Johannesburg, Gauteng, 2193, South Africa
A Talk by Dr David Simon

17:30 for 18:00

The rise of AI-generated and enhanced mass violence materials – often (mis)using recorded testimonies that are central to historical memory and social repair – presents a crisis for mass atrocity memory. While AI could revolutionise the field of memorialisation, it also risks amplifying distorted and denialist views, while weakening acceptance of historically accurate depictions and analysis.

In this presentation, Dr. Simon will summarise both the promise of AI technology, as well as a selection of the harms – both immediate and systemic – that might arise from the careless or unethical use of AI in connection with mass atrocity testimonies. He will address some of the possibilities for technological, legal, and institutional responses to these challenges, arguing that collective action involving all three prongs is needed.

About the speaker

Dr. David J. Simon is a Senior Lecturer and the Assistant Dean for Graduate Education at the Jackson School of Global Affairs at Yale University, where he directs the Genocide Studies Program and the Mass Atrocities in the Digital Era initiative, and co-directs Yale’s Human Rights Studies certificate programme. His research focuses on atrocity prevention and the politics of recovery from mass atrocities.

He is the co-editor of Mass Violence and Memory in the Digital Age: Memorialization Unmoored (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, with Eve M. Zucker) and The Handbook of Genocide Studies (Edward Elgar, 2023, with Leora Kahn). With Dr. Kahn he created the exhibition Speaking Up: Confronting Hate Speech, which has shown in Houston and New York, and he is a founding member of the Digital Archive of the Memorialization of Mass Atrocities (DAMMA) working group.

Dr. Simon sits on the board of advisors of the Landecker Digital Memory Lab, chairs the board of the Reckoning Project, and serves on the advisory board of the Bosnia-based Post-Conflict Research Center. He is a graduate of Princeton University and holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Online Film Screening: Among Neighbors
2026-08-11 19:00 - 20:40 | Online
Join the South African Holocaust & Genocide Foundation for an online film screening of Among Neighbors.

Decades after the Holocaust, award-winning American filmmaker Yoav Potash (Crime After Crime, Sundance Film Festival) unearths the haunting mysteries of a small Polish town where people of two different faiths lived side by side for centuries. At its heart, the film focuses on two individuals who lived through the peril of World War II and its aftermath: Yaacov Goldstein, a Holocaust survivor whose harrowing story exposes both the heights of human compassion and the depths of cruelty and Pelagia Radecka, an eyewitness to when five Jews were murdered, not by the Nazis but by her own Polish neighbors, six months after the end of World War II. Breaking decades of silence for this film, they share secrets they have held for a lifetime, and their experiences are brought to life in stunning animated sequences, enriched by artful touches of magical realism. Together, their accounts illuminate the darkest chapter of Poland’s history. As attempts to rewrite this history in favor of a more politically convenient narrative gain momentum, Among Neighbors offers a powerful counterpoint. Revealing a tale of love and murder spanning seven decades, the film boldly asserts that true patriotism lies in facing history honestly, no matter how painful the truths may be. As life imitates art, political extremists and historical revisionists in Poland, including its president, have now called for the film itself to be banned.

Watch the trailer here

On the 18th of August, there will be an online conversation with the film’s award-winning writer, director, and producer Yoav Potash, in discussion with Jakub Nowakowski.

Lunch & Learn: We Are Here; Women's Voices, Memory, and Srebrenica
2026-08-12 12:00 - 14:00 | Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, 1 Duncombe Rd, Johannesburg, Gauteng, 2193, South Africa
Join us as we mark 31 years since the genocide in Srebrenica, remembering the women who endured the Bosnian War and carry its memory. Aimée Mica Komorowsky playwright, actress, and South African ambassador for Remembering Srebrenica reflects on the 2026 theme, We Are Here. She is joined by Lejla Damon, an advocate born in Sarajevo in 1992 as a result of wartime sexual violence, who will discuss memory, reconciliation and women’s experiences of conflict.

Stay for lunch at Issy’s Coffee & Gift Shop and continue the conversation with Lejla, Aimée, and the JHGC team.

Among Neighbors: In Conversation with Yoav Potash
2026-08-18 19:00 - 20:00 | Online
Following our screening of Among Neighbors on 11 August, we invite you to join an exclusive online conversation with the film’s award-winning writer, director, and producer, Yoav Potash, in discussion with Jakub Nowakowski.

Yoav Potash is an award-winning writer, director, and producer whose previous documentary, Crime After Crime, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and received numerous international honours, including the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award and the National Board of Review Freedom of Expression Award. His work is widely recognised for its commitment to social justice, historical truth, and human rights.

In conversation with Jakub Nowakowski, Potash will explore the making of the film, the ethical challenges of documenting contested histories, and the continuing relevance of Among Neighbors in a world where historical denial, antisemitism, and nationalism remain pressing concerns.

This promises to be a thoughtful and engaging conversation about the enduring importance of testimony, remembrance, and the courage to face difficult pasts in pursuit of a more honest future.

Exhibition Opening: The Landscape Archive
2026-08-19 18:00 - 20:30 | Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, 1 Duncombe Rd, Johannesburg, Gauteng, 2193, South Africa
6 for 6:30 pm

Beyond the major killing centres, thousands of Jewish people were murdered in forests, fields and by roadsides across Poland. Many were buried where they fell, in graves that were never marked. Hundreds of these sites remain unmarked to this day.

The Landscape Archive reveals a lesser-known landscape of the Holocaust: the hundreds of unmarked burial sites of Jewish victims scattered across forests, fields, and roadsides in Poland. While the Holocaust is often associated with major killing centres such as Auschwitz or Treblinka, thousands of people were murdered in countless other places while hiding, escaping, or during deportations. Many of these graves remain unmarked to this day.

The exhibition presents the work of the Zapomniane Foundation, which combines historical research with non-invasive technologies to locate and document these burial sites in accordance with Jewish religious law (Halakha). Through photographs, precise geographical coordinates, and visual documentation, The Landscape Archive uncovers traces of violence still embedded in the contemporary landscape of Poland. At once a research project, an artistic intervention, and an act of remembrance, the exhibition invites visitors to reconsider how the Holocaust continues to shape the places that surround us.

Programme highlights

Keynote address by exhibition curator Dr Aleksandra (Ola) Janus and photographer and surveyor Aleksander Schwarz

Formal remarks from Mr Jacek Chodorowicz (Chargé d’Affaires a.i. of the Republic of Poland) and Tali Nates (Founder & Executive Director Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre).

A response from Prof. Sascha Feuchert (Professor of Modern German Literature, Managing Director of the Institute for German Studies, Head of the Holocaust Literature Research Unit at the University of Giessen)

A walkabout of the exhibition

The keynote speakers

Aleksandra (Ola) Janus works at the intersection of academia, art, and activism. She holds a PhD in Anthropology from the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland. She is the Director of ESHEM: European Sites of Holocaust Memory, a European Commission initiative, President of the Zapomniane Foundation, and co-founder of the Engaged Memory Consortium, which develops innovative approaches to remembrance.

She is a collaborator with the Research Center for Memory Cultures at the Jagiellonian University, a member of the global network Thinking Through the Museum, and serves on the editorial board of the Jagiellonian University/Columbia University Press book series Exhibiting Theory. She initiated numerous cultural projects, including Museum Lab (2014), Open Culture Studio (2016), Kultur-Lige – a network of contemporary Jewish artists in Poland (2023) – and the Museums for the Climate working group and Culture for Climate collective (2020), within which she co-authored the guidebook Culture for Climate.

She is the author and editor of numerous academic articles and publications, including Hideouts. Architecture of Survival (Hatje Cantz, Berlin, 2024), and the co-editor of a two-volume Polish-language publication on “non-sites of memory.” She has co-created exhibitions including Natalia Romik’s Hideouts. Architecture of Survival (Warsaw and Szczecin, 2022; Frankfurt, 2024), and curated exhibitions such as Landscape Archive (Brussels and Mechelen, 2025) and Miła: The State of Things (Warsaw, 2026).

Aleksander Schwarz is the co-founder and vice-president of the Zapomniane Foundation, long-term member of the Rabbinical Commission for Cemeteries (Office of the Chief Rabbi of Poland), where he works as an expert on Jewish law (Halacha) specializing in cemeteries and burials. Responsible for defining historical boundaries of cemeteries and their burial zones and identifying mass graves of Jewish victims of the Holocaust, using forensic analysis and non-invasive methods such as GPR (ground penetrating radar), LIDAR analysis, aerial photos interpretation and synchronization of archival maps. He collaborates with experts from AGH University of Science and Technology in Cracow and Warsaw University of Technology. He supervised the archeological and construction works in most of the sites of the former Nazi camps in Poland, including: Bełżec, Sobibór, Auschwitz, Majdanek, Treblinka as well as site of the former KL Plaszow camp (Kraków), Chełmno (Kulmhof) and many others.

He runs workshops and gives talks on Jewish law and non-invasive methodology of studying material traces of the Holocaust. He works with diverse audiences: schoolchildren, students, teachers, religious groups and groups of people affected by social exclusion, including prisoners (within the Atlantis Project, 2005-2009 and Tikkun Repair, 2009-2014).

He recently co-created several artistic research projects such as: „Speculative Cartographies” (Biennale Warszawa, Poland, 2019; NSCAD Halifax, Canada 2022), participated in exhibitions: „Knowing materiality” 2021 (Re:Kultura, Kraków), „Reference Points” 2021 (CentrALT, Kraków). He also contributed artistic-research materials for the exhibition „(post-)Jewish” at POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews (2024).

When the Nazi Past Becomes a Bestseller: the Opportunities and Limits of Popular Fiction
2026-08-20 15:00 - 16:00 | Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, 1 Duncombe Rd, Johannesburg, Gauteng, 2193, South Africa
For a while now, popular fiction set in the years before 1933 and their long aftermath has been doing very well in Germany. In its own way, it’s become part of how the country remembers — and it’s quietly reshaping how people picture that history. Drawing on two examples – the Gereon Rath crime novels, including the popular Babylon Berlin, which run from the 1920s through to the end of the Nazi regime, and the novel Stella, about a Jewish “catcher” – this conversation looks at what popular fiction can achieve, and where it runs up against its limits.

Sascha Feuchert is a professor of modern German literature, specializing in Holocaust and concentration camp literature, at the University of Giessen. He has received numerous awards for his work, including the Copernicus Prize of the German Research Foundation and the Foundation for Polish Science, as well as the Hessian University Prize for Excellence in Teaching.
