The Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre

Sweet Home Sweet: exhibition opening workshop
2026-05-14 17:30 - 19:00 (Europe/Helsinki) | 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.
