WHAT ARE A HOLOCAUST MUSEUM AND JEWISH MUSEUM DOING IN SOUTH AFRICA?

On our second day in Capetown, our group as a whole was surprised to learn that there were both a Holocaust and Jewish Museum and that we would be going there.  We were confused about why the museum existed, and asked ourselves whether there were Jewish people in South Africa and whether they had a real presence in this country.   I was especially interested to learn the answers to these questions because I am Jewish and am very eager to understand more about my own heritage and believe it is my responsibility to do so.  As soon as we got to the Holocaust Museum I became even more interested because our tour guide was Jewish and his mom had died in the Holocaust. I also have several relatives who died in the Holocaust. When I asked why there was a Holocaust Museum in South Africa he responded quickly and with great passion that the apartheid system was based in part on the Nazi regime.  I didn’t know about the role of propaganda in the Nazi regime and how that related to apartheid tactics until our tour guide explained it as we went through the museum.  I was surprised, though, that the guide didn’t mention that it wasn’t only Jews that were killed in the Holocaust but many others as well.  I was inspired by this tour, now wanting to go to Israel and take also take a course on the Holocaust spring semester at Elon.  I couldn’t believe how modern the Jewish museum was and how much work went into it.  One question that I kept asking myself was what the local people thought about this museum and whether many have seen it.

I was, in fact, surprised to learn that there was a Jewish presence in South Africa and that Jews had been part of South African history. We also visited the Jewish Museum, but we didn’t spend as much time there as in the Holocaust Museum Although I need to learn more, I did learn that there is a small percentage of Jewish people in South Africa, and that Jewish people had been on both sides of the apartheid issue.  Although many were very active protestors and involved with the anti-apartheid movement, unfortunately some did not want to get involved. The old (white) South Africa has also had a conflicted relationship with Jews and Israel, at times attempting to stop Jewish immigration, and also showing some support for Nazi Germany.  South Africa, I believe, has generally been supportive of Israel.  One night a group of us wanted to go out and we ended up in a town called Sea Point.  We later learned that this was an area known for its Jewish population as well as a population of gays.

However, it was the Holocaust Museum that had the most impact for me.  As I thought more and more about why this museum exists in South Africa and what the connection is between the Holocaust and apartheid, I began to understand.  I tried to do some reading and research into this idea and realized more and more how much of what we had been learning as a group about racism, discrimination and the horrors of apartheid had certain parallels to the Holocaust at another time in history.  Although these two events are different, the importance of a commitment to human rights is the lesson that should be learned from both.  Both South Africa and Germany have a past full of  horrific events and shameful acts against other human beings and if people don’t learn from history, then as the saying goes, history is likely to repeat itself.

I learned from my research that the South Africans in 2007 included teaching the Holocaust as part of the new curriculum in schools. The South Africans wanted to emphasize teaching human rights and how that theme is based on the Constitution of South Africa.  This documents was influenced by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which was written as a result of the Holocaust and World War 11. The South Africans wisely saw that to teach human rights, along with teaching many other historical events, the teaching of the Holocaust and the lessons learned was crucial.  To study the Holocaust is important in and of itself; however; to focus on what can be learned from it, what parallels to apartheid there are,  is critical to a commitment to human rights, a respect for differences and a more complete understanding of moral and ethical issues involved in being human.

There are many other advantages to an awareness of the Holocaust for South Africans.  I was reminded in my research that the testimony of Holocaust survivors fits in well with South African tradition of oral history and story telling as a way to teach values and morals.  Drawing parallels in the two events also allows present day South Africans to understand what the responses are to extreme discrimination and what choices the oppressed people have.

I learned that Archbishop Desmond Tutu is a supporter of the museum and has eloquently summed up the value of teaching the Holocaust to South Africans.  “We learn about the Holocaust so that we can become more human, more gentle, more caring, more compassionate, valuing every person as being of infinite worth, so precious that we know such atrocities will never happen again and the world will be a more human place”  I was very moved by this quote, and sincerely hope that as human beings, we can learn from our tragic mistakes in history; however given the continuing human rights violations and atrocities in countries around the world, I can’t help wondering if we ever really learn these critical lessons?