The Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre, which provides resource materials and training for teachers and learners, will move late next year to a bigger, permanent property on Jan Smuts Avenue, near the zoo.
The centre is operating from a temporary location in Highlands North, east of Johannesburg.
Centre director, Tali Nates, said she is elated she will be operating from a bigger, formal space dedicated specifically to studying the Holocaust, a subject that has always been close to her heart.
Nates, a trained historian, said she is passionate about genocide prevention, Holocaust education, reconciliation and human rights. She is an international expert on these areas and has also published widely on these subjects.
Nates was born in Israel to a family of Holocaust survivors. Her father and uncle were saved while the rest of the family was wiped out in the Holocaust.
She said the need for the centre was given impetus by the introduction of sections on ‘Nazi Germany and the Holocaust’ and ‘Genocide: a case study of Rwanda’, as part of the national curriculum for grade nine and eleven learners. She said this presented an opportunity for the centre to team up with the Gauteng Department of Education where they facilitate workshops for teachers on how to handle these subjects.
“I realised teachers did not get sufficient support to teach these sensitive and traumatising subjects. So what we do is empower them on content, methodology and how to use historical skills like oral testimonies. The good thing about this is that some of the skills they gained during the workshops could be used across learning areas,” Nates told the Mail & Guardian Online.
She said the workshops are provided free of charge to teachers and each school gets a resource pack, DVD, learners’ and educators’ books and a set of posters. The GDE, through its district offices, helps select teachers to attend the workshops, said Nates.
‘Easy to relate’
She said the 1994 Rwandan genocide and the recent xenophobic violence in South Africa make it easy for teachers and learners to relate to and understand the adverse effects of racial or ethnic hatred.
Nates said the centre uses the Holocaust experience and other mass murders elsewhere on the continent and the world as case studies for humanity to glean wisdom and therefore be in a position to intervene early.
The centre has teamed up with sister centres in Cape Town and Durban to form an umbrella structure called the South African Holocaust and Genocide Foundation, through which they collaborate on a variety of projects. Each centre works closely with their provincial education department and they have collectively hosted around 3 000 teachers.
The Johannesburg centre’s patrons include high-profile personalities like former education minister Kader Asmal, Justice Richard Goldstone, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, and Chief Rabbi, Warren Goldstein.
Once completed, the centre will house both permanent and temporary exhibitions, venues for workshops and public events, a memorial garden and resource centre, a coffee shop and a bookshop.
Lewis Levin, who has been appointed architect of the centre, has made sure the architectural design features and the aesthetics resonate with what the building represents.
Levin said: “It is important that this building is humble yet respectful, austere yet contemplative. And it is important that children are able to relate to it.” The building is scheduled to be operational towards the end of 2011.
For more information contact the centre on (011) 640 3100 or email [email protected]. Alternatively visit them on the web