rabinowitz, cohen, goldstein, cohen.
Familiar names crowded the Jewish Museum of Cape Town, Cohen, Rabinowitz etc etc, they really bring me back home to Jewton, MA. Anyways, previous to my visit to the Jewish museum was quite informative. I knew about the large Jewish population, mostly in JoBerg, but I had not realised how long the Jewish people have been in South Africa, since the 1800s! Got some great fun facts, like the founders of De Beers diamond company are Jewish (not such a great reputation…hmmm)
In the next building is the Holocaust memorial and museum. It was also quite informative, but a little bit dry. I say this after having visited the museums in Washington, D.C. and in Israel, which were two of the most emotion provoking experiences of history that I have ever had. The one in South Africa was informative, especially putting the Holocaust into a South African context, which I appreciated and did not know a lot about.
But there is something about the two museums in Washington and Israel that have the real artefacts, the piles of shoes and spectacles, that make genocide real, and this museum had many photographs and no real artefacts, which made it more like a living text book than a real piece of history.
Another difference that I noticed is that in the Israeli Holocaust museum, every exhibit refers to the Jewish people as “us.” It makes it more real and more personal, but in South Africa, there are just too many types of people to say that, the Jews are “they” at the holocaust museum, making the whole experience a little bit less personal.
Putting the Holocaust in the context of South Africa and apartheid that occurred during this lifetime is discouraging. Not only did the Nationalist government side with Hitler, and denied many Jews the freedom to live in South Africa, but this blatant killing and torture, human rights offences occurred in this country in my lifetime and is still occurring everywhere. The words “torture,” “mass killing,” “inferior race,” “ghettos,” come up too many times to count in this museum and in this country everywhere. I just need to keep remembering the words “freedom fighter,” “liberation,” “survivor,” also do come up, giving hope in people.
