Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre serves as tribute to the memory of victims and aims to contribute to the prevention of a recurrence of atrocitiesSing Arbeit macht frei in Auschwitz II Birkenau concentration camp located in the west of Krakow, Poland. Picture: ISTOCK
There is a story told that a little boy was walking with his mother in Munich near the Dachau concentration camp. They saw concentration camp prisoners walking under guard to do slave labour. The little boy asked his mother “who are those people?”, and she replied “they are not people”. The significance of the opening of the Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre is much more than just the building, as impressive as it may be. Its symbolic value far transcends the material structure. That symbolic value is in itself multifaceted. Centres such as this are erected to pay tribute to the memory of all the victims, those who perished and those who survived, in such dastardly events as the Holocaust, genocides and all similar events.
Incredibly, barely 70 years after the Holocaust, rampant anti-semitism is on the march worldwide, as is the Holocaust denial that is but a manifestation of antisemitism. Regrettably, other forms of racial hatred are also blossoming in other parts of the world.