Holocaust Mourning and Memory


         

Holocaust Education in South Africa


 
 
 
 

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Tolerance Education in Post-Apartheid South Africa

By Gwynne Schrire

Most South African Jews have their roots in Lithuania where Jews had lived since 1316. A third of world Jewry was killed during the Holocaust. Of the 250,000 Jews who lived in Lithuania in 1939, 95% had been murdered by the war's end in 1945. The majority were shot by einsatzkommandos in three months between July and September, 19412. On one day alone, October 28, 1941, 9,000 Jews from Kovno were shot by Lithuanian guards. These special mobile killing groups rounded up the Jews from the villages or ghettos, marched them to selected killing grounds, usually in a forest, forced them to dig pits and then shot them. The booty in terms of clothes, money and jewels were taken from the corpses, the pits filled in and the group would move onto the next area. Most of the Lithuanian population welcomed the Germans and collaborated with them.

To the relatives and friends in Cape Town, this was an unparalleled tragedy - they had lost touch forever with their entire families and places of origin. All that was left in Lithuania of the vibrant Jewish culture they had left behind were blood soaked forests. Closure was difficult - there was not even a graveside or a place of memorial where they could mourn. It was a trauma beyond imagination, beyond forgetting, beyond mourning.

"Remembrance as a vital human activity shapes our links to the past, and the ways we remember define us in the present. As individuals and societies, we need the past to construct and anchor our identities and to nurture a vision of the future... We know how slippery and unreliable personal memory can be, always affected by forgetting and denial, repression and trauma, and, more often than not, serving the need to rationalise and to maintain power. But a society's collective memory is no less contingent, no less unstable, its shape by no means permanent and always subject to subtle and not so subtle reconstruction."3

This article describes the ways in which the Cape Town Jewish community tried to come to terms with the devastating loss. How the need to construct and anchor their identities changed with the passing years and the changing conditions around them. How initial ceremonies for mourning developed into annual communal commemorations and then extended into the outside society; how memories of experiences, initially suppressed, became valued and published in a book by the Holocaust survivors' society4 and how a Holocaust centre was developed that would serve to nurture a vision of the future and which would become a model for teaching tolerance in a society emerging from its own past of human rights abuse.

The rise of Nazism in the 1930s had been accompanied by a rise in South African antisemitism fanned by active Nazi propaganda. There had also been a strengthening of Afrikaner nationalism and the belief in white supremacy. Antisemitism helped to cover over and blur class divisions and antagonisms within Afrikaner society.5 Allport's classic study of prejudice showed clearly that "people who reject one group will tend to reject other out-groups. If a person is anti-Jewish, he is likely to be anti-Catholic, anti-Negro, anti any out-group".6 This certainly held for many Afrikaners and antisemitism was deeply entrenched in their religion and nationalistic consciousness.7 Shain relates this to an intensification of "poor whiteism" following the world depression, the emergence of Nazism and the rise of an illiberal, anti-modernist and exclusive Afrikaner nationalism.8 Jews had become successful - they had developed trade and industry both in the small towns and in the big cities, they had contributed to art and culture, to medicine and law, but strangely they were still regarded as undesirable and unassimilable.9

Leaflets were being distributed in the 1930s stating 'Jews are Asiatics ... they will never be otherwise. Their ideas do not conform to ours and will not even though they live among us for ten generations. A leopard cannot change its spots. Jews are Asiatics, are a menace to this country and should be excluded by this government."10

Eastern European Jewish immigration had been stopped by the Quota Act in 1930. As conditions in Germany deteriorated and German Jews struggled to find places of refuge, immigration of German Jews to South Africa was closed by the Alien's Act in 1937.11

Even when the news of the fate of the Jews began to emerge, German Jewish refugees were not allowed in on the grounds that they were 'enemy aliens'. The Afrikaans newspaper, Die Burger, complained that the Jews were alleging that two million Jews had been murdered so that more Jewish refugees could be admitted.12 In a Parliamentary debate Afrikaans members of parliament suggested Jews were being killed because they were unassimilable, and that it was preposterous to suggest that Hitler intended to murder the Jews and take everything they had. After hearing descriptions of events in Europe by Jewish MPs, one answered that "if" the reports were true, "this house can do no less than express its deepest regret at the unprecedented persecution".13.

In 1942 the systematic killing of the Jews became known. The Zionist Record reported that the Nazis were carrying out "a policy of extermination more relentless and inhuman than anything the world has ever seen." The Jews were being murdered "by the most satanic means the deranged mind of men can devise." The tragedy was so great that there "were no tears to mourn this dire catastrophe; its magnitude is beyond all weeping."14A National Day of Mourning was called for the Jewish community on 29 December 1942. This day of lamentation helped a community traumatised at the silence from their families, at the rumours of what was probably happening to their loved ones in Europe. There were special synagogue services, Jewish shops were closed and functions were cancelled. A special meeting was held in the Cape Town City Hall addressed by the mayor, the chief rabbi, the Anglican Archbishop and a Dutch Reformed Church minister in a demonstration of solidarity with the Jewish community. The service was attended by all sections of the Cape Town Jewish community and it enabled them to take comfort in collectively sharing their individual grief. The Day of Mourning also drew the attention of the non Jewish public to what was happening to the Jews in Nazi Europe.15

On 7 December 1943 another Day of Mourning was called with special synagogue services followed by a mass meeting in the City Hall. Even some non Jewish businesses closed in sympathy. Towards the end of 1944 some of the camps were liberated and the first survivors visited South Africa to tell the community the catastrophic facts. The traumatised community sought comfort in a formalised communal ritual in which they could share their grief, their shock and their loss. A third day of mourning and fasting in memory of the massacred Jews was held on 14 March 1945. Offices were closed, no one went to public entertainment, special gatherings were held for children and the Jewish Board of Deputies prepared a manifesto which was sent to the United Nations. In it they declared that throughout the free world Jewry had gathered together on the same day to mourn the millions of Jews who had perished as a result of the barbaric policy of extermination carried out by the Nazis. They asked the UN to punish those who committed crimes, to guarantee the Jewish people free national development in their ancient homeland, to end restriction on Jewish immigration to Palestine, and to establish in Palestine a free and democratic Jewish commonwealth.16

The pre-War immigration laws passed by a government fearing a "Jewish problem" with "unassimilable" outsiders, had made it virtually impossible for Jews to enter South Africa. With the war's end, despite the knowledge of the enormity of the Jewish losses, the South African government, unlike those in America or Australia, did not ease restrictions on Jewish immigration. Eric Louw, a Member of Parliament, had made it plain that there was no room for them in South Africa." In their own interests .... there should be a discontinuation of Jewish immigration into this country," he declared.17

Those few Holocaust survivors who did arrive had many problems to contend with. They had lost six years, their families, homes, income, education, possessions, health. They had to learn new languages, make new friends, find new ways of supporting themselves. A minor problem, as indicated by the use of the words "if" and "alleging" in the parliamentary debate, was the unwillingness of the people around them to believe the facts to which these survivors with their tattooed arms, fragile bodies and haunted nightmares were witness .

The outcome of the Final Solution was so enormously horrific that it was difficult to believe. How could one come to terms with the figures quoted by Raul Hilberg, that when the Soviets moved into Auschwitz they found that the Germans had burned down twenty nine out of thirty five storerooms in an effort to cover their crimes, that in the six remaining store rooms the liberators found 368 820 men's suits, 836,255 women's coats and dresses, 5,525 pairs of women's shoes, 13,964 carpets, large quantities of children's clothes, tooth brushes, false teeth and pots and pans, and in the tannery the Soviet investigation commission found seven tons of human hair!18 All belonging to victims, old and young, who had been hunted down from all the corners of occupied Europe.

As one Cape Town survivor said, "Who could believe such a story? One reads books about such things but they are impossible to believe".19

The survivors were the repository of memories that people did not want to acknowledge or hear. It was a mixture of guilt at not having been able to prevent the Holocaust, unwillingness to believe that humanity could be capable of such bestiality. "When we arrived in Cape Town", said one, "my husband and I were interviewed by a newspaper. An Englishman phoned and asked if he could see our tattoos because he did not believe the story and he said the Jewish deaths must have occurred on the battlefield, there could not have been gas chambers. He came to our home to look".20

There was a cognitive dissonance because "civilised" people like the Germans, who had been much admired and emulated by the Afrikaners, could not have behaved in such a way. How did this conform to much vaunted ideas of white Christian superiority which gave this Afrikaans minority its moral right to dominate the voteless Black masses. Was the ruthless bureaucratic slaughter of millions carried out by ordinary civil servants working industriously to eradicate Jews as efficiently and economically as possible an indicator of Aryan civilisation, of Western culture?

It was not only non-Jews who were unwilling to accept the horrors of the Holocaust. One survivor related this story. "My husband was approached by various (Yiddish) newspapers to write about his experiences. In one article he described how one morning in the camp Birkenau while we were standing appel in order to be counted, some prisoners supported a man in an upright position who had died a few minutes before in order to receive his portion of bread. After this appeared in the press we received a phone call from a Jewish man ... who expressed disbelief at anybody being so hungry as to do such a thing."21

He refused to write further articles. A refugee from Germany gave a talk to a Zionist women's group about her life in Nazi Germany and was so upset by the level of ignorance and lack of insight shown by her audience, that she walked out of the meeting. She refused further speaking engagements.22

Some found their experiences too upsetting to discuss and tried to repress the memories. "To this day I find it difficult to talk about these times ".23 In the immediate post war years, survivors were preoccupied with rebuilding their lives in their new homeland and establishing new families. They were encouraged to put their past behind them, to forget about it, to build new lives. " People didn't ask and we didn't talk about it".24 The children often grew up in silence and embarrassment.

One of the survivors expressed this in a poem:

Another wrote "I did not tell my children about my experiences for a long time because I did not want them to grow up with hatred. My children often asked why I had a number on my arm. I would tell them that it was a telephone number. My daughter once came to me with a rag and soapy water. I thought it was to wash her doll, but instead she told me that she wanted to wash my arm because it was "dirty". The number on my arm was a constant reminder to me and a constant mystery to my children. All along I think that the children knew that I was hiding something from them by my silence. They also knew I was different from the other mothers." 26

When relating to fellow survivors, they were not different. They felt accepted and understood. Mourning and memory was something they shared when they were together and at the annual communal commemorative services on Holocaust Memorial Day (Yom Hashoah) it was something they shared with the Jewish community as a whole.

In 1951 the survivors decided that rather "than go home after the service with our own pain", they would gather together.27 From this a survivor support group, She'erith Hapletah, the Association of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, developed which met monthly in private homes. Its aim was to promote social and cultural ties among the survivors and the community, to render assistance to each other, to involve them in the affairs of the community and to participate in all aspects of Holocaust research and testimony on the Holocaust.28One of their first projects was to place a commemorative six-branched menorah made by one of their members, Nachum Zolin, at the cemetery as a Holocaust memorial. Smaller replicas were installed in synagogues. The money paid for these by the congregations, plus subscriptions and donations, were used for a fund to provide financial assistance for emergencies.

As time passed the survivors became integrated into their new homeland and community. As their children and grandchildren grew up, many of whom wanted to know their family history from the safety of a comfortable space detached from the horrors, survivors world wide found that people were now willing to listen to the story they needed to tell. The passing years put a thin scab and a safe distance over the past. They participated in international enterprises to record memories, such as the Yad Vashem enterprise "Pages of Testimony" inaugurated in 1977 and the 1983 Student Holocaust Interviewing Project, a national project of the South African Union of Jewish Students.

By the mid 1980s, the Holocaust was no longer a subject kept under wraps and, as the perpetrators as well as the survivors were ageing, the subject was no longer so threatening to the outside world. The subject of the Holocaust moved outwards to a wider audience. The Shoah was no longer the private pain of the survivors or an annual mourning ceremony by the Jewish community but had moved into the realm of public interest, as evidenced by books and films, like Oscar-winning Sophie's Choice and Claude Lanzmann's nine hour documentary Shoah. The destruction of the Jews was conducted and planned by non-Jews and people wanted to understand how the previous generation could have perpetrated such deeds or have allowed it to happen.

When the 40th anniversary of the liberation of the camps, one of which had been liberated by South African troops, was due to be commemorated, Myra Osrin, chairman of the education committee of the Zionist Council, approached the Cultural History Museum to host an exhibition, thinking that it would be a good opportunity to address a wider audience. The director agreed provided that it focussed on the liberation of local Cape Town Jews, which would allow the exhibition to fit into its mission policy. The She'erith Hapletah was approached and a major exhibition was mounted from 14 April to 15 May 1985 together with an accompanying series of lectures and workshops in co-operation with the other major Jewish communal bodies and the Jewish Museum.29

This was the first time the Jewish community acknowledged the She'erith Hapletah as a group with stories to be told. Until then it had been very low key and few people were aware of its existence. Its members were still insecure and reluctant to be identified as survivors and they were named in the exhibition either by initials or with vague details like "Leon of Sea Point". The exhibition brochure stated that the display "was envisaged as a personal statement and witness by those survivors who found refuge in Cape Town. The memorabilia on exhibition were but a modest testament to the inhumanity of the Nazi genocidal programme". 30 The exhibition was a great success and it represented for the survivors public recognition and an affirmation of self worth.

Arising from this co-operation, a Cape Town Holocaust Memorial Council was set up as a co-ordinating council. Its brief was to promote awareness and knowledge of the Holocaust among the Jewish and general community. It organised regular public lectures, film screenings, commemorative events and exhibitions and school children, as representatives of a Jewish future, despite Hitler, became active participants in the Yom Hashoah commemoration ceremony.

At the same time some Cape Town survivors attended the World Assembly of Survivors held in Israel in 1985 to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the Liberation from the camps and the defeat of Nazi Germany. Miriam Lichterman attended and she was impressed by an address by Simon Wiesenthal. He told them they were the last survivors and the last witnesses, they were all getting older and had to put their memories down on paper for the next generation. The survivors at the assembly realised that people were ready to hear about their experiences. It was important to document them, particularly as Holocaust deniers, by casting doubt on the truth of their experiences, threatened the memories and veracity of the deaths of their families. She returned to Cape Town imbued with the urgency of communicating their memories and shared Wiesenthal's sentiments with the group at their next meeting. "Until this time we didn't talk much. After that we started to talk."31

Among the meetings to commemorate the fortieth anniversary was a seminar organised by the B'nei Brith. Three Holocaust survivors were invited to appear on a panel. This was the first time survivors had spoken on a public platform in Cape Town. The hall was crowded. Soon after that the Jewish Day School requested them to address an audience of teachers, parents and the older students in the presence of the visiting Israeli ambassador. Then more invitations started to stream in. People were keen to listen to their experiences, audiences were moved at their presentations, the survivors found the meetings emotional and meaningful and went to speak at schools, churches and gatherings. The survivors discovered that it was okay to talk about the past. That is was okay to have suffered and be different. That it was okay to have survivor guilt.

"I often speak to people about my experiences. Some cry with me, some don't want to hear. If G-d made a miracle which enabled me to survive then I must give testimony. I must never forget and I can never forgive."32

A logical development was the decision to ensure that their memories were preserved. "We used to meet and reminisce; now we decided to put them in a book". 33 Realising the historical importance of their own experiences during these nightmare years and the fact that "there is nobody left to speak in the voices of the millions' who did not survive,34 the members of She'erith Hapletah decided that they wanted to record their stories in a book to be in sacred memory of those who did not survive. This was a communal project of the survivors to give their memories a meaning beyond the physical facts of individual survival. With the enthusiasm of the survivors and the assistance of the Cape Town Holocaust Memorial Council and the Jewish Board of Deputies, a book of their memoirs called In Sacred Memory: Recollections of the Holocaust by Survivors Living in Cape Town, was published in time for the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of the camps and the end of the war.

This writer edited and structured the book and conducted most of the interviews. The publication brought a great sense of pride and achievement to the fifty participants, whose stories appeared in it. Although all living in Cape Town, they had come from Belgium, Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, Greece, Holland, Lithuania, Poland, Rhodes Island and Rumania and their stories covered life in pre-war Nazi Germany, in flight and in hiding, in ghettos, in camps and in Auschwitz as well as in resistance. Which ever survivor I visited subsequent to its publication, I noticed "their" book displayed on the coffee table, so that visitors could look at it, often with a book mark inserted at "their" chapter.

The book brought the memories out of the closet and into the public arena. For many families it was the first time they learnt what had happened to them. The second generation brought up with a "black box" of silence inside, knew that there was a terrible secret that made their family different from other families. One survivor requested to withdraw her contribution to the book because her adult children did not want people to know that she had been in Auschwitz. After much debate she finally agreed to its publication under her murdered sister's initials. When the book came out, the children realised that they did not have to be ashamed of their mother's past, and felt pride in her survival and resilience. When subsequently that survivor was involved in the Spielberg Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Project, she was delighted when the children asked if it could be filmed in their home because they wanted to be part of it. Other families who had been brought up in an atmosphere of silence and '"don't ask" also remarked on improved family relationships which was caused by the new openness.

At this time South Africa was going through a dramatically changing mind set. In 1948 the National Party under D.F.Malan had gained power with more seats but 100 000 fewer votes than the combined opposition and their government was "conservative and reactionary to a man.35 Within a short period of time Malan had passed laws classifying groups according to skin colour, banning marriages and sex between white and black people, imposing forced residential separation. He also introduced a new immigration policy which, by limiting immigration to the existing composition of the White population, meant in practice that only Northern European Protestants were welcome. Jews were classified as Whites who were called Europeans. Blacks were calledNon-Europeans. Jews, usually part of a non-privileged persecuted minority, now found themselves part of a privileged persecuting minority. Many people saw apartheid as a survival of the Nazi doctrine of racial superiority and Jews, unhappy at the prospect, began emigrating - a process that would continue into the future and fracture the cohesive family structure.

For nearly fifty years the country was a "pigmentocracy" that deprived the majority of their citizens of their human rights. Racism and prejudice was legally entrenched as a fact of daily life. There were laws intended to prevent economic and social integration. These laws controlled virtually every aspect of life, from whom one could marry, to with whom one could socialise, where one could live, where one's children could go to school, and what work one could do. Comparisons with Nazism were unfair, but understandable. It was a country with race groups segregated into separate elevators, separate post offices, separate park benches, separate beaches, separate cinemas, separate parking areas for drive-in cinemas (with the separated audience sitting in separate cars watching the same film), separate pedestrian bridges, separate schools, separate hospitals, separate churches, separate graveyards, separate everything.

On 13 September 1989, the new prime minister, F W De Klerk, a younger and more flexible man than his predecessors, permitted a peaceful march to take place and 30 000 people packed the streets of Cape Town en route to the centre of town to be addressed by Archbishop Tutu who announced "We are a new people, a rainbow people, marching to freedom." Six weeks later the Soviet Union fell and with it the Communist threat. On 2 February 1990 F W De Klerk stunned South Africa by announcing in Parliament to gasps of disbelief that he was unbanning the African National Congress (ANC) and was releasing its leader, Nelson Mandela.

The Holocaust Memorial Council became more active and became involved in outreach educational programmes in high schools. As the history of World War 11 was included in the school curriculum, the Council brought out from the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, Los Angeles, the exhibition, "The Courage to Care". This was comprised of forty large coloured posters which were mounted in a hall, schools were invited to visit and talks were arranged in 1992, 1994 and 1996.

In March 1994 as the apartheid era was closing and negotiations were taking place to formulate a new government and constitution in what was planned to be a prejudice free society, the South African Jewish Board of Deputies and the Royal Netherlands Embassy presented the travelling exhibition "Anne Frank in the World" on behalf of the Anne Frank Stigting, Amsterdam. Holland had participated in the cultural boycott of apartheid South Africa and it was only now as the old order was changing that permission was given for the exhibition to come to the country. The Anne Frank Stigting stipulated that the exhibition must travel round South Africa together with an ancillary exhibition on apartheid and resistance. It was difficult to find such material as De Klerk's government was still in power.36

The National tour was launched in Cape Town at the South African National Gallery in Cape Town. It was billed as an "international exhibition to promote tolerance and understanding" and was in association with the Dutch Reformed Church, the SA Catholic Bishops Conference, the SA Council of Churches and the World Conference on Religion and Peace (SA Chapter). It was opened by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and there was an accompanying series of lectures and films focussed on the legacy of Anne Frank, on the Holocaust and on human rights issues including a seminar on race and the law in the future South Africa. The ancillary exhibition on Apartheid and Resistance was created and curated by the newly established Mayibuye Centre for History and Culture in South Africa, University of the Western Cape..37

The organisers were overwhelmed by the level of interest in and ignorance of the Holocaust shown by the schools groups which flocked to see the exhibition wherever it went on its eighteen-month tour of South Africa. One black teacher came to thank Myra Osrin. "You have no idea how important this experience has been for my pupil's self esteem," he told her. "For the first time they understand that people can be discriminated against even if they do not have a black skin."38

Emerging out of a society where possession of a pigmented skin was a sign of degradation and stigma, the knowledge of the existence of antisemitism gave a perspective that racism was not only dependent on skin colour, and that even white people could be victims of stereotyping, discrimination and persecution. It was clearly demonstrated that there was a role in the new South Africa for Holocaust education that would raise the issues of race prejudice and abuse of power when taken to its extremes. The interest was there, but the extent and efficacy of these short term programmes was restricted because there was no permanent Holocaust centre or exhibition in Cape Town, or in South Africa.

On the 29th April 1994, three weeks after the Cape Town exhibition closed, white and black stood chatting and relaxed in long peaceful queues that snaked around the polling stations, in the first election in which every citizen could vote no matter how many melanosomes their epidermis contained. The ANC came to power on the basis of wanting to create a non-racial country where bigotry (including antisemitism) would not be tolerated and they have succeeded. South Africa was the only country in the world in which a substantial Jewish community lived within a black majority but Judaism was just regarded as one square in a quilt of beliefs in a culture of tolerance which included the acceptance of eleven instead of two official languages.

Click here to continue to Part II

1 .I should like to thank Myra Osrin, Jocelyn Stoch and Maxine Boyd of the Cape Town Holocaust Centre, Dr Ute Ben Yosef and Lorraine Knight of the Jacob Gitlin Library and Evan and Roy Robins for their help in the preparation of this article.

2 .For details see Israel Gutman, The Encyclopaedia of the Holocaust (New York: Collier, 1990); Masha Greenbaum, The Jews of Lithuania: A History of a Remarkable Community, (Jerusalem: Geffen, 1995). From a secret report from Karl Jaeger, Commander of Einsatzkommando 3 dated 25 November 1941. I can state today that the goal of solving the Jewish problem in Lithuania has been attained by Einsatzkommando 3. There are no Jews in Lithuania anymore, except those needed for work and their families… I intend to kill off these working Jews too but the civil administration and the Wehrmacht need them and their families for the war effort. The goal of ridding Lithuania of Jews could not have been achieved without the co-operation of the Lithuanian partisans and the respective civil offices. Only proper timing helped us to carry out five aktionnen per week and do the current job. The aktionnen in Kovno itself, where a sufficient number of trained partisans was available, may be described as shooting ducks in an arcade. We can now report a total of 133,346 Jews killed to date…"(Masha Greenbaum)

3 .Andreas Huyssen, quoted in Neville Dubow, Imaging the Unimaginable: Holocaust Memory in Art and Architecture, (Cape Town; Jewish Publications - South Africa, University of Cape Town, 2001), 3.

4 .Gwynne Schrire, ed. , In Sacred Memory: Recollections of the Holocaust by Survivors Living in Cape Town (Cape Town: Holocaust Memorial Council, 1995)

5 .Milton Shain, Antisemitism (London: Bowerdean Briefings, 1998),81

6 . Gordon Allport, The Nature of Prejudice, Anchor Book ed. (New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1958), 66.

7 .Milton Shain, The Roots of Antisemitism in South Africa,( Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1994),144.

8 .Milton Shain, "If it Was So Good, Why Was it So Bad," in Memories, Realities and Dreams: Aspects of the South African Jewish Experience, ed. M Shain and R Mendelsohn, (Cape Town: Jonathan Ball, 2000), 87.

9 .See Mendel Kaplan,Jewish Roots in the South African Economy, (Cape Town; C Struik,1986); "Jews and the Law in South Africa", Jewish Affairs, Vol. 55 No2, 2000; "South African Jews and Medicine", Jewish Affairs, Vol 56 No 2, 2001

10 .Nathan Berger, In Those Days, In These Times (1929-1979), Spotlighting Events in Jewry - South African and General, (Johannesburg:Kayor 1979), 53.

11 .Louis Hotz," The Refugees en Route - Restrictions on immigration in South Africa" In Frieda Sichel, From Refugee to Citizen, (Cape Town: A A Balkema,1966)

12 .Die Burger, 29 March 1943

13 .Eric Louw, Member of Parliament for Beaufort West, WD Brink, MP for Christiana, MJ van den Berg, MP for Krugersdorp, Hansard, 10 April 1944, in Michael A Green, South African Jewish Responses to the Holocaust, 1941-1948, (MA Thesis, University of South Africa, 1987)

14 .Editor, Zionist Record, 27 November1942

15 .Michael A Green, South African Jewish Responses to the Holocaust, 1941-1948, (MA Thesis, University of South Africa, 1987), 61

16 .Michael A Green, South African Jewish Responses to the Holocaust, 1941-1948, (MA Thesis, University of South Africa, 1987), 94, 135

17 .Michael A Green, South African Jewish Responses to the Holocaust, 1941-1948, (MA Thesis, University of South Africa, 1987),14 February 1947,167

18 .Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jewry.(Chicago: Quadrangle Books,1985), 983.

19 .Helene Czerniewicz, "In Hiding in France", in In Sacred Memory: Recollections of the Holocaust by Survivors Living in Cape Town, ed. Gwynne Schrire (Cape Town: Holocaust Memorial Council, 1995), 77.

20 . Miriam Lichterman, interview, ( 17 June 2003)

21 .Miriam Lichterman, "Life in Auschwitz", in In Sacred Memory: Recollections of the Holocaust by Survivors Living in Cape Town, ed. Gwynne Schrire (Cape Town: Holocaust Memorial Council, 1995), 135.

22 .Lotte Liebrecht, interview, (2 August, 1996).

23 .Karl Langer,"In Hiding in Holland",in In Sacred Memory: Recollections of the Holocaust by Survivors Living in Cape Town, ed. Gwynne Schrire (Cape Town: Holocaust Memorial Council, 1995), 46.

24 .Miriam Lichterman, interview, (17 June 2003)

25 .Clarissa Jacobi, "The Unanswered Question", in Brochure, Holocaust Exhibition Commemorating the 40th Anniversary of the Liberation of the Nazi Concentration Camps, S A Cultural Museum, (17 April -15 May 1986), 13

26 .RA, "From Rhodes Island to Auschwitz", in In Sacred Memory: Recollections of the Holocaust by Survivors Living in Cape Town, ed. Gwynne Schrire (Cape Town: Holocaust Memorial Council, 1995), 153.

27 .Miriam Lichterman, interview,17 June 2003.

28 .Xavier Piat-ka, "She'erith Hapletah", in In Sacred Memory: Recollections of the Holocaust by Survivors Living in Cape Town, ed. Gwynne Schrire (Cape Town: Holocaust Memorial Council, 1995), 194.

29 .Myra Osrin, interview, 22 June 2003

30 .Brochure, Holocaust Exhibition Commemorating the 40th Anniversary of the Liberation of the Nazi Concentration Camps, S A Cultural Museum, (17 April -15 May 1986), 2.

31 .Miriam Lichterman, interview,17 June 2003

32 .Violette Fintz, "From Rhodes Island to Auschwitz", in In Sacred Memory: Recollections of the Holocaust by Survivors Living in Cape Town, ed. Gwynne Schrire (Cape Town: Holocaust Memorial Council, 1995), 148.

33 .Miriam Lichterman, interview,17 June 2003

34 . Diana Jean Schemo, "Good Germans: Honoring the Heroes. And Hiding the Holocaust". The New York Times: The Week in Review 12 June 1994

35 .D.W. Krüger, The Making of a Nation, (London: Macmillan, 1967), 238

36 . Myra Osrin, interview, 22 June 2003

37 .Anne Frank in the World at the South African National Gallery, (1 March to 4 April 1994),Exhibition Leaflet.

38 .Myra Osrin, interview, 22 June 2003

~~~~~~~

from the December 2007 Chanukah Edition of the Jewish Magazine

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