MAKING AN IMPACT:
SEEING AUSCHWITZ EXHIBITION
IN SOUTH AFRICA
As a place of memory, education, dialogue, and lessons for humanity, the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre (JHGC), is sensitive to its location in South Africa and the ongoing challenges faced by those who live here. Educators at the JHGC are continually searching for ways to encourage visitors to make connections between multiple histories and between the past and contemporary human rights issues; urging visitors to understand the consequences of prejudice, discrimination, and ‘othering’, so as to prevent the recurrence of mass atrocities and genocide in all its forms.
Seeing Auschwitz, was conceived and produced by Musealia, in partnership with the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum and in collaboration with the UN and UNESCO. The Embassies of Germany, Austria, Israel, Poland and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation supported bringing the exhibition to South Africa to be hosted by the JHGC for the first time on the African continent. The exhibition created opportunities for school groups and other visitors to engage with photographs in a way that encouraged this type of reflection, conversation, and a deeper understanding of the consequences of prejudice, ‘othering’ and indifference. From its opening in November 2022 until beginning of April 2023, when it moved to the Johannesburg sister Centre in Durban (the Durban Holocaust & Genocide Centre), the exhibition asked visitors the question “what do you see?”. When looking at these historical images we challenge our initial perceptions through probing questions and engagement with the images. Seeing Auschwitz foregrounds photographs – not as illustrations to history but as valuable objects that have their own stories and perspectives to share.
In museum spaces, it may be tempting to assume that photographs are neutral and accurate records of a moment in time, but as Paul Salmons, lead curator, reminds us “These photographs are not neutral sources at all: we are looking at a piece of reality but seen from the Nazi perspective”. At the JHGC, the exhibition challenged visitors to confront and disrupt this gaze – one that was intended to document and record the efficiency of a process devised as a ‘solution’ to the ‘Jewish problem’. When faced with this dilemma, school students and adults, looked more closely at the images to find the humanity; the acts of resistance, the moments of tenderness, the individual stories – all of which were ignored and never intentionally recorded by the photographer.
The practise of disrupting the ‘Nazi gaze’ brought into focus what had previously gone unnoticed and gave visitors the opportunity to explore largescale events, like the Holocaust, on a micro or human scale. Those who spent time ‘seeing’ and noticing details were able to recognise universal experiences like holding a child’s hand, feeling overwhelmed, adjusting the weight of a heavy bag and more. They were able to humanise the victim even within photographs that recorded a system designed to strip groups of people of their humanity, through the selection and registration process, through the systematic violence and through industrialised murder.
A 14 year old student reflected on the impact of the exhibition had on her: “I had stood there thinking that this would be just like every other educational experience of the Holocaust until I was led further into the museum and proven totally wrong…[ the exhibition] made me realise that their deaths in the Holocaust weren’t just a statistic, they were real people that had lived torturous and unfair lives.”
Through this process of ‘close looking’; of asking what do you see, how do you see it, what information does that give us and what does that make us wonder; even visitors with little knowledge of the Holocaust, were able to connect to these images though their own narratives. Educators at the JHGC found the exhibition incredibly versatile – being able to focus on historical themes such as eugenics and the role of doctors with a group of third year medical students from the University of the Witwatersrand who focused their visit on ethics, examining photographs as primary sources with high school learners and finding the human stories with adult groups. The exhibition enabled guides to give every visitor a unique experience; allowing them to connect to this period of history from a myriad of different vantage points.
“After today’s visit, I realised the importance of the choices we make when we witness injustices happening to others. As future physicians, it is essential to recognise our own biases and choose to relate to the people we treat on a human level.” - third year medical student, University of the Witwatersrand.
The exhibition includes other, less well known, photographs and sketches that add different perspectives of Auschwitz. This included clandestine photographs taken by members of the Sonderkommando working in the crematoria, sketches drawn by victims and survivors, photographs taken before the war but carried into Auschwitz amongst victim’s possessions, and even photographs from the Höcker Album, discovered in 2007, showing SS officers and the Auschwitz staff relaxing at a resort just 30 km south of Auschwitz. “Seeing” these images differently provoke visitors to wonder; are they people just like us?
At the end of our tours, guides asked student groups to select only three images from Seeing Auschwitz for their own imagined mini exhibition. They were asked to think about why they chose these photographs or sketches and how they would display them. This activity allowed the learners to creatively engage with the information they had spent an hour or so unfolding. Whether the images would be displayed in a moving train, projected on the walls of their school or their own image mirrored in a “mug shot”, the understanding of breaking the photographers gaze and not taking images at face value had clearly been understood.
The engagement with the guided tours of the exhibition and feedback that we received convinced JHGC educators that learners in South Africa were able to connect to the personal stories and different perspectives that make up the complex history of Auschwitz-Birkenau. The experience provided opportunities to deepen their understanding of events, to connect to the human narrative, to complicate their understanding of the roles of victim and perpetrator and to honour and remember the individual victims who were murdered at Auschwitz. This quote, from a 13 year old learner, describes the power of approaching these topics in a multidirectional way that encourages connection and dialogue:
“Thank you for helping me discover a part of myself I never knew I had. I leave this space a young educated black women who wants to change the world into a better place. More people need to be taught about this because it’s a part of us and not knowing is like not knowing a part of yourself.”
We have been honoured to host this unique and world renowned exhibition. The exhibition will open at the Durban Holocaust & Genocide Centre on 23 April 2023 and at the Cape Town Holocaust & Genocide Centre in September 2023. For more information about the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre and the work that we do in Southern Africa, check out our website and social media pages: https://www.jhbholocaust.co.za/
Making Holocaust history relevant and relatable to visitors and students, over 78 years after the event, is a global challenge and even more so in South Africa; on a different continent, in a country which was on the margins of this history and one with its own history of racial discrimination and violence.
Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre