EDITOR’S NOTE: To mark the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camps, in 1995 the Cape Town Holocaust Memorial Council published In Sacred Memory: Recollections of the Holocaust by survivors living in Cape Town. The book, which has been reprinted twice, was edited by Gwynne Schrire, whose name will be familiar to all Jewish Affairs readers for the proliferation as well as diversity of the contributions she has made to the journal over the decades. It was the first of some two dozen books that Gwynne has since written, co-written or edited on aspects of South African Jewish and Western Cape history, a truly remarkable achievement!
Now, to mark next year’s eightieth anniversary of the liberation of the camps, a follow-up volume featuring the stories of Cape Town survivors which had not been included in the original book is to be published, this time by the Cape Town Holocaust and Genocide Centre (which was founded a few years after the first volume appeared and which effectively replaced the Cape Town Holocaust Memorial Council). The omission of these stories was due to a variety of reasons. In the ensuing thirty years, additional survivors have settled in Cape Town. Then, some interviews conducted in the 1980s by Jewish students at the University of Cape Town as part of the SHIP (Student Holocaust Interviewing Project) long thought lost had been discovered in the UCT Archives. There were also those who at the time had preferred not to be identified as survivors but were now more willing to share their testimonies.
As the editor comments in her new introduction, the testimony of survivors is “even more important now at a time when knowledge about the Holocaust in the wider public is diminishing. Soon there will be no more living survivors, while antisemitism – a never dying virus, easily spread by media, particularly social media – is flourishing again. With the worldwide upsurge in antisemitism, fuelled by social media filled with ignorance, misinformation and disinformation, readers of this book will be confronted with the real meaning of genocide”.
Fittingly, the preface is provided by Myra Osrin, whose vision and efforts led in 1999 to the establishment of the Cape Town Holocaust Centre, the first such centre devoted to commemorating and teaching about the Holocaust on the African continent. It’s founding led to the establishment of sister centres in Johannesburg and Durban, which together form part of the association, the South African Holocaust & Genocide Foundation.
The book, as Schrire writes in her introduction, feature “memoirs about seeking refuge; about living with false identities; about hiding, always afraid of being found; about living in an orphanage, living underground, in attics, in the ghetto, in labour and concentration camps, and Auschwitz”. It further “records the aftermath of the Holocaust, both the psychological damage caused, and the looting of Jewish artifacts, some of which came illegally to South Africa. And, of course, most of the stories are about fear, hunger, loss, and the desperate struggle to survive”. Against that, there are “stories about bravery and resistance. About Jewish women in Germany who ran schools to train young women to become domestic servants to qualify for visas for England. About an aristocratic Jew who, disguised as a SS officer, went into prisons with forged transfer orders”.
Also featured are some of the ‘Righteous Gentiles’ who, at considerable personal risk came to the aid of their Jewish neighbours and fellow citizens. They include Raoul Wallenberg, Nicholas Winton and Queen Wilhelmina of Holland.
The full Contents page appears below.
In Sacred Memory: Recollections of the Holocaust by survivors living in Cape Town (Vol. 2) will be brought out around Yom Hashoah 2025. Copies can be obtained through the Cape Town Holocaust and Genocide Centre (021 462 5553; admin@holocaust.org.za; www.holocaust.org.za; 88 Hatfield Street, Gardens, 8001).
CONTENTS
Preface – Myra Osrin
Introduction and Acknowledgments – Gwynne Schrire
In Sacred Memory, poem by Clara Soriano
CHAPTER ONE FORMS OF RESISTANCE
Inge Irene Karro
Steffie Newell
CHAPTER TWO LIFE IN FLIGHT
CZECHOSLOVAKIA: Anita Kennet – Kindertransport
BELGIUM: Esther Grunfeld
POLAND: Devora Schweitzer
BOSNIA: Stepan Közer
CHAPTER THREE LIFE IN HIDING/FALSE IDENTITY
HOLLAND
Michal Roosendaal
Elisabeth Syré
Clara Spitz Friedman
HUNGARY
Eva Donde
RHODES ISLAND
Lina Kantor
BELARUS
Jack Shmukler
CHAPTER FOUR LIFE IN CAPTIVITY
LIFE IN THE GHETTO
HUNGARY– Sanya Glezer
ROMANIA – Frieda Farkash
POLAND – Shoshana Baer
POLAND – Talma Koorland
LIFE IN CONCENTRATION CAMPS
Esther Lipshitz
Elizabeth Koransky
LIFE IN AUSCHWITZ
Mathilda Capelouto
Johanna Lisson
CHAPTER FIVE THE AFTERMATH
Assistance to Survivors – Clare Schur
Memorialisation – Hans Liebermann
Psychological Damage – Devis Iosifzon
Life as a second generation child – Batya Glezer
Looting of Property – Restitution
Looting of Property -Theft
CHAPTER SIX THE CAPE TOWN HOLOCAUST and GENOCIDE CENTRE
