Where They Settled: Holocaust Survivors in South Africa

This talk by Gwynne Robins explores the history of the Holocaust survivor community in the city of Cape Town, South Africa. Initially, due to discriminatory immigration laws, the survivor community in South Africa began as a small one. In 1952, survivors formed She’erith Hapletah, a group which provided survivors with social, emotional and financial-support and eventually led to the construction of Holocaust memorials. In the 1960s, large groups of Sephardi survivors from Rhodes fleeing violence in Congo immigrated to Cape Town, making this city home to more survivors from Rhodes than anywhere else around the world. Therefore, the survivor community began to host an annual Yom HaShoah commemoration in Cape Town in both Ladino and Yiddish. The Cape Town Holocaust & Genocide Centre later played a key role in making Holocaust education mandatory in South African schools, creating teaching materials and inspiring similar centres in Durban and Johannesburg. In response to Holocaust denier David Irving's proposed visit, She’erith Hapletah published a memoir collection consisting of testimonies from the survivor community in the city. To this day, survivors play a crucial role in the Centre and in the city's Holocaust education initiatives.

Gwynne Robins was the deputy director of the Cape South African Jewish Board of Deputies. She has arranged annual communal Yom HaShoah ceremonies and administered the Holocaust compensation through the Claims Conference. She was also an interviewer for USC Shoah Foundation's Visual History Archive and edited the book In Sacred Memory: Recollections of the Holocaust by Survivors Living in Cape Town. In addition to this book, she has edited multiple Holocaust survivor testimonies, family memoirs and written books and articles on local Jewish history. For her scholarship, she earned a prestigious award in recognition for her many years of distinguished service to the Board and to Jewish historical scholarship in South Africa.

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