How to Make a Museum About Genocides Popular? Lessons from South Africa

A typical feature of Johannesburg, South Africa, is the abundance of places surrounded by barbed wire for securityreasons. One of the few exceptions is the Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre. This museum, locatedon a busy street in the heart of South Africa’s largest city, is an open and welcoming space without barbed wire. Anyone can come in to relax, have a coffee, and, if they wish, visit the exhibition itself.At its core, the Centre explores the history of 20th-century genocides, with a particular focus on the Holocaust andthe 1994 genocide in Rwanda. For its founder and director, Tali Nates, these subjects are deeply personal. She is a historian, and her father and uncle survived the Holocaustthanks to the German industrialist Oskar Schindler.Tali Nates emphasizes that patience is one of the essentialqualities needed to build a museum like this. The Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre was founded in 2008, but it opened its doors to visitors only in 2019. During that long period, Nates and her team workedmeticulously on many aspects of what the museum should represent—both as a historical institution and as a space for dialogue.Many similar museums tell the story of mass killings through the moment of death — focusing on the sites of atrocities, gas chambers, torture rooms, and the methods of killing. By contrast, the Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre tells the story of genocides through the lives of the victims, so that they are remembered first and foremost as people, not only as victims whose deaths provoke horror.What should be considered when creating genocide museums, what makes the Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre unique, and how has it responded to the Israel–Gaza war? How are cultural institutions in South Africafunded—sometimes even through casino revenues—and why are personal human stories so vital? All this and more in journalist Natalya Gumenyuk`s conversation with Tali Nates.This publication has been produced with the support of the ‘Partnership Fund for a Resilient Ukraine’. The content of this publication is the sole responsibility of Public Interest Journalism Lab and does not necessarily reflect the viewsof the Fund and/or of its Financing Partners.