Sylvestre Sendacyeye, a Rwandan genocide survivor, and Holocaust survivor Veronica Phillips. Picture: CAROLYN RAPHAELY
“Jewish survivors identified train tracks as the most powerful symbol of the cattle-trucks used to transport them to the concentration camps during WW2. For the Rwandan survivors, the tracks represented colonial oppression and the trees that bore witness to the murder of their countrymen in forested landscapes.”“The centre’s large glass windows indicate genocide happens in daylight while the neighbours are watching,” Nates adds.
Mary Turner, an eight-month-pregnant black woman hung upside down from a tree by her ankles, set alight and her stomach sliced open so her unborn baby fell to the ground is just one of them. Nates is adamant the JHGC is an educational centre, not a museum: “We support schools and educators with the implementation of the compulsory human rights curriculum which has mandated the study of the Holocaust for every South African Grade 9 learner since 2007.
“Our role is to assist children [to] understand the critical connections.” In 2018, 14,000 students visited the centre even before it officially opened, and in 2019 more than 20,000 are expected. “If I don’t tell the story it will happen again,” Sendacyeye said earlier this year standing before a JHGC display of a mound of bloodied clothing belonging to men, women and children murdered in the Nyamata and Ntarama church compounds.
Not content with building a memorial and a museum, the unstoppable Stevenson also aims to change the built environment of the Deep South. To this end, exact replicas of the 800 hanging slabs inside the NMPJ have been lined up horizontally in the surrounding park awaiting collection, and installation in the counties they represent. Over time, says EJI, “the Memorial will serve as a report on which parts of the country have confronted the truth, and which have not.
“We believe that telling the truth about our history of enslavement, racial terror and segregation and reflecting together on this history and its legacy can lead to a more thoughtful and informed commitment to justice today,” Stevenson says. “We hope our museum and memorial will inspire individuals, communities and our nation to claim our difficult history and commit to a more just and peaceful future.
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