When a Holocaust museum becomes an accomplice to genocide: The Cape Town centre’s shameful silence on Gaza
By ljdevon // 2025-08-25
Copy
 
Imagine walking through the halls of a Holocaust museum, surrounded by haunting images of concentration camps, the personal belongings of victims, and the stories of those who resisted Nazi tyranny. The air is thick with the weight of history, the lessons of "Never Again" echoing in every exhibit. Now imagine that same museum, in the face of a modern-day genocide — choosing to remain silent. Not just silence, but active complicity, hiding behind bureaucratic excuses while children starve, families are obliterated, and an entire people are erased before our eyes. This is not a hypothetical scenario. This is the Cape Town Holocaust and Genocide Centre, a institution that has betrayed its own mission by refusing to acknowledge the genocide in Gaza, where over 200,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded — 80 percent of them civilians — since October 2023. The centre’s leadership claims they are waiting for a legal verdict from an international tribunal before they will even acknowledge what is happening. But when a museum dedicated to the memory of genocide refuses to speak out against an active extermination campaign, it doesn’t just fail its moral duty — it becomes part of the machinery of denial. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has already ruled that Israel’s actions in Gaza amount to "plausible" genocide, a finding that should have been enough to jolt the centre into action. Instead, it clings to neutrality, as if genocide were a matter of legal technicalities rather than a moral emergency. By doing so, the Cape Town Holocaust and Genocide Centre has not only abandoned its purpose — it has aligned itself with the oppressors. Key points:
  • The Cape Town Holocaust and Genocide Centre refuses to recognize the genocide in Gaza, despite over 200,000 Palestinians killed or wounded (80 percent civilians) since October 2023.
  • The centre claims it cannot comment on "ongoing conflicts", yet its silence makes it complicit in the very crimes it claims to oppose.
  • The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has already ruled that Israel’s actions constitute "plausible" genocide, a legal threshold that should demand action, not excuses.
  • The museum has deep ties to pro-Israel donors and the Israeli embassy, raising questions about conflicts of interest in its refusal to address Palestinian suffering.
  • Activists and scholars argue that the centre’s selective remembrance — honoring Jewish Holocaust victims while ignoring Palestinian genocide — undermines its credibility and turns "Never Again" into a hollow slogan.
  • The centre’s partnerships with the Israeli state and its erasure of the Nakba (1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestinians) suggest it is more interested in political cover for Israel than in preventing genocide.
  • South Africa’s own history of apartheid makes the centre’s silence even more damning, as it fails to draw parallels between Nazi racial supremacy, apartheid and Zionist settler colonialism.
  • Starvation is being used as a weapon in Gaza, with 576,000 people on the brink of famine, yet the centre remains mute, despite its stated mission to educate on human rights abuses happening today.
  • Holocaust survivors and their descendants have spoken out against Israel’s actions, comparing Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto — yet the centre ignores their voices.
  • The museum’s deflection — waiting for a tribunal — is a cowardly excuse that allows the genocide to continue unchecked while it hides behind procedural formalities.

A museum that has forgotten its own lessons

The Cape Town Holocaust and Genocide Centre was founded in 1999 as Africa’s first institution dedicated to preserving the memory of the Holocaust and educating the public on the dangers of racial supremacy, dehumanization and state-sponsored mass murder. Its exhibits walk visitors through the systematic erosion of rights that preceded the Holocaust — propaganda, legal discrimination, ghettoization, and finally, extermination. One of its most striking displays features a quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian executed for resisting the Nazis: "Not to act is to act. Not to speak is to speak." And yet, when faced with a real-time genocide that mirrors the very patterns it claims to warn against, the centre chooses silence. Jakub Nowakowski, the museum’s director, insists that the institution does not comment on "ongoing conflicts" — as if genocide were a debate to be settled in courtrooms rather than a moral crisis demanding immediate condemnation. "We are deeply disturbed by the violence and human suffering we are all witnessing," he told Middle East Eye, before adding the cowardly disclaimer: "Our role as a museum cannot be to adjudicate between [tragedies] in real time." When the Nazis began their campaign of extermination, the world did not wait for a tribunal to declare it genocide before acting. The Nuremberg Trials came after the fact — after millions had already been murdered. If the Cape Town centre truly believed in its own mission, it would sound the alarm now, not hide behind legalistic excuses while children are bombed, starved and buried under rubble. Jo Bluen, a genocide scholar and member of South African Jews For a Free Palestine, put it bluntly: "By choosing to remain silent on the horrors unfolding in Gaza, the centre has flagrantly misappropriated the memory of our ancestors who resisted, fled, and died in the Nazi Holocaust… to participate in the most egregious genocidal complicity by genocide denialism." In other words: The centre is betraying the very people it claims to honor.

The hypocrisy of "Never Again"

The phrase "Never Again" is supposed to be a universal vow — a promise that the world would never again allow a people to be systematically erased through state violence. But in the hands of institutions like the Cape Town Holocaust and Genocide Centre, it has become a sectarian slogan, applied selectively to justify silence when the victims are Palestinian. The centre’s permanent exhibition draws direct parallels between apartheid South Africa and Nazi Germany, showing how racial supremacy leads to dehumanization and mass violence. And yet, when it comes to Israel’s apartheid policies — which have been documented by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and even Israeli human rights groups like B’Tselem — the centre falls eerily silent. Worse still, it erases the Nakba — the 1948 ethnic cleansing of 750,000 Palestinians that made way for the creation of Israel. This was not just a historical event; it was the foundational act of Zionist settler colonialism, a blueprint for the ongoing displacement and oppression of Palestinians. By ignoring the Nakba, the centre whitewashes the very history that explains why Gaza is under siege today. Usuf Chikte, coordinator for the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in Cape Town, put it best: "If a Holocaust Museum remains silent, or worse, goes into denial while Palestinians face extermination, what purpose does it serve? Selective remembrance reeks of hypocrisy and signals complicity." The centre’s ties to pro-Israel donors only deepen the stench of corruption. One of its trustees, Philip Krawitz, was honored in 2015 by Keren Hayesod, an Israeli fundraising organization, for his efforts to raise money for Israel during the 2014 war on Gaza — a conflict that killed over 2,000 Palestinians, including 500 children. Another trustee, Anthony Harris, has publicly defended Israel’s actions in Gaza, calling criticisms of its military “antisemitic”. Is the Cape Town Holocaust and Genocide Centre more interested in preserving the memory of the Holocaust or in providing political cover for a state that is repeating its crimes?

Starvation as a weapon: The Gaza Holocaust in real time

If the centre’s leaders truly understood the lessons of the Holocaust, they would recognize the tactics being used in Gaza today:
  • Ghettoization: Gaza has been under blockade for 17 years, its people trapped in an open-air prison with no freedom of movement, just as Jews were confined to ghettos before the death camps.
  • Starvation as a weapon: The Nazis deliberately starved Jewish ghettos to weaken resistance. Today, Israel is doing the same in Gaza, where 576,000 people are on the brink of famine, and children are dying of malnutrition.
  • Mass displacement: The Nakba was the first wave of ethnic cleansing; today, Israel is forcing Gazans into ever-shrinking "safe zones" before bombing them anyway—a tactic reminiscent of Nazi "liquidation" operations.
  • Dehumanization: Just as the Nazis referred to Jews as "vermin", Israeli officials call Palestinians "human animals" — a psychological precondition for genocide.
  • Destruction of cultural memory: The Nazis burned Jewish books and synagogues; Israel is bombing universities, libraries, and mosques in Gaza, erasing Palestinian history.
The International Court of Justice has already ruled that Israel’s actions plausibly constitute genocide. The United Nations has warned of famine and total societal collapse in Gaza. Doctors Without Borders has documented children dying from starvation. And yet, the Cape Town Holocaust and Genocide Centre still refuses to act. Sources include: MiddleEastEye.net SAJFP.org Enoch, Brighteon.ai
Copy