Holocaust centre hits 10-year mark
Te Aro’s Holocaust Centre of New Zealand is this year notching up 10 years of promoting and teaching tolerance.
The centre, based in Wellington’s Jewish Community Centre in Webb St, is the country’s only remembrance and education centre, and aims to keep the memory of the Holocaust in the present.
Since opening in 2007 it has provided education programmes for more than 15,700 people, most of those being students from school groups.
Centre board chairman Jeremy Smith says recent political turmoil shows the importance of having a national education centre.
‘‘People feel they can just put anything out in social media. Unless you educate, it’s difficult to disseminate what’s fact and fiction.
‘‘We teach a lot about tolerance and acceptance and bullying and how to actually look at refugees. We are using education to differentiate between fake news and Holocaust deniers.’’
Smith says a highlight has been the centre’s international education programme, which pays for 25 secondary school teachers and educators every two years to study the Holocaust at Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Centre, in Jerusalem.
The programme began in 2013 and provides educators with knowledge of Holocaust history so they can come back and develop teaching modules in line with our country’s curriculum.
To date 75 educators have gone through the programme, the latest group returning in February.
Another highlight was helping Holocaust survivor and ‘‘shining light’’ Clare Galambos-Winter publish her book The Violinist ,he says.
‘‘She survived Auschwitz as a young child and ended up as a violinist in the New Zealand [Symphony] Orchestra.’’
Before being jailed during the 1944 German occupation of Hungary, Galambos-Winter was a violin student at the private music academy the Fodor in Budapest.
After surviving the war, she and her aunt left Europe for New Zealand in 1948.
When she arrived, GalambosWinter joined the then-fledgling National Orchestra and went on to play with the NZSO for 32 years. She died in 2014.
Smith says the centre has always held the view that New Zealand should have some form of Holocaust education.
‘‘A lot of teachers choose not to teach the Holocaust. We need to commemorate and celebrate survivors who have added massive value to New Zealand.’’
While the centre had recently moved into a bigger complex within its existing building, he says they started ‘‘very small’’ in a back room collecting artefacts.
‘‘It started as very humble beginnings but we had a great vision. It was a test mission and we’ve just been gradually chipping away at our objectives. We’re on the right road.’’
"We teach a lot about tolerance and acceptance and bullying and how to actually look at refugees." Holocaust Centre board chairman Jeremy Smith