CHOL Community History OnLine
with Geraldine Auerbach
Geraldine Auerbach will tell the exciting story of how CHOL (Community History On-line) was conceived during the murky days of COVID, with the aim of preserving the footprint of South African Jewish communities in all their diversity via the Internet. Listen to how residents and former residents, now residing all over the world, conjure up the heydays of their communities and the people who made them tick from Beaufort West and Bellville via Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg, to Worcester and Zimbabwe. As well as creating virtual communities, Geraldine will discuss how the CHOL website hosts personal memoirs and original stories as well as journal articles and other resources.
About the speaker
Geraldine Auerbach grew up in Kimberley and has lived in London since 1962. After studying Art at Wits and Teacher Training at UCT, she taught art for 26 years. She is best known though for running ten, month-long festivals of Jewish music and establishing the Jewish Music Institute now based at London University. Since retiring in 2012, she created a website for the Jewish Community of Kimberley with Eli Rabinowitz in 2014 and connected with others doing similar work. In 2020 they teamed up with the Kaplan Centre and the SA Jewish Museum to form CHOL.