Published: 16 August 2022
Last updated: 5 March 2024
With few Holocaust survivors remaining, NSW CEO ED ST JOHN tells MICHAEL VISONTAY about the innovations underway to sustain its mission to combat discrimination through survivors’ stories.
How do you chart a long-term future for an organisation whose core assets are in short supply and will, sooner rather than later, be gone altogether?
That may sound like a harsh way to describe the Holocaust survivors who have made Courage to Care (C2C) a powerful educational and ethical asset for schools and communities. But that is the key challenge facing the organisation as it strives to “inform and educate Australians about the dangers of prejudice, racism and discrimination” through the stories of survivors.
For Ed St John, the inaugural CEO of Courage to Care in NSW, it’s just one of many he has been grappling with since taking up the role last October. The solution remains a work-in-progress for the former Executive General Manager at the (St James) Ethics Centre in Sydney, who brings an obvious enthusiasm as well as a strong skill and ethical fit to the role.
“I've done a lot of things in my career and I’ve realised that what draws me to organisations is a strong sense of purpose, and people who are passionate about sending a message out,” he told The Jewish Independent in a recent interview.
“When I saw what Courage To Care does, it was quite similar in many ways to what the Ethics Centre does, which is to help people be better humans, make better decisions and to have the tools to function better in society.”
In the landscape of C2C, that revolves around the idea of being an “upstander”, someone who intervenes on behalf of a person being attacked or bullied. “We say discrimination exists on a continuum: at the most benign level, it just takes the form of a kind of joke, or casual racism or a ‘micro aggression’, as they call it,” St John explains.
“But if it's left unchecked, it morphs into something darker, more dangerous. And if that's left unchecked, then you end up with murder and Holocaust and genocide. And we all know that because that's exactly what happened in Germany in the 1930s - and in America recently.”
St John says the purpose of C2C has not changed since it started more than 20 years ago in NSW, and 30-plus years in Victoria (the state bodies are moving to align more closely), “nor has the core message, or the means by which that message is transmitted, through stories from the Holocaust told by actual survivors.
"Discrimination exists on a continuum; at the most benign level, it takes the form of a kind of joke, or casual racism. But left unchecked, it morphs into something darker."
“I think what's changed recently is that we're now professionalising the organisation; we're less reliant on volunteers, more reliant on paid staff, with an aim to reach more people and have a wider impact.
Which brings us back to the central question. St John estimates there are “probably about a dozen that we work with actively in NSW. (C2C NSW is also responsible for Queensland, which has a number of survivors, and the sister organisation in Victoria also has its survivors.)
“The truth is, there is nothing quite as powerful as a first-hand witness to history. If you put a survivor in a room with a bunch of students, they'll walk out saying it was a powerful experience because it's first-hand testimony. But it's not a sustainable model so we simply have to find a solution."
He says there are several aspects to consider. “Firstly, the survivors are getting older and won't be able to do what they do for us for much longer. Then there’s a moral quandary: the bigger we get, and the more times we have to do workshops, the more we have to keep asking them to tell their stories; that seems a little unfair to me. It's a lot to ask of somebody who's already old and already gone through what they have."
St John is pursuing a two-pronged strategy to overcome those issues. “The first part is to record our own documentaries with the survivors. We've recorded two already and we’ll be doing more. Usually at that point in the conversation, people say, ‘Oh, the [Sydney] Jewish Museum is doing that as well’.
"Our videos are more concerned with the moral lessons that we can draw from the survivor's story - what can we learn from this? What is important about being an upstander?"
“Theirs are fantastic but ours are different; we’re not concerned so much with telling a story, with facts and incidents. Ours are more concerned with the moral lessons that we can draw from the story: what can we learn from this, and how can we apply these lessons to a contemporary environment? What does courage mean? What is important about being an upstander? Why do we have to stand up to bullies? What is the nature of discrimination?”
In addition to making the films, C2C is looking for “custodians” who can tell the story on behalf of the survivor. “Whether it's children or grandchildren, we need to have people who can be custodians of those stories.”
He says the second part of the strategy is to reach more people. “There's only so many people that you can reach by going into schools. I think our ultimate goal is to look at how we can use technology to deliver to more people at scale. Whether that's by providing resources to teachers or having more video-based resources at our disposal, I’m not sure yet what the mix will be.
“Our emphasis at the moment is to build up a better library of video resources that we can have available on the website so we can make this more accessible and more scalable. But ultimately that's for the future.”
In the meantime, C2C is on the front foot in other ways. It is currently working with Multicultural NSW to develop tools to address issues such as respect, tolerance, diversity, discrimination and bullying.
It is also working with the Ethics Centre to develop a program for young leaders in Years 9-10. The content for this program is still a work in progress and he expects to be running the program next year.
“It’s an example of Courage To Care stepping out of being purely an organisation that's here to tell stories about the moral lessons of the Holocaust. We're broadening it out to training a cohort of the leaders of tomorrow. Not just in the Holocaust stories but in the general qualities that can be applied in their lives.”
St John says there is also an obvious potential for partnering with Jewish museums. “There is interesting synergy between telling the historic story, then drawing out the moral lessons that come from that.”
He is in talks with a number of Holocaust museums, including ones not yet built and operating, specifically in Brisbane and in Canberra. “We're already having conversations with those two institutions about how we can work with them as an educational arm, to provide some educational content that inspires some reflection.”
On a personal level, the past year has also been a steep learning curve for St John, who is not Jewish. “There have been a lot of stories and traditions to absorb. I’ve found it really enjoyable actually, to dive into this world and say, ‘OK, what's important? What's the message here?’”
At the end of the day, he says, “the message of Courage to Care is universal. It’s one of basic humanity and it doesn't really matter whether I'm Jewish or not."
With that, our conversation comes to an end, and he remembers one more thing he has learned since taking on the job: "Jewish organisations do excellent catering!”
