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Holocaust, History and Memorabilia: The SAJBD Cape Council and the Preservation of the South African Jewish Past

Author: Published on: Published in: Religion, Arts & Culture

(Author: Gwynne Schrire, Vol. 66, No. 1, Pesach 2011)

  • Feature image: Engraved silver salver presented to Bertha Solomon, MP, in the collection of the SAJBD – Cape

 

Despite the losses incurred through the centuries from pogroms, persecutions, book burnings and looting, Jews have always treasured their religious artefacts and the Cape Town Jewish community is no exception. Since the 1940s, their members had collected such articles, which were donated to the Jewish Museum when it was established in 1958. In 2000, this museum was replaced by the ultra-modern South African Jewish Museum, a major tourist attraction, with a different focus and interactive high-tech attractions. Earlier items belonging to its predecessor no longer considered suitable were carefully packed and put into storage.

In 2008 the Jewish Board of Deputies (Cape Council), as trustees of the former Jewish Museum, suddenly found itself in possession of a proud collection of religious, historical and cultural items. As one of the Board’s functions is “enriching and maintaining Jewish life through cultural and educational programmes”, the Cape Council, under its then chairman Owen Futeran,  willingly agreed to take on the added responsibility. A special cultural department was duly established under the treasurer Joe Fintz and deputy director Gwynne Robins [author of this article – she writes for Jewish Affairs under her maiden name] to take on the curatorship of this inheritance. With the assistance and specialist knowledge of Jeff Fine, Judaica specialist and curator of the Johannesburg Jewish Museum, these were sorted and since 2010 are on display in specially built cabinets in the Samson Centre.

The original Cape Town Jewish Museum was opened on 3 August, 1958. In his opening speech its founder, Dr Louis Mirvish, said: “We approached the Board of Deputies for help… we did not manage to make any progress. We could not manage to make any impression on those Gentlemen in those days. Then a year or two ago, things did start moving at last… and the Board realised that the Museum was a worth-while venture and they voted us the sum of £500.“1 In fairness to the Cape Board, the lack of progress had not been their fault and three year’s earlier its Chairman, Justice David Cohen, had stated that arrangements were being made to establish such a museum.2 Continued Dr Mirvish:

Every generation feels impelled to re-interpret the past afresh, and in doing so we stamp it with our own problems and pre-occupations. That is why the study of history is more than an academic subject- the story of the past is pregnant with the doings of today…. But the records of the past must be preserved and treasured. I think that our Jewish community in Cape Town has risen to the occasion and has decided to value its treasures in the correct spirit.3

The existence of museums to preserve its community’s treasures dates back long before Biblical times. Archaeologist Sir Leonard Woolley wrote that the treasury of Sumerian temples in Ur (c.2300 BCE) were regular museums of antiquities.4 If they contained idols from Abraham’s father’s workshop, these have not been recorded, but clay tablets have been unearthed describing the museum built by Babylonian Princess Bel-Shari Nannar in 550 BCE.5

Bel-Shari Nannar was the sister of Prince Belshazzar, son of Nabonidus (not Nebuchadnezzar), last king of Babylon – modern-day Iraq. It was for Belshazzar that Daniel interpreted the writing on the wall while the Prince’s one thousand guests ate and drank wine out of gold and silver vessels looted by the Babylonians from the Temple in Jerusalem.6 (The Tanach states that Belshazzar drank as much wine as his thousand guests!) The oldest object in the princess’s collection was already 1500 years old – an inscribed arm from a large statue of King Shulgi7 of Ur, from 2058 BCE. She also owned an ancient mace head, a foundation cone from 2000 BCE, school children’s slates and tablets with old Sumerian text, even a catalogue label.8 Their father King Nabonidus died in 539 BCE soon after his kingdom was conquered by Cyrus, the ruler who let the Children of Israel, who lived by the waters of Babylon and had not forgotten Jerusalem, return to their homeland.

Six hundred years earlier the Elamite kings in Susa – modern-day Iran – had an underground museum where they preserved relics of earlier eras – stamps and cylinder seals imported from Eastern Iran which were already more than two thousand years old as well as old axe heads. These museum pieces were kept to reinforce the ruler’s claim to descent from the wife of the first Elamite king 800 years earlier, rather like the family idols that Rachel stole from her father Laban.9 Under Mesopotamian law, someone could claim most of the family estate if they possessed their household gods so that possession of such items would ensure that both Jacob and the Elamite kings held legal title to inherit.

Art critic Natalie Knight had written that  “a visit to the Jewish Museum in Cape Town will show examples of the ritual objects such as candlesticks, menorahs and magnificently illustrated books, all of which bind Jews culturally to their past.”10 Thus the Cape Council, having inherited these objects which do indeed bind our community culturally to its past, has also become the heirs to that past.

What were these objects? When the door of the storeroom above the Ladies Gallery in the Gardens Shul was opened, Robins found an artistic, religious, historical and cultural treasure house. The Cape Council’s collection cannot boast of anything quite as old as those in the collections of the Babylonian princess or the Elamite kings, but its oldest holdings are clay lamps and pottery dating back fully two thousand years. There is further a 4th or 5th Century fluted glass jar and a thousand-year-old limestone bench-style chanukiyah. All these are from the Holy Land.

But then the record of the Babylonians and Elamites as the first collectors themselves pales into insignificance when compared to the anonymous Australopithecine art enthusiasts from Gauteng who found a 260-gram red jasperite stone that looks remarkably like a human face and carried it 32 km to their cave in Makapansgat north of Pretoria some two to three million years ago.11 The only way that large pebble face could have got into that cave was if some Australopithecine collectors had carried it in.12 Once again, Africans did it first.

But the Cape Council does have something that travelled much further than 32 km. These are silver rimonim and the bottom of a spice container that was given by Bokharan Jews to landsleit who established a congregation in Oranienburg, Russia, near the Kazakhstan border. There was no electricity in the early 19th Century Bokharan synagogues, so the rimonim are hinged to enable a candle to be inserted in a special holder inside to provide light for the Torah reading. When Michael Eliasoff, the last Jew of this group in Oranienberg, returned to Bokhara and then moved to Jerusalem around 1880, he took these cherished objects with him. Later, he moved to England, finally settling, together with the rimonim and bessamim box, in Upington in the 1920s. In 1974 his son, HM Elias, donated them to the Museum, still wrapped in old scarves, and they have ended their journey in the Samson Centre.

The most moving items found were the objects responsible for the establishment of the Jewish Museum itself. These came from the vast hoards of ceremonial silver and other religious artefacts looted by the Nazis from European synagogues and homes and recovered by the Allies. Some of these sacred articles were discovered in salt mines and castles, others squashed into ammunition boxes on trains to Switzerland where they were to be melted down to make coins.13

The US Army, as part of the ‘Jewish Reconstruction’ programme of the Jewish Restitution Successor Organisation, decided to distribute these to Jewish communities around the world and allocated 5% to South African synagogues to be disbursed by the Jewish Board of Deputies.14 A few items were received in 1950 while the rest arrived at the end of January, 1951.15

An undated, anonymous and very touching report from the National Jewish Board of Deputies representative who cleared the items from Customs, possibly the Board’s Cultural organiser,  Dr Abt, stated that it was his task to give the Customs Officials a detailed description as to the nature of the Ceremonial Objects.

There were three cases which had to be unpacked, every item had to be registered. My task was heart-breaking, I had to give explanations of a factual nature but every item I touched with my hands seemed to cry out to me, and I am not ashamed to say that I could hardly keep back my tears. Every item had been the most treasured possession of Synagogues in Europe, till the Nazis came, burned the Synagogues, murdered the worshippers ruthlessly in circumstances of unspeakable horror and took possession of the silver as a reward for their crimes against humanity.

He added that:

“(f)uture visitors [to the proposed museum] will become conscious of the immense tragedy hidden behind every single item which tells of the biggest robbery ever committed in history. Visitors will see the blood dripping from silver candelabra. They will see eyes opened widely with horror, they will hear the cries of agony of death with which the silver will be connected for them.16

Because of the conditions under which the objects had been looted, nearly all were in need of repair.17

In all, 176 items were received, plus an additional 23 pointers, which were distributed before the 1953 High Holydays to 122 congregations around the country who had sent in requests for items which they lacked.  No congregation was allocated more than one article. Each had to sign a form acknowledging the receipt on loan with the proviso that if the congregation was dissolved, the item was to be handed back to the care of the Board. (As the Jewish Reconstruction Programme emphasised that these objects should not become the property of any institution or society but remain the property of the Jewish Board of Deputies, it is a moot point whether this has been done in the case of all country congregations that received such items. Chairmen come and go and memories go with them.)

Because of their artistic and historic value, 49 items were held back as these were considered to be of sufficient merit to be placed in a museum. The Johannesburg Board of Deputies wished to centralise these in a Jewish Museum in Johannesburg.18 This decision was met with howls of anguish from Chief Rabbi Israel Abrahams of the Great Synagogue, Cape Town who, since 1941, had been on the committee with Dr Louis Mirvish of the Jewish Historical and Museum Society, serving as its President, with Dr Abt as Curator before he left for Johannesburg.19 When the news of the possible allocation was made public, his secretary wrote (16 August 1949) to ask that Cape Town receive a share. The Chief Rabbi received an “unqualified assurance” from Dr Karpas, acting chairman of the Cape Committee, that “Cape Town would definitely receive an equitable portion of the books and silver”.20

Two years later the matter still had not been resolved and an undated Memorandum of Distribution of Ceremonial Silver suggested …that no allocations for a museum should be made to any other city than Johannesburg. The Board holds the Ceremonial Silver in trust on the understanding that due consideration will be given to the perpetuation of the memory of the destroyed Jewish communities of Europe. In view of the concentration of at least two-thirds of the Jewish population of South Africa in Johannesburg and the Witwatersrand area, Johannesburg is undoubtedly the most suitable venue for a Central Jewish Museum”.

In the end, Cape Town obtained a fair distribution and the Cape Board arranged an exhibition in the Old Synagogue. Such was the drama of their provenance and their symbolism that thousands came to view them. The Cape Chairman, Mr Justice David Cohen, in his 1953-1955 Conference Report stated:

An outstanding exhibition of Jewish religious art was arranged in the Old Synagogue in Cape Town that was visited by thousands, both Jews and non-Jews. The nucleus consisted of some of the ceremonial silver salvaged from Europe presented to the South African Jewish community by “Jewish Cultural Reconstruction” that had been brought to Cape Town by Dr H Abt… supplemented by pieces from private collections in Cape Town and elsewhere. A portion of the “Jewish Reconstruction” collection has been allocated to Cape Town and arrangements are now being made for the establishment of a permanent Jewish museum in the Old Synagogue.21

At the same time, Justice Herbstein had written to the Cape Committee “pointing out that valuable historical material and oral information was available from the older members of the community reflecting the history of the part played by the Jewish community in South Africa and this information and material should be gathered before it is too late.”22

The “Jewish Reconstruction” collection, supplemented by the valuable historical material from the older members of the community and from private collections, was to form the nucleus of a permanent Jewish Museum in the Old Synagogue. The latter was established with the assistance of the Cape Committee of the Board together with material collected since 1941 by the Cape Town Jewish Historical and Museum Society Committee. When the door of the storeroom above the Ladies Gallery in the Gardens Shul, was opened, these were all part of the artistic, religious, historical and cultural treasure house that was found and opening the boxes one could imagine “the blood dripping from silver candelabra… the eyes opened widely with horror (and) the cries of agony of death with which the silver” was connected.

After ten years in storage, the unwanted articles from this museum including the items looted by the Nazis not required by the new SA Jewish Museum are now displayed in a purpose-built cabinet in the foyer of the Samson Centre thereby fulfilling the terms of the original Memorandum on Distribution of Ceremonial Silver which stated that “The Board holds the Ceremonial Silver in trust on the understanding that due consideration will be given to the perpetuation of the memory of the destroyed Jewish communities of Europe.”23

What else is the Cape Council’s collection? One cabinet is devoted to Sephardi artefacts, such as a large silver mezuzah cover, rimonim and amulets, including amulets intended to protect one from bee and scorpion stings, in childbirth and from ill health.

There are sections displaying religious artefacts used for Shabbat (such as Western European Shabbat lamps and Eastern European Shabbat candlesticks); Megillat Esther for Purim; an etrog box for Sukkoth and for Pesach a Ponovez Yeshiva Pesach plate and 18th Century pewter plates engraved with Biblical stories. There is even a chocolate box given to the children who attended the Maitland Synagogue Simchat Torah service in 1934 (without the chocolate unfortunately).

One section displays Bezalel ware from the academy founded in 1903 by the early Zionists to create a distinctive style of Jewish art for the new nation they were building. The school closed down in 1929 because of the depression, but reopened in 1935, with teachers and students from Germany, many of them from the Bauhaus school which the Nazis had shut. These objects were souvenirs from trips to Palestine and represent the firm Zionist identity of the donors.

One Bezalel item given to the Museum was a carved olive wood writing slope, containing ruler, inkbottle, blotter and brush. It had been the Hebrew prize awarded in 1926 to Jack Shrier, one of 200 “Ochberg Orphans”. When Isaac Ochberg, President of the Cape Jewish Orphanage, read a plea from the British Chief Rabbi that “1 000 000 human beings had been butchered and that for three years 3 000 000 persons in the Ukraine had been made ‘to pass through the horrors of hell’” and that “there were something like 600 000 homeless children, 150 000 orphans and 35 000 double orphans in the Ukraine who would die from cold, hunger or disease unless Jewish hearts remained human and came to the rescue24, he contacted Prime Minister Jan Smuts and gained permission to bring orphans to South Africa. A massive fund-raising campaign was launched and Ochberg set off for Eastern Europe going from town to town choosing eight orphans from each orphanage. Some of the children were sent to Oranjia in Cape Town, some to Arcadia in Johannesburg, many were adopted, and they rapidly became part of the South African Jewish community.25 As an old man, Jack Shrier donated his treasured prize to the Museum. Another Ochberg relic inherited by the Cape Council was a large bronze plaque found in the old Zionist Hall, moulded with the head and shoulders of “Isaac Ochberg, President of the Dorshei Zion Association”.26 When Ochberg died in 1937, he left what was then the largest single bequest to the Jewish National Fund, called Nahalat Yitzhak in his honour. Today, the kibbutzim of Dalia and Ein Hashofet stand on this land. Later in 2011, the descendants of the Ochberg orphans will be holding a reunion in Israel to commemorate the 90th anniversary of their rescue. The Cape Council has donated the plaque which has been erected at Kibbutz Dalia and will be a feature of the commemorative event.

There are objects with relevance to the Board of Deputies. Interesting examples include a book bound in Israeli olive wood containing Readings From The Holy Scripture by Chief Rabbi Hertz for the Jewish Members of His Majesty’s Forces, presented in 1943 by the Jewish Board of Deputies “With best wishes from South African gifts and comforts” to the Jewish servicemen in the Middle East as Xmas gifts; a collection box from the United South African Jewish War Appeal  established in 1941, in partnership with the SA Zionist Federation, that operated under the auspices of the Board and worked through the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee,27 and a brass Dutch chanukiyah given to Morris Alexander, a founder of the Cape Board of Deputies, at the 1907 World Zionist Congress in The Hague by Rev Hechler, Herzl’s most famous Christian disciple.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

From the First World War there is an olive woodcovered book in German and Hebrew Blumen von Heiligen Land. The word Jerusalem is inscribed on the front and inside are pictures made of pressed flowers and ferns. But someone has pasted inside the cover a red, white and blue British military ribbon attached to dried brown leaf on which is written in gold ink, Dardanelles 1915.

The campaign in the Dardanelles (Gallipoli) was amongst the biggest Allied disasters of the First World War.  Among the Australian, New Zealand and Ghurkha units fighting there were 700 men in the Jewish Brigade established by Josef Trumpeldor and Zev Jabotinsky – Palestinian Jews with Russian citizenship and Sephardic Palestinians keen to liberate Palestine from Turkish rule. Orders were given in English and Hebrew, the Grand Rabbi was nominated Honorary Chaplain and the Jewish officers were paid 40% less than the British.

After a nightmarish fiasco, Britain evacuated its troops to Egypt where they reformed and regrouped. General Sir Ian Hamilton, Commander-in-Chief in the Dardanelles, later wrote in his diary, ‘I have here, fighting under my orders, a purely Jewish unit – the Zion Mule Corps. As far as I know, this is the first time in the Christian era such a thing has happened. They have shown great courage taking supplies up to the line under heavy fire’ and proved ‘invaluable to us. (Although invaluable, Britain later refused to grant the men of the Zion Mule Corps regular British army pensions.)28

Presumably one of the soldiers went to Palestine on leave and sent this memento as a gift to a loved one in the Cape, attaching the carefully preserved leaf as a souvenir of the hellhole he had survived.

From the South African War there is a walking stick carved by Moses Segall, who spent fifteen months as a prisoner on Darrel’s Island in Bermuda. He was arrested by the British, not for fighting, but for trading with the enemy. His shop in Vlakfontein was looted and he was sent to the Green Point POW camp in Cape Town, and then to Bermuda. “The food and treatment were very bad and having no money I was obliged to take what they gave me”, he grumbled. Unfortunately his trunk was ransacked on the island, and he complained to the British that a great number of things had been stolen, including “numerous curios in silver and carved wood, a good number of them bearing my name and which I valued greatly.” 29 These were never found, nor was any compensation paid to him by the British for the seizure of his property back home on the grounds that he was a Russian, not a British citizen.

One can imagine Moses distress because the superb quality of his workmanship can be seen in this one souvenir of his stay on the island that has survived – a walking sick with his name “M. Segal, Darryl’s Eiland, Bermuda krygsgevang July 1901”. He has also carved on it the armorial crests of the Orange Free State and the Zuid Afrikaanse Republiek surmounted by an eagle, a hand with (President) “ P.R.D.T. M.T. Steyn” on its cuff that is holding a stick piercing the head of the snake twisted round a frog with the snake’s tail in the mouth of another snake twisting up the other side of the stick.

There are items of local historical significance. There is a silver tray presented to Bertha Solomon MP by the “United Party Women Members Constituency Constantia in appreciation for the Women’s Disabilities Act”. Solomon, a chairman of the Women’s Suffrage campaign, was one of the first practising women advocates and one of the first women’s rights activists in South Africa. The Matrimonial Affairs Act of 1953, called Bertha’s Bill by Prime Minister DF Malan, gave women legal right to their property, income and children. One of the pictures in the collection was presented by her father Idel Schwartz, founder of the Dorshei Zion Society in 1899, and is a reproduction of the painting The Opening of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem by the Rt Hon The Earl of Balfour, K.G. 1.4.1925 by Leopold Pilichowski – the original measured 16 ft by 8 ft. Schwartz attended the opening and donated a chair of Post-Biblical Hebrew Literature to the university.

Many of the items in the collection belonged to defunct congregations. These also include the silver trowels presented at the laying of the foundation stones and the keys given at the inauguration of many Jewish communal buildings and synagogues, many from country communities or suburbs where there are no longer viable Jewish communities.

There are trowels from the laying of foundations stones of synagogues in Maitland, Muizenberg, Observatory/ Mowbray, Woodstock/ Salt River, Worcester, Beth Hamidrash Hechadosh , Wynberg, the Cape Jewish Aged Home, the Zionist Hall and other places. There are engraved keys presented at the opening of synagogues and communal buildings in Maitland- Brooklyn, Malmesbury, Paarl, Stellenbosch, Upington, Wellington, Herzlia School and elsewhere. At the suggestion of Jeff Fine the trowels and keys have been framed in boxes making poignant and striking displays

Although the congregations have moved from many of these areas, these objects remain as a tribute to the Jews who worked and raised money to ensure that they would be able to worship and teach their religion to their children wherever they were.

Among the objects found in the store room were many works of art. Art curators Dr Rayda Becker of Parliament and Philip Todres examined these and selected the best which were reframed and hung. Some had been brought to Cape Town by Jews fleeing from Germany who were only allowed to take out ten marks, but could take certain personal possessions including family portraits. Some of these were offered for sale to the Jewish Museum when the refugee owners became old and in need, some were donated while others were later bequeathed to the Jewish Museum in gratitude for the welcoming home Cape Town provided them.

Two paintings are by Hermann Hirsch, who killed himself in Germany in 1934 when he was no longer allowed to sell his work. His niece, Hilda Jeidel, a refugee, later bequeathed these paintings to the Jewish Museum along with a generous bursary for academic study administered by the Cape Council. In 2009  the German city of Göttingen, wanting to compensate for their treatment of this great artist (and of his community who had made enormous contributions to their country’s culture, music, art, literature, science, medicine and economy) decided to host a major exhibition of Hirsch’s work in their Städtisches Museum. Tracing existing paintings was not easy, especially as the Gestapo had marched into Hirsch’s studio and destroyed all they saw. However, family put them in contact with the Cape Council which, at their request, provided photographs of these works for the Göttingen Städtisches Museum and in due course the Board received copies of the poster and catalogue of the commemorative exhibition, held in October 2009.

These are not the only paintings with Holocaust reverberations. Hilda Jeidel also brought paintings by Meta Cohen, who adopted the name of her fiancée, Jeidel’s nephew, when he died fighting for Germany in the First World War. Meta fled to America where her work now hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. There is a monotype of an old anguished tallis-wrapped Jew drawn by Lippy Lipshitz in 1945 when the facts of the Holocaust emerged – later Lippy went on aliyah.

On one wall hangs the horn, bone and ebony walking stick of Hyman Liberman, first Jewish Mayor in Cape Town, who laid the foundation stones of both the City Hall and the Gardens Synagogue and whose house forms part of Astra, the Jewish Sheltered Employment Agency. Alongside his walking stick is the original sketch by sculptor HV Meyerowitz of the magnificent Hyman Liberman memorial door carved from Burma teak illustrating Jewish migrations that is now the pride of the SA National Gallery. It traces Jewish migrations from the pyramids of Egypt, the Temple in flames, Jews by the waters of Babylon, the expulsion from Spain, Jews in Holland and in Mediaeval Germany, Russian emigrants boarding a ship and early Jewish colonists in the Cape, including a ‘smous’. The War affected Meyerowitz too – he committed suicide in 1945 when he learnt of his mother’s death.

There are pictures showing Jewish traditions and celebrations – woodcuts of Purim, of Yom Ha’atzmaut and other biblical themes. A bronze mirror with a hand carved teak surround by Lippy Lipshitz shows Simchat Torah celebrations. Originally, this was given to the SA National Gallery, which agreed, because of its specific Jewish theme, to exchange it for something else from the Jewish Museum. There are ketubot, Omer calendars, an 1877 deed of ownership for seats in the Great Synagogue in Telz, Lithuania and mizrachs – pictures designed to hang on the wall facing Jerusalem so that people would know in which direction to pray.

There is an engraving showing emigrants on a crowded ship; pictures of scholars hunched over the Torah, including an engraving by EM Lilien, a founder of Bezalel, and known as the first Zionist Artist; pictures and a commemorative glass plate of Moses Montefiore – the stained glass windows in the old synagogue, now serving as the entrance to the new Jewish Museum, were erected in 1901 in his honour.

There is a macabre engraving called “The Wedding” by British artist John Henry Amshewitz, a rabbi’s son, which illustrates a belief that an unmarried person would not go to heaven. It portrays an old woman on her deathbed, being married by a rabbi to a passer-by. As the ring is placed on her finger, she expires!

The precocious talents of Amshewitz led to his admission to the Royal Academy School and he soon won important commissions, until he fell from a ladder while painting a mural, breaking his thigh. He came to South Africa in 1916 on a six-month contract as an actor, and stayed for six years before returning to England, and fame as an artist. There was a scandal in South Africa when the SA Honorary High-Commissioner for Palestine commissioned Amshewitz to paint murals for London’s South Africa House, and the Afrikaans painter Pierneef complained about a non-South African artist winning the commission. Amshewitz later ‘immigrated’ to Muizenberg.

In the store room, I was excited to recognise a pencil drawing by Amshewitz of an anxious man, supporting a fainting woman and knocking vainly on a door. It was called “The Jew and the ever closed door”.

Doing research some years previously at the time of the Cape Council’s centenary, I had opened a South African Jewish Chronicle of 24 December 1942 and seen that same picture on a full page advertisement for a “Jewish Day of Mourning and Intercession – A Citizen’s Mass Meeting to be held in the City Hall to Express Sympathy with the Millions of Victims of Nazi Barbarism” – the systematic killing of the Jews had just became known. This event, which was to become the fore-runner of the annual Yom Hashoah commemoration services, took place on 29 December 1942.

“The Jews were being murdered”, reported the Zionist Record, “by the most satanic means the deranged mind of men can devise… there were no tears to mourn this dire catastrophe; its magnitude is beyond all weeping.”30All Jewish shops and businesses were asked to close and leaflets and posters in English and Afrikaans were distributed by the Board of Deputies and Western Province Zionist Council explaining the purpose and meaning of the day of mourning. Synagogue services were held, followed by a mass meeting in the Cape Town City Hall addressed by the mayor, Chief Rabbi Abrahams, the Anglican Archbishop and a Dutch Reformed Church minister in a demonstration of solidarity with the Jewish community. 31

This pencil drawing was the original design that Amshewitz had made for that poster. It was one of the last things he did as he died in Muizenberg soon after. His wife donated the drawing to the Museum. It has now been framed together with a reduced copy of the advertisement for the Day of Mourning and Intercession and hangs in the building. The 12th Century Spanish Jewish poet Yehuda Alcharizi32 wrote, “ I hurried to guard a stranger’s vine/ And yet in my haste abandoned mine.” The Cape Council is determined to treasure, not to abandon, its own cultural heritage. To quote Berl Katnelson, the Zionist leader, in a different context, “a generation that is innovating, creating, does not toss the legacy of the generations onto the garbage heap.” 33

Through the actions of the Cape Council who have restored to view the unwanted items that had been languishing for ten years in a store room, the looted religious artefacts “which tells of the biggest robbery ever committed in history… (and) the immense tragedy hidden behind every single item“34are once more accessible to the Jewish public. The original picture and story of what was to become the first Yom Hashoah ceremony has been found. Some of the paintings of Hersch have come to light and received their rightful recognition in his home town. Ochberg’s plaque has been found and mounted on land he bequeathed to Israel. The Hebrew prize of an Ochberg orphan can be admired. Bertha’s Bill can be recalled and as ephemeral an object as the box containing the Simchat Torah chocolate enjoyed by an unnamed child 70-year ago can be viewed long after the synagogue itself has closed its doors.

The late Dr Mirvish would be satisfied to see that the Jewish community in Cape Town had risen to the occasion and valued its treasures in the correct spirit. We must give credit to the Jewish Board of Deputies (Cape Council) for agreeing to take on the additional responsibilities involved in caring for the community’s cultural heritage and displaying its history on its walls. We must also give credit to the tenacity of Rabbi Abrahams, who fought for several years for the right of the Cape Town Jewish community to obtain a share of the looted religious artefacts.35

Subsequent events sadly showed just how fortunate that division proved to be. In the early 1990s, the Johannesburg share of the allocated “Jewish Reconstruction“ collection vanished from the Johannesburg Jewish Museum over a long weekend, along with the Russian security guard, and has never been traced.

 

Gwynne Schrire is Deputy Director of the Cape Council of the SA Jewish Board of Deputies. She is a regular contributor and a member of the Editorial Board of Jewish Affairs and has written, co-written and edited various books on aspects of local Jewish and Cape Town history.

 

NOTES

  1. This money enabled them to obtain the services of a Curator, Newman, Richard, The Jewish Museum Catalogue, Introduction, undated typed manuscript, v
  2. South African Jewish Board of Deputies Report, June 1953August 1955, 66
  3. Newman, Richard, op cit
  4. Woolley, Sir Leonard, Spadework, (1953), 99
  5. Purcell, Rosamund & Stephen Jay Gould, Finders, Keepers: Eight Collectors (1992)
  6. Daniel – Chapter 5: 1-2; 12-13
  7. Shulgi, formerly incorrectly pronounced as Dungi, son of King Ur-Nammu, ruled Ur (either 2429-2371 BCE or 20291982 BCE), and built the Great Ziggurat of Ur. He was the first to try to codify civil and criminal law and also the first to arrange for himself to be deified both in his lifetime and after his death – hence the erection of statues for his worship. Rostovtzeff , Mikhail, A History of the Ancient World: The Orient and Greece, p 29, Google Books; Hastings, James, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, Part 21, p75, Google Booke
  8. The desire to collect can go to extreme lengths – King Augustus 11 of Poland who was reputed to have sired 350children was so keen to add some of his rival Frederick William 1 of Prussia’s Chinese porcelain to his collection, that he arranged to swap 600 soldiers for 117 pieces of china. Then there was the bookseller Don Vincente who could not bear to part with a book and would follow the purchasers, kills them and retrieve the book. His only regret when found and tried was the discovery that one of the books he had reclaimed was not unique but that a second copy existed.
  9. Genesis 31.
  10. Knight, Natalie “Jewish Art- not the weakest link”, Jewish Affairs, Vol. 60 No 21 Winter 2003,.12
  11. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makapansgat_pebble”;Bednarik, Robert G. “Makapansgat cobble analysed”. University of Melbourne. http://web.archive.org/web/20030330065452/http://sunspot.sli.unimelb.edu.au/aura/MAKAPANSGAT.htm.
  12. Other cave dwellers who chose to decorate their home with antiques were Neanderthals who some 35 000 years ago possibly fleeing a pogrom from a Homo Sapiens tribe had to abandon in their cave in Grotte de l’Hy‘ene ‘a Arcy-sur-cure their carefully assembled collection of fossils and lumps of iron pyrites. There was also an ancient Egyptian fossil collector who had a catalogue label in Egyptian hieroglyphics for his fossil sea urchin from the Eocene period (40 – 55 million years ago) carefully detailing his name, the date and the locality of the find on it Today this can be seen in the Egyptian museum in Turin. Purcell, & Gould,op cit.
  13. Edsel, Robert , The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History(2009),by Center Street, a division of Hachette Book Group
  14. Letter to Dr Abt , SAJBD, from Jewish Restitution Successor Organisation, Frankfort Regional Office, US Army, dated 2July 1949, Beyachad Archives
  15. Letter dated 13 February 1951 from Dr Abt to Chief Rabbi Professor I Abrahams These and the following letters are all contained in a memorandum dated 26 February 1951 from JM Rich to IA Maisels. K.C., BA Ettlinger, K.C., SN Kuper, K.C., AB Klipin, J Daleski, Saron, Druion and Dr Abt, Beyachad Archives
  16. “Tragedy in silver” undated unsigned typed document, Beyachad Archives
  17. Letter dated 13 February 1951 from Dr Abt to Chief Rabbi Professor I Abrahams, Beyachad Archives
  18. Memorandum on Distribution of Ceremonial Silver, undated unsigned typed document, Beyachad Archives
  19. Newman, Richard, op cit
  20. Letter dated 16 February 1951 from Chief Rabbi Professor I Abrahams to MH Goldschmidt, Chairman of the Cape Committee, Beyachad Archives
  21. SAJBD Report, June 1953-August 1955,66
  22. South African Jewish Chronicle, 16 Oct 1953, Beyachad Archives
  23. Undated Memorandum of Distribution of Ceremonial Silver, Beyachad Archives
  24. www. ochbergorphans.com
  25. Eric Rosenthal, The Story of the Cape Jewish Orphanage,(1960), 11-18
  26. Established 1899, the Dorshei Zion Association united with other Zionist organisations to form the Western Province Zionist Council in 1943
  27. Large sums were sent to transport refugees from the Balkans to Palestine, to assist Jewish refugees in Switzerland Greece and Spain, to Jewish communities in Algiers, Tunis and Casablanca, to the Association of Lithuanian Jews in Palestine who sent parcels to Jews who had escaped into Russia and for relief in Palestine itself. Money was also sent to the Teheran child refugees, and while allowed, to Stockholm , to provide food parcels to prisoners in Bergen-Belsen and Birkenau .
  28. Sugarman, Martin, The Zion Muleteers of Gallipoli (March1915 – May 1916); www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/gallipoli.html
  29. Mendelsohn, R, A Jewish Family at War; The Segalls of Vlakfontein, Jewish Affairs,55:3,24
  30. Zionist Record 27.11.1942
  31. Green, M, South African Jewish responses to the Holocaust1941-1948, MA Thesis (Unisa 1987), 50-77
  32. Born in Spain, 1170.
  33. Rubin, Barry, Assimilation and its Discontents(1995), 255-256
  34. “Tragedy in silver” undated unsigned typed document, Beyachad Archives
  35. Cape Town now has a dynamic Jewish library, the Jacob Gitlin Library, and a Museum, the South African Jewish Museum. The looted books are secure in the library of the Kaplan Centre of Jewish Studies and Research at the University of Cape Town and the looted artefacts are on display in Durban, in the SA Jewish Museum and in the collection of the Cape Council of the Jewish Board of Deputies on display in The Samson Centre

 

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