(Author: Veronica Belling, Vol. 70, No. 1, Pesach 2015)
Editor’s note: December 2014 saw the launch of a new history of the Jewish orphanage in Cape Town, entitled From Cape Jewish Orphanage to Oranjia Jewish Child and Youth Centre: A Hundred Years of Caring for Our Children, 1911-2011. In this article Veronica Belling, a frequent contributor to Jewish Affairs, describes how she went about researching and writing the book and summarizes its themes and contents. To order the book, e-mail Jean Mausenbaum: Mausenbaum@oranjia.com; Tel: 021 462 5520
This new history1 traces the development of one of the oldest and finest of South African Jewry’s charitable institutions, the Cape Jewish Orphanage, from its founding in 1911 through its metamorphosis into the ORANJIA Jewish Child and Youth Centre to its centenary year in 2011 and beyond. Based on the archival records of Oranjia and of the Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies and Research at the University of Cape Town, as well as personal memoirs and interviews, this new hard cover volume in full colour, showcases new research including a new translation of a Yiddish poem by three of the Ochberg orphans rescued from the Ukraine in 1921, as well as historical posters, plans and images that have never before been featured in any other work of South African Jewish history.
(From the back cover)
In 2010, I was approached by Motti Lewis, then President of the Committee of the Oranjia Jewish Child and Youth Centre, to suggest someone to write a centennial history of Oranjia, the Cape Jewish Orphanage. Working at the Jewish Studies Library at the Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies and Research at the University of Cape Town, I was in the ideal position to research the history of Oranjia as the archival records of the Home are stored in the adjacent Jewish Studies Archive.
This would not be the first book about the Orphanage. A Golden Jubilee volume, written by Eric Rosenthal, had been published in 1961, on the 50th anniversary.2 This history is invaluable, but is fairly brief. It is also written in the uncritical rhetorical style of that time, containing statements such as: “All the children at Oranjia are happy.” This seemed unlikely, and it was clear that a new history could not merely continue where the Jubilee volume had left off, but would have to start from the beginning again.
Writing the history entailed going through a vast quantity of material. This included minutes – General, Executive and Welfare – in volumes stacked from floor to ceiling, starting in 1911 and continuing until approximately 1985. In addition to these, and annual reports, there were thousands of documents, arranged by subject. Here Oranjia must be congratulated for having the forethought to gather together the papers scattered throughout the Home and, in the late 1980s, present them for safekeeping to the Kaplan Centre Archives. Besides archival records, interviews were conducted with staff, committee members and former residents.
The book is divided into two sections: History and Memory. The History does not aspire to be exhaustive but rather to trace broad developments from 1911 to the present day. It is divided into six chapters:
Chapter One covers the period from 1911 – with Natalie Friedlander’s suggestion that something be done about Jewish orphans and the establishment of the Cape Jewish Orphanage by a Committee chaired by Joseph Kadish – to the outbreak of World War II in 1939. New discoveries include a previously unknown Yiddish-English poster advertising a Cape Town Jewish Orphan Society predating the establishment of the Orphanage, that is published for the first time in this chapter.
The early minutes are like a window into a bygone era: to a Dickensian world with children wearing identical clothes made out of blue serge with a matron who plastered the children’s mouths insisting that that was common practice in her native UK! Applications for admissions reflect the circumstances at of that time, a period of immigration and economic hardship. But they also reflect illness, divorce, intermarriage, and occasionally co-habitation across the colour line.
The minutes look back on a time when a committee of 28 members (13 men and 15 women) played an active role in the children’s lives inside the Home and even made representations to the Principal on their behalf, undermining the discipline of the Home. However even in the 1980s, when the numbers of the children in the Home had dropped to little over 30, there were virtually as many committee members as there were children. Such was the commitment and interest in the Home in those days.
The period is dominated by Isaac Ochberg’s rescue of some 176 orphans of the pogroms in the Ukraine in 1921, the most dramatic episode in the entire history of Oranjia. The number of children peaked during this period. Although after the new wing, built c1920, the capacity of the Home increased to 122, according to numbers recorded in the minutes, actual numbers never exceeded 100.
Chapter Two revisits the Ochberg orphans, not to retell the story, but rather to review new research, writing, a documentary, and reunions, such as the 1971 Jubilee reunion of their arrival, and the Israeli reunion of descendants in 2011. Files about the Ochberg orphans were also passed on to the Kaplan Centre from the old Jewish Museum when it was dismantled and replaced by the new South African Jewish Museum in 2000. It was these files that contain the Ochberg scrapbook, as well as a poster for the Jewish New Year depicting the orphans, dating back to 1922.
Some of this new research was discovered serendipitously only five days before the book was due to go to the printers. This was a Yiddish poem contained in the Ochberg scrapbook that had been published in English translation at the time of the Ochberg orphan reunion in 1971, where it is described as anonymous. To my surprise, when I compared the original Yiddish to the popular 1971 translation, I realised that the translation did not resemble the original. Moreover it was not anonymous, but signed by three twelve year old boys: Girsh or Hirsh Litwinitski, Shmuel Garbus and Avraham Raichman.3 Whereas the 1971 translation was written in free verse, the original poem was more naïve as befits twelve year olds. It is written in the style of the rhyming liturgical poems recited in the synagogue, known as piyyutim, with each of its ten lines starting with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Below is the 1971 translation, followed by my own literal translation alongside the original Yiddish in transliteration.
The poem of the orphan on his way to South Africa, 1971
Merciful Father in Heaven/ Who in His mercy toward children left orphans/ Forced to leave their homes/ Has sent father Ochberg to make us citizens of South Africa/ God blessed us that we found ourselves among good people/ Our worries ended when we received the letter/ Our group, hundreds of children, would not be separated we would live as brothers/ A miracle will happen and when we grow up and stand on our feet/ We will never forget the poor and the needy/ Sins we have known/We will pray and ask blessings from heaven/ We left behind us ruins when we started on our way/ We took leave of our friends/ And hoped that fate would allow/ That we would live as Jews/ To reach Zion is our dream/ Father Ochberg came to rescue us/ And we will live as Jews/ And to Zion come…So wrote an anonymous Jewish child from the Ukraine…
New translation by Veronica Belling, 2014
ALEF makht Av ha-rakhamim shokhen meromimAz okhen vey tsu di kleyne kinder vos hobn gebliben yesoymim.
BEYS makht Beys a shtub a shod avek tsu varfenKumt tsu geyn der tate Hokhberg vel unz Afrikaner makhen
GIMEL. makht Got zol unz benshnAz mir zoln opkumen mit gute menshn
DALET makht Dayges on a shirAz es kumt a brivele ver ikh a gvir
HEY makht Hunderter kinderVeln mir zikh nit tsesheydn azoy vi eygene brider
VAV makht Vunder vet zayn ven mir veln vern laytVeln mir guts ton oreme layt
ZAYIN makht Zindike menshnZaynen mir gevenItster vet Got unz benshn
KHET makht a Khurbn iz gevezenVen mir hobn opgefornFun unzere khaveyrim
TET makht Tomer vet unz zayn shlekhtVeln mir zikh tsaplen vi a hekht
YUD makht Yudn veln mir zaynUn mir veln zikher zayn in Tsiyon arayn.
ALEF is for Av, Our Merciful Father who dwells up on highWoe to the little orphan children for whom we sigh.
BET is for Beys, the Home from which we were expelledSaved by Daddy Ochberg in South Africa we shall dwell
GIMEL is for God, whose blessings we shareThat we should be among people who care
DALET is for Dayges, worries without an endI rejoice when a letter arrives from a friend
HEY is for Hundreds, of children on the seaTogether as brothers we shall be
VAV is for Vunder, the wonder of growing oldAnd being generous to the poor we behold
ZAYIN is for Zindike, the sinful life we were livingNow God His blessings to us will be giving.
KHET is for Khurbn, the destruction we leftTaking leave of our friends we are bereft.
TET is for Tomer, if perchance wicked we beWe will be tossed around like fish in the sea
YUD is for Yudn, Jews we shall remainOur dream is that Zion we should regain
Sof kumt di dikhter fun der lid – Lastly come the composers of the poem:
G. Lidwinitski
Sh. Garbus
A. Raichman
Other files in the Oranjia collection contain questionnaires in Yiddish and Polish that were drawn up by the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in the Rowno District in the Ukraine. Questions related to the children’s names, ages, names of parents, occupation, education, languages spoken, relatives, cause of death of parents. An unexpected question was: “Can the child daven?”- Can the child pray? And I did not find one form – whether for the boys or for the girls – in which the answer was not in the affirmative. Even if the children were not yet attending school – they all knew how to pray, i.e. to recite the blessings.
Chapter Three – The War years and its aftermath, 1939-1950 – is dominated by attempts to rescue Jewish orphans from war torn Europe both during and after the war – all of which came to naught. It also describes the brief period of about three months in 1940 when Oranjia provided a haven for some 94 children evacuated from Britain. This chapter also includes the original architectural plans of the Montrose building that – other than the façade – was completely rebuilt in 1939, designed by Max Policansky, Oranjia’s Honorary architect. These plans were discovered in the UCT Libraries’ Archives (not the Jewish section) by the architectural historian, Dr Stewart Harris. In this chapter, they are published for the first time.
Oranjia: Second Floor plan
Chapter Four covers the years 1950 to 1980. This is one of the longest chapters in the book and the one most likely still to be remembered today. There are a plethora of photographs of the children, taken by Photo Hausmann, who was himself a member of the Oranjia committee at that time. During this period Oranjia was central to Jewish Cape Town, with its Pesach seders when it opened its doors to the families of the children, former residents, as well as to members of the Jewish community who had nowhere to go. Its table was graced on occasion by the mayors of Cape Town, several of whom were Jewish. It was a time when Oranjia provided a haven for children affected by the Congo crises, the Muizenberg camp was a highlight for the children at the end of the year, Stone Villa in Stephen Street provided a Home for Aftercare young boys who were moving out into the community, and the Sarah Bloch Creche, that still exists (although no longer run by Oranjia) was established in 1975. Oranjia was regarded as a model of institutional childcare by the wider community.
The central question of the book is to explain the change in the operation of the Home, introduced in 1981, when its management by an onsite Principal and Matron was replaced by an offsite Programme director with the assistance of social workers and childcare workers. This change would ultimately lead to the establishment of Group Homes. The book would also have to answer a question that is still echoed in the Cape Town Jewish community even today, and that is: why was the building sold and why was it subsequently demolished?
All these questions are tackled in Chapter Five that deals with the last years in Montrose Avenue 1981-1992. This chapter is mainly reliant on the input of former committee member, Frank Kaminer, Welfare Chair at the time of the transformation of the operating system in 1981. Oranjia was following international trends in institutional childcare that in South Africa were being pioneered by Brian Gannon of St John’s Home in Vredehoek. However, the willingness of Oranjia’s committee to accept the changes and the fact that Oranjia had the financial backing of the Jewish community of Cape Town, meant that Oranjia became the leader in the field of institutional childcare.
Chapter Six, the final chapter in the History section, deals with the period of the Group Homes to the present day with a single Group Home at Frank Avenue in Highlands Estate. It is chiefly based on the input of Belinda Slavin, the present day Programme Director.
The Section on Memories contains twelve memoirs and interviews. The aim here is quality rather than quantity. The interviews are aimed at elucidating issues that are discussed in the History Section. An effort was made to cover all the various periods of the history. The earliest memoirs are of two of the Ochberg orphans, who arrived in 1921, and the latest interview is for the period, 2000-2006. The memoirs are introduced by a chapter contributed by Gwynne Schrire. This chapter, entitled “The children speak”, provides a lens through which to view the changing nature of institutional child care that is conveyed in the sometimes very critical memoirs.
The book is designed by Angela Tuck of HANDS ON design, in full colour and hard cover. The printing and design were financed from a bequest from the estate of the late Geoffrey Hirschmann, a Cape Town businessman, arranged by Oranjia Trustee, Barry Lockitch, whose partner, Jeremy Wilder, was the executor of the estate. Barry has a very strong family connection to Oranjia. His mother, Fanny, who was one of the orphans rescued from the Ukraine by Isaac Ochberg, was active on the Oranjia committee for many years and was one of only two women who were awarded the title of Honorary Life Chairlady. In addition both his father and his uncle, who had also spent some time in the Orphanage in their youth, were one time Presidents of the committee.
Veronica Belling is the author of Bibliography of South African Jewry (1997), Yiddish Theatre in South Africa (2008), and the translator of Leibl Feldman’s The Jews of Johannesburg (2007) and Yakov Azriel Davidson: His Writings in the Yiddish Newspaper, Der Afrikaner, 1911-1913 (2009). She held the position of librarian at the Jewish Studies Library, part of U.C.T. Libraries and the Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies and Research, for over 30 years, retiring at the end of 2012.
NOTES
- This book should not be confused with David Solly Sandler’s self-published collection, “Memories of Oranjia, 1911-2011”. This is not a history of Oranjia, but a collection of memoirs of former Oranjians, to which Sandler has added a selection of Oranjia’s annual reports; three issues of an in-house children’s publication, The Flag of Oranjia; and two chapters from Oranjia’s 1961 Golden Jubilee publication – The Story of the Cape Jewish Orphanage by Eric Rosenthal.
- Eric Rosenthal, The Story of the Cape Jewish Orphanage: Commemorating the Fiftieth Anniversary of ‘Oranjia’, and Incorporating the Formal Reports and Balance Sheets for the Financial Year Ended 31st January 1960, Cape Jewish Orphanage, Cape Town, 1961.
- Whereas the original Yiddish poem only has boys’ initials and surnames, it was possible to identify their first names plus their ages from a full list of the orphans contained in the Oranjia, Cape Jewish Orphanage collection, BC 918 Q1.1, Special Collections, UCT Libraries.
