The attitude of South African Jewry to German Jewish refugees seeking asylum in South Africa

Four principal pieces of legislation affected Jewish immigrants to South Africa, namely the Immigration Registration Act of the Cape of 1902, the Immigration Regulation Act of 1913, the Immigration Quota Act of 1930 and the Aliens Act of 1937. It is only the latter two Acts, and particularly the second, that have direct relevance to the topic under consideration. The Nazi accession to power in1933 was followed almost immediately by repressive measures against German Jewish citizens. An exodus from the Reich followed.

In the beginning the exodus was to neighboring countries and then further afield. As time progressed, the number of Europeans who no-one wanted rose steadily. By the end of 1936 some 100 000 of Germany’s half-million Jews had emigrated, about one-third going to South America, another third to what was then Palestine and the remainder to diverse countries, including South Africa.2

The Hilsverein der Deutschen Juden, founded in 1901 by German Jews to help East European refugees, turned its energies in 1933 to helping the German community’s own young people to emigrate. After 1936, it was assisted by the German Council for German Jewry. Immigration to the Union of South Africa from Germany was free from the Quota Act restraints, since Germany was not one of the quota countries. From accounts of former refugees it is evident that German Jews knew little about South Africa.3 An editorial in the Cape Times in1930 stated “that South Africa will always welcome settlers from the British Empire, from Holland, from Germany and from Northern France. They are ethnically our own kith and kin”.

General Jan Smuts was on board ship returning from an overseas trip when he learned to his consternation that the government had during his absence introduced a Quota Bill to restrict Jewish immigration to South Africa. Even worse, his entire South Africa Party (SAP) caucus, with the exception of five Jewish members and two others had supported the Second Reading of the Bill. Arriving at Parliament during the Third reading, an infuriated Smuts took his party to task so effectively that during the final division on the Bill every SAP MP voted against it. Government members taunted him for being the ‘King of the Jews’.4 It is noteworthy that the Quota Act did not mention Jews as such, but its effect was to restrict Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe, so much so that after 1930, as Edna Bradlow remarks, a camel could have gone through the eye of a needle more easily than a poor Lithuanian immigrant could have entered South Africa for the first time.

Initially, a limited number of German Jews came to South Africa.5 The increase in their numbers in 1935 was not extraordinary when compared with those from other non-restricted countries, hence the government up until then did not contemplate taking steps to deal specifically with Germany and the victims of Nazi persecution. This notwithstanding, there were some vague expressions of disquiet as early as 1934, from sources as divergent as Sir Abe Bailey and the parliamentary caucus of the National Party. Even Morris Alexander, a Jewish parliamentarian and then leader of the SAJBD, ‘viewed with concern the large number of German Jewish immigrants who are looking for jobs’.6

Early in 1936, a deterioration of the Jewish position in Germany in conjunction with Arab opposition in Palestine which forced the British to tighten up entry into the mandate, led to an upsurge in German Jewish immigration into Southern Africa. That year, the SAJBD leadership wrote to Norman Bentwitch, a prominent figure in Anglo-Jewish refugee work and Chairman of the Council of German Jewry in London; to Otto Schiff, Chairman of the Jewish Refugees Committee in London and Max Warburg President of the Hilsverein in Berlin, asking the overseas organizations to reduce the volume of immigrants to South Africa. The most serious debate arose in September, when Jewish organizations wanted to charter the SS Stuttgart to transport over 500 refugees to the country.7

German newcomers were not at first welcomed by the local Jewish community, whose roots lay predominantly in Eastern Europe, and who traditionally felt an antagonism towards German Jews (pejoratively referred to as ‘Yekkes’). The Yekkes for their part tended to look down on Jews of Lithuanian extraction (‘Litvaks’). Joe Joffe, a ‘Litvak’, said that he ‘always tried to keep away from German Jews because they always tried to prove their superiority and I didn’t like it’.8 This antagonism was not always the case. Indeed many Litvak Jews associated with, and indeed married Jews of German origin.

Late in 1935 and early 1936 the fate of German Jews in Germany worsened with the promulgation of the infamous Nuremberg Race Laws. Between 1933 and 1936, a total of 6132 German immigrants entered the Union of South Africa; 3615 of these were Jews, 2549 in 1936 alone. The Greyshirts, a virulent antisemitic organization, vociferously protested about the inf lux. Antisemitic elements within the opposition Gesuiwerde Nationaliste Party (‘Purified National Party’) were quick to jump onto the bandwagon of galloping agitation. On 16 June 1936 they raised an angry cry in Parliament against continuing Jewish immigration and demanded that the loophole in the Quota Act permitting Jews, particularly from Germany, to immigrate be blocked. Rebuffed by a government majority in Parliament, the hue and cry against German immigration was continued at public meetings throughout the country. In Stellenbosch Dr D F Malan, later to become Prime Minister and at the time National Party MP for Calvinia, contended that Jewish immigration was being fostered by organized Jewish ‘geldmag’ (money power) and that the Government had purposely done nothing to remedy the position. He is alleged to have said that the Jews were the salt of the earth and that one needed salt to make a good meal but that too much salt spoiled the meal.

These remarks were followed by a spate of antisemitic letters in the press. The government found it increasingly difficult to withstand the pressure of public protest. In 1936, as a first step, the existing immigration regulations were tightened. Whereas until that time all that was needed by prospective German Jewish immigrants was a valid passport and a guarantee signed by a South African citizen, now a cash deposit of £100 sterling was required. The writer’s friend Henry Fabian, later to become chairman of the Transvaal Council of the SAJBD, relates how as a young boy he was instructed by his father, a businessman in Cape Town, to go to the docks and exhibit the requisite £100 to an appropriate immigration official. This was then exhibited as a deposit for use by people coming to South Africa. Henry, in his short pants, would then scramble up the gangplank of the ship carrying German Jewish immigrants and hand the £100 to a would-be immigrant, who would then exhibit the notes to the official. Henry would be standing nearby. As soon as the formalities were complied with, the £100 would be handed back to Henry, who would unobtrusively make his way back onto the ship and hand the same £100 over to another would-be immigrant. The process went on very successfully. Henry says that the attitude of the officials was probably to turn a blind eye to what was happening.

Jewish communal leaders at the time attempted to get government to make it illegal to provoke racial hatred between Europeans, much along the lines of the many years later Riotous Assemblies Act. The government, regrettably supported by its own Jewish MPs, was loath to introduce such legislation (1934). It viewed with some apprehension an open discussion in the House of Assembly of the Jewish question. The reason for this was obvious. The Greyshirts activities were exposing and further inflaming what Smutscalled a wide current of antisemitism, particularly in the platteland and smaller t ow n s. Ma la n’sNational Party was forced, as it were, to adopt antisemites as an effective means for making a counterbid. Bradlow comments that: ‘From about April 1936, after a two-year f lirtation with the idea, a campaign was launched against Jewish immigration, during which the semantic subterfuge of 1930 was abandoned. They were replaced – even in parliament – by language both reflecting the beliefs of the simplest white voter – as the provincial councils, particularly in the Cape were to show, later in the year. At Lichtenberg, Malan stated that that he was not a Greyshirt but that he went along with them as far as German-Jewish immigration was concerned.9

Pressure from the opposition to restrict German-Jewish immigration was compounded by that from the government’s own officials abroad. During February and March 1936, the Union’s representatives in Washington, The Hague, Rome, London and Berlin, which included the well-known antisemite Eric Louw, and Charles te Water, sent the Prime Minister a memorandum, subsequently called the ‘Te Water Memorandum’. This stated that ‘at this critical juncture and in view of the exceptional circumstances attending it, there should be restrictions on the movement of Jews into South Africa’. The memorandum further pointed out that between April 1936 and the end of that year, over 2000 Jews had applied for information concerning South Africa and that the country was regarded as a ‘Jewish country’. The signatories posed the question as to whether without detriment and even danger to the national interests, South Africa could ‘continue to allow its commercial interests and related vocations to be fed by recruits of the type from overseas.’

In Parliament, the Nationalists demanded that people whose travel did not allow them to return to their home country should not be allowed to enter South Africa. This patently referred to German Jews since under the Reich’s Citizen Act of September 15 1935 (a section of the Nuremberg Race Laws), all non-Aryans had been deprived of their German nationality, which inter alia meant the cancellation of their German passports and the issue of new passports indicating that had no status in Germany or right of return. The SAJBD immediately expressed its fears that the effect of the proposed amendment would be to exclude people on the very racial and religious grounds that had occasioned their disabilities in their homeland. J H Hofmeyr, then the Minister of Interior, was asked to consider what the effect of the amendment would have on the local antisemitic movement. Distressed by the situation yet unable to act without jeopardizing his position in the Cabinet, Hofmeyr confessed: “My blood boils …when I read of the new antisemitic excesses in Germany and Austria. Sometimes I wonder whether I should not be gloriously indiscreet and say exactly what I think about Hitler’s policy in this respect. Then no doubt the PM would send an apology to Germany and I would have to resign”.10

Various amendments were proposed to the 1930 Quota Act. Although an Immigration Bill was prepared, it was dropped by the government. The latter was prepared to introduce certain restrictions on immigration but these were quickly attacked by Malanas being inadequate. The German Jews, unlike the earlier Lithuanians, were a sophisticated secularly educated group, who could not be excluded by stiffer education tests. New regulations were introduced, stiffening the financial requirements and any attempts made to use influence to secure admission of a particular person were to be regarded as enough to cause the person’s exclusion. The opposition described the new regulations as particularly weak and of a patchwork nature. The immediate effect of the regulations was to cause immigration figures to rise dramatically, especially in October 1936, when the peak figure of 948 Jewish immigrants came in. This peak was reached in order to beat the 1 November deadline. That month, the figures dropped to 113.

It was at this time that the Council for German Jewry in London made hasty efforts to charter the Stuttgart, to enable as many immigrants as possible to arrive ahead of the deadline. Shimoni writes: