(Author: David Saks, Vol. 72, No. 1, Pesach 2018)
During the last decades of the 19th Century, the South African Jewish community embarked on a sustained period of dramatic growth, primarily as a result of immigration from Eastern Europe. One of the unfortunate, if probably inevitable side-effects of the influx was that for the first time, antisemitic modes of thinking began emerging as a significant element in the political and cultural discourse of the country. In response, the community developed formal representative structures whose core mandate was to safeguard the civil rights of South African Jewry, and in particular to confront the antisemitic threat wherever it surfaced.
Since 1903, this function has primarily been carried out by the SA Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD). In recent decades, a substantial role in this area has also been played by the Community Security Organisation (CSO), which was founded under the auspices of the SAJBD in the early 1990s and which continues to work closely with its parent body in all matters concerning Jewish safety, security and psychological well-being.
The SAJBD, CSO and other major communal organisations (notably, the SA Zionist Federation) that have involved themselves in promoting Jewish civil rights over the years have always operated as formally-constituted representative bodies operating at all times within the official laws and structures of their society. Their work has included making representations to government, educating the broader public via the media and other vehicles, building alliances through interfaith activities and, in more serious cases, instituting court action.
Parallel to this, however, there has also been a tradition of informal, extra-legal Jewish activism against antisemitism, of which, for obvious reasons, much less is known. This phenomenon was primarily in evidence during the 1930s, in retrospect the heyday of antisemitism in South Africa, but there would subsequently be other occasions where Jewish defence groups would – with varying results – take the law into their own hands to deal with real or perceived threats.
The ‘Shirt’ movements
In the 1930s, antisemitism in South Africa reached unprecedented heights of virulence. The rise to power of the Nazi movement in Germany helped to spawn numerous imitators throughout the world, all characterised by ultra-nationalist, racist and radically antisemitic ideologies. In South Africa, such activities were especially prevalent in the southwestern and eastern Cape Province, northern Natal and on the Witwatersrand, although they surfaced from time to time in all parts of the country. The best known of the Nazi spinoff movements was the South African Gentile National Socialist Movement, subsequently known as the Greyshirts. Other right-wing organisations with explicitly antisemitic programmes active during the period included the Suid-Afrikaanse Nasionale Demokratiese Beweging (Blackshirts), Bond van Nasionale Werkers (Brownshirts), Oranjehemde (Orangeshirts) and Volksbeweging (aka the South African Gentile Organisation). In public meetings in all parts of the country, its spokesmen propagated the message that “Jews had fomented the Boer War, incited Blacks against white civilisation, controlled the press, dominated the economy and exploited Afrikaners”.1 As described by Milton Shain:
Doing their best to appeal to dislocated and unskilled whites, these movements consistently blamed the Jew for the country’s woes. By mid-1936 six independently branded ‘Shirtist’ groups were in existence, some operating as breakaways, others newly created. Led for the most part by disillusioned and angry young men, these fascist clones traversed the country aping the politics of their European mentors. Filled with conspiratorial bluster, they crudely alerted South African whites to the exploitative, menacing and evil Jew. Propagating fantasies, flirting with notions of ‘Aryanism, and peddling international Jewish conspiracies and other outrageous fabrications, they took advantage of enhanced rail and road communications and improved literacy to spread their toxic message.1
The Greyshirts, headed by Louis Weichardt, had its headquarters in Cape Town and maintained branches in all four provinces. Himself of German extraction, Weichardt dedicated his efforts in the pre-war years to spreading the doctrine of National Socialism throughout the country, and to that end relied heavily on crude Jew-baiting strategies.
Greyshirts founder and leader Louis Weichardt
The SAJBD spearheaded the official Jewish community response to the ultra-right menace, most notably in successfully exposing several of the leading Greyshirts for propagating as fact a crude antisemitic forgery loosely based on The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion in a famous court-case held in Grahamstown in 1934. Unofficially, however, the Greyshirts and their fellow travellers also on occasion found themselves unexpectedly confronted by well-organised Jewish vigilante bands whose members had no compunction in taking them on physically in order to break up their meetings. Interestingly, the latter included in their ranks many dogmatic Marxist activists who under normal circumstances would not have chosen to identify themselves with specifically Jewish causes but chose to do so in this case because of their abhorrence of racism and antisemitism.
Greyshirt armband. Orange was chosen as the colour of the swastika because of its association with the Dutch national independence struggle against Spain, something reflected in, inter alia, the naming of the Orange Free State and the inclusion of orange in the then South African flag.
One of the fullest recorded accounts of how South African Jews physically confronted antisemitic agitators can be found in the posthumously published memoirs of Leo Lovell, then a Benoni-based lawyer who later became a long-serving Labour Party MP and forthright opponent of apartheid. Lovell was centrally involved in planning the violent break-up of two Blackshirts public meetings in Benoni in 1938. The following passage describes how the first of these meetings, held outside the municipal offices on 14 May of that year, was disrupted:
I ordered them in section by section. I led the last section into the crowd and charged for the platform. Simultaneously the rest of the sections did the same. One hundred and twenty men charging from the perimeter of the huge gathering cut the crowd in two and so sudden and swift was the onset, that the Blackshirts and their supporters had no time even to bring their weapons into play, when they were hurled against the wall behind them and the table was smashed. Using the planks from the broken table, my men belaboured the vanquished Blackshirts in view of the huge crowd. By now the police had rushed in, in a formidable crescent, with batons raised striking right and left. My own men retreated and ran as ordered and the unfortunate recipients of many a blow with the batons, were members of the crowd who couldn’t get away in time. I am almost certain that the impetus of the charging police brought them right among the floundering Blackshirts, many of them strewn on the ground, who, in addition to the blows administered by ourselves, also received unintended injuries from the flailing batons.1
It should be mentioned that Lovell had first approached the courts to prohibit the rally. Only once legal options were exhausted did he commit himself to extra-judicial action. Lovell and a smaller number of protestors went on to disrupt a second Greyshirts meeting shortly afterwards. At a third rally a few months later, Greyshirt speakers were pelted with rotten tomatoes and noisily heckled, and ultimately the police had to escort them and their supporters to the police station for their own safety.1
Individual Jews also periodically became embroiled in violent altercations at Greyshirts rallies. Rebecca Hodes has described how two young Jewish immigrants, Max Raysman and Jack Rubin, took part in reducing one such meeting, held on the Grand Parade, Cape Town, on 2 April 1936, to “a chaotic brawl”.2 This particular rally was addressed by the overall leader of the Greyshirts himself, Louis Weichardt. Both Rubin and Raysman were arrested and charged for their involvement in the violence, after which they were taken to hospital for injuries sustained in the fighting. Both, Hodes notes, “had heard about the Greyshirt meeting while at the Maccabi club, a gym on Long Street in Cape Town’s city center, and had decided to attend in a show of strength and opposition to the antisemitism that characterized Greyshirt public meetings”.
Leo Lovell, 1907-1976
While radical rightwing events in the major urban centres were not infrequently disrupted, sometimes violently, in the smaller towns, where the Jewish population was invariably small, they generally went ahead without incident. One poignant episode nevertheless demonstrates how at least one Greyshirts meeting, held in the town of Smithfield in the Orange Free State, was brought to a premature close. Amongst those in attendance at the gathering was a member of the local Jewish community, Joseph ‘Jakkals’ Segall, famed for his record of having fought under General Christiaan de Wet during the latter half of the Anglo-Boer War. He made no impassioned speech about the evils of antisemitism. Instead, he stood up and stated simply, “Ek is Jakkals, wie vir die Boere geveg het”. As a result, the meeting broke up soon afterwards.1
Jewish leftists had a dual motivation in confronting the Greyshirts, since thereby they would be striking a blow against both antisemitism and the foremost ideological adversary of the world communist movement, fascism. It is worth noting that much of what was happening in South Africa took place against the backdrop of the civil war in Spain, where left and right, represented by the Republican and Nationalist factions, were engaged in a ruthless battle over the country’s future and thousands of international volunteers were serving on both sides. In South Africa, a high proportion of those Jews who physically confronted the ultra-right menace were firmly in the communist camp. One of them was Jack Flior, as it happens, the only South African known to have served in the pro-Republican International Brigade during the Spanish Civil War. In a 1994 interview, he recalled his involvement in local anti-fascist activities:
We were fighting like hell all the time. I was arrested one time, on the steps of the [Johannesburg] Town Hall. The Greyshirts used to come there and organise their meetings and we used to come and break it up. I remember the paper reported that two children were arrested – that was me and my younger brother [Mendel, later killed in action in World War II – ed.]. You see, I was wearing short pants and they thought I was a child. But it was not only Jews fighting against them – in those days there was Johanna Cornelius, an Afrikaner woman and her sister, Esther. We also went to Pretoria to break up meetings of the Greyshirts.
On one occasion we demonstrated against the Greyshirts, and the man who was leading them was Vorster, who was South African prime minister in later years. I remember him dressed in black shirt and black trousers. The Jewish Workers Club participated, but there were other people also. One of our members, Menahem Mendel Yudelowitz, who was born in Palestine, was with us. He jumped up at the flag of the Greyshirts, pulled it down and tore it up. And then everyone fell upon him, and we pulled him out, bleeding.1
Former Cape Town mayor Alfred Harold Honikman records another instance of Jewish anti-Greyshirt activity in Johannesburg, where he was then working as an architect:
When a Jewish cemetery near Johannesburg was vandalized, a number of young Jewish boys formed themselves into a vigilante body and stationed groups at potential Greyshirt targets. Waiting in watch outside a synagogue, they saw four Greyshirts step out of a car and stealthily approach the building. One was carrying a can of gasoline, the others, logs of wood. They stopped at a side window. One was unscrewing the can cap when the vigilantes emerged from the shadows and pounced on them. The would-be arsonists abandoned their plot and ran for their car, leaving behind the gasoline can and logs. For a while, the incident appeared to mark the end of Greyshirt activity on the Rand!1
The Hillbrow Beerhall Incident
Under very different circumstances, outraged Jewish youth again came together to confront Nazi sympathisers in May 1967, following reports that the previous week Hitler’s birthday had been celebrated at a beerhall frequented largely by German immigrants in Hillbrow. On
5 May, an estimated 1000 protestors gathered outside the beerhall and a few dozen found their way into the venue itself, disrupting proceedings by dancing and singing Hebrew songs.
Most of the violence that ensued took place outside, with baton-wielding policemen clashing with a number of Jewish youths and tear-gas being used to break up the gathering. As reported by Sunday Express deputy news editor Desmond Blow (who was himself severely beaten by the police, despite making them aware of his journalistic credentials), punches were thrown, and some Germans chanted ‘Sieg Heil’. There were more shouts of ‘Heil’ as police took away four Jewish boys, who later paid admission of guilt fines of R6 for disturbing the peace”. According to Blow, an immigrant said that a few Hitler supporters had stood and drank toasts to Hitler on his birthday the previous week, adding, “Most of us joined in – anything for a party, especially as we are so far away from home – but few of us think much of Hitler. It was all a bit of fun”. A Jewish protestor was quoted by the Eastern Province Herald as saying, “We don’t like the fact that neo-Nazis are active here – after what our people went through during and before the war. We do not propose to be passive about what we feel is a threat here”.
The fracas received front-page coverage in the mainstream media and was considered serious enough to be discussed in parliament. The following summary of what happened was presented by United Party Member for Hillbrow Dr G P Jacobs:
…based on my interviews, and in all good faith, I should like to put this position before the House. Some months ago a new beer hall was opened. It was advertised as a German beer cellar. It built up a clientele quite soon, and it was frequented, not unnaturally, by German-speaking people who included a fair sprinkling of young German immigrants. People went there at night to drink beer and to sing German folk songs and nobody in his senses can make any objections to that. On the 20th April, a date which coincided with Hitler’s birthday, there are reports that events took a new turn. Now, I want to say quite clearly I do not know what the motives are that were involved, but from all accounts some of the youths produced a portrait of Hitler and began to dance and prance around it, shouting slogans and giving salutes which were reminiscent of the Nazi era.
There were reports of this particular gathering and these reports came to the notice of many people and also to groups of Jewish youths. They saw this as provocative behaviour. To them it signified the introduction in South Africa of a new Nazi cult and they decided to retaliate. And so there were disturbances. At first they were in a small form, but they culminated on the 5th May in a disturbance of quite some major proportion. From all accounts it involved a police force of some 200 men and the police had to resort to the use of tear-gas, a baton charge and dogs, to disperse not only the trouble-makers but the hundreds of spectators who had gathered….the reports that I have had were to the effect that the police behaved with commendable restraint and with competence. For this we are all pleased. Fortunately there was no damage to property and there was no loss of life.1
Protestors and police outside the Deutscher Keller beer garden, 5 May 1967 (Rand Daily Mail)
Prime Minister B J Vorster, who is mentioned by Jack Flior as a participant in a Greyshirt demonstration and who went on to campaign for the far-right Ossewabrandwag during World War II, predictably expressed scepticism over whether any pro-Nazi demonstration had taken place at all and warned that the police had been instructed to crack down hard on illegal protests, whether carried out by Jews, Italians or anyone else. He further took a swipe at “irresponsible journalists and undisciplined university students” who were giving South Africa a bad name and stirring up ill-feeling within the white population (“no newspaperman who is worth his salt and who has the interests of South Africa at heart, and no newspaperman who is interested in good relations between Jewish citizens and German citizens, or English- and Afrikaans-speaking people, writes like this to incite groups against each other, as was done on this occasion”).
One thing clearly demonstrated by the Hillbrow incident was a strengthened sense of resolve amongst young Jews to confront, physically if necessary, any potential attempts to revive the rabidly antisemitic, neo-Nazi ideologies of bygone years. In part, no doubt, this was due to the greater sense of security that came with being second or third generation South Africans, as opposed to being in the main first-generation immigrants, which was largely the case with South African Jews during the 1930s. The Israel factor, with its accompanying introduction of a new kind of Jew who took robust steps to defend himself where required, would also have played its part. But there would have been a more sobering reason for this unusual display of Jewish militancy. In the post-Holocaust era, Jews now recognised what comparatively innocuous events such as the Hillbrow beerhall affair might ultimately lead to if not firmly confronted from the outset.
David Saks is Associate Director of the South Africa Jewish Board of Deputies and Editor of Jewish Affairs.
