(Author: Mary Schrire, Vol. 73, No. 2, Rosh Hashanah 2018)
Both of my parents, Dr Louis and Mary Schrire, were keen Zionists. My late mother was the longest serving member of the Bnoth Zion Association-WIZO in Cape Town and my late father was named an honorary member – but felt too sheepish to get his certificate. The section below comes from a series of interviews I conducted with my mother to get her life story. I have added some material from other sources – Gwynne Schrire.
After being demobbed at the end of the war, my husband Dr Louis Schrire decided to go to England to specialise in ophthalmology. Once he got settled I joined him. We spent two years in London and one in Cardiff.
At this time the United Nations were meeting and to their horror they discovered that there were Jews in Auschwitz the Germans had overlooked – no one wanted them – not even the USA! The British did NOT want Jews in Palestine – it would upset their friends, the Arabs, who were giving them oil!!!
Meanwhile, Jews from Russia were sneaking off to Palestine but the British caught them and put them in a concentration camp in Cyprus. Some Jewish settlers fought the British. The Irgun kidnapped three British soldiers and threatened to hang them if Britain hanged three Jews convicted on charges of illegal possession of arms. Both sides followed through with the hangings. The British were outraged, the British press went to town with the “cold blooded Irgun murders” and anti-Jewish violence broke out all over. The antisemitism was horrific – I thought I was living in Nazi Germany. A wooden shul was burnt down in Scotland, London shuls had their windows broken and received telephonic death threats, bricks were thrown through the windows of Jewish shops and “Hitler was right” was daubed on properties.
I was travelling on a bus and was furious when I heard the good British citizens sitting around me discussing the hangings and saying that Hitler “should have killed the lot of them”. I made a vow then that if the United Nations gave the Jews their land, I would use every bit of my energy to work for it.
We returned to South Africa after three years and settled in Kimberley. Three weeks later I went to a meeting – World Jewry had decided to form a women’s campaign and Doris Kaplan came to speak about it. She asked the lady who ran the Blue Box and JNF Trees Fund to do it, but she refused – she said she helped her husband in his clothing business in the Market Square. (In her old age I discovered them both living in Beit Protea in Israel!)
Doris looked down. I was sitting in the front row, and she recognised me – she and I had been at university together. Later she was to marry Eliahu Lankin, who became Israeli ambassador to South Africa. Doris asked other women, but they all declined, so she said “Mary Katz” will do it.
“But I don’t know anyone,” I said, “I only arrived three weeks ago.”
Someone yelled out, “It’s better to collect money from people you don’t know.”
Then it hit me – I had made a commitment and here it was.
“Yes,” I said, “I’ll do it!”
I have been a campaign collector ever since. They made me vice-chairman and the following year, 1951, chairman, and I held that position until we left Kimberley for Cape Town four years later.
We came to Kenilworth and I joined the Kenilworth Bnoth Zion Association. I was asked to join the executive of both Bnoth Zion Association and the Union of Jewish Women, but refused both. In the Kenilworth branch, the campaign convener left for Ottawa so I took over and the following year became chairman as well, a position I held for practically the whole time until the Kenilworth branch closed.
As there were originally a lot of Southern Suburbs branches we formed a Southern Suburbs committee and Barbara Sandler and I were co-chairmen – we even ran our own Yom Tov market – held in the Claremont Civic Centre. I was repeatedly asked to join the executive but repeatedly refused until I was pressed by Sylvia Winnikow (her aunt was married to my uncle) and gave in. I have remained on ever since.
I used to be in charge of the clothing drive and after we stopped sending the clothing to Israel we ran a shop. When we discovered our sales ladies were helping themselves, we gave the shop up. I put up rails in a spare room and would sell to dealers who would come to my house,
For our AGMs we would find homes in the Southern Suburbs with large gardens and hold “Garden Parties.” Being in the Southern Suburbs, it fell to my lot to organise these parties – it was a big headache.1 It meant finding the necessary homes, hiring a bus to transport the people from Sea Point, hiring tables, chairs, crockery, urns, sun umbrellas – all had to be counted before and afterwards. Extra power sometimes had to be laid on for the urn.
Different branches would be responsible for the catering and serving. My branch made the sandwiches. The day before they would come to my house and we would set up a production line to make sandwiches for two to three hundred people. I was known as the Sandwich Queen. In those days pre-sliced bread was not available so it was my husband’s job to slice twenty loaves of bread the night before. I would get up early in the morning and take my maid and gardener along to wipe the dew or rain off the chairs.
In 1981 rain forced us to move at a moment’s notice to the Claremont Civic Centre. In 1983 Myra Osrin phoned the night before the AGM to tell me that rain was forecasted for the following day and I had to cancel the idea of holding a function in a garden. Panic – but Rabbi Hoffman of the Wynberg Temple Israel agreed to let us go there and I roped in my grandchildren to help to move everything. The next morning we woke to a beautiful hot sunny day – indoors we did not need the hired sun umbrellas.
Twice we held the garden party in the home of Phyllis Sachar. She recalled that 700 women attended the garden party in her home in 1970 because they had just moved into their new home and everyone came because they wanted to see what it looked like. The next time was in 1987 as they were moving to Israel. After the garden party they held a lunch for the Country Communities who had their AGM. As they finished each course, the dishes were washed and sent downstairs to the packers for shipping to Israel.
Then the hire of the bus became too expensive. By that time hiring costs had become so high that garden parties had become impractical – not to speak of the vagaries of Cape Town weather, so we moved to the Albow Centre which meant no problems with the weather and I could relax! There everything was accessible and available.
In 1967, we were all anxiously anticipating trouble because Egypt was behaving badly and closed the Straits of Tiran.2 We decided to collect more funds and have a bumper fete – we went around collecting from everyone and asking them to give something of value. We went to one woman’s house and asked her for something valuable to sell. She looked around and said – ‘OK – take that Persian carpet.’ So we did.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row] A Bnoth Zion fete, circa 1960. From left: Renne Rakin, Maisie East, Mary Schrire Sylvia Smaller-Winnokur was in the chair when the war began. “It seemed my fate to be chairman during the crises of both the Suez Campaign in 1956 and the Six Day War of June 1967. The Israeli Cavalcade was our response to Israel’s thrilling achievement on the field of battle. The entire Jewish community was brought together in a statement of unity and commitment rarely experienced before. My phone used to ring until all hours of the day and night with people offering ‘to do something to help’. Although all offers were graciously accepted, I couldn’t help feeling that we shouldn’t need wars and crises to “want to do something to help”. The lessons of history have been wasted on us if we need disasters to stir us into action. The corridors of Zeeland House, where our offices were, were choked by volunteers wanting to join the Israeli Army but the speed and success of Israel’s remarkable forces left most of the volunteers frustrated. They weren’t needed. Israel did however need volunteers to help rebuild the disturbed economy and to help with the agricultural needs of the kibbutzim and moshavim whose men were retained in the Army for nine months after the war ended. Only those volunteers who were able to offer a minimum of six months service were subsequently considered and many remained as olim.We were deluged with contributions of goods and valuables of a quality and quantity never offered before. In order to do full justice to what was showered upon us, we sat around the clock with experts in such fields as paintings, sculpture, silverware, antiques, jewellery, furs, stamps and coins. The Israel Cavalcade itself was a happening and the outpouring of emotion, support for Israel and real hard work by our army of workers has never before or since been equalled or excelled.”3 At that time the old station concourse was going to be demolished and we heard that another charity organisation was going to use it for their annual fete so we decided to do the same. We asked them if they would leave all their decorations up so that we could use it the following day. The Jewish convenor said he would only do so if we paid him a considerable amount of money. We explained that we were trying to collect money, not spend it. “If you don’t pay me I shall tear them down,” he said – and he did. When we arrived the next morning to set up the fete we found the decorations hanging in shreds. It looked dreadful. We asked Robert Krafchik the caterer for advice and he tidied it up for us without charging and made the place look lovely at a moment’s notice. Bella Silverman recalled4 that ‘It was fantastic because the station was totally empty – we had the shell of the station and we put out wonderful stalls. I had to fetch Mary Marcus (Raymond Ackerman’s mother) – she had a stall and made doughnuts the whole day. Everyone was helping.” Esther Rabie5 from the Bishopscourt branch went to Percy Sieff, the actor, and asked him to do a show for us. He agreed and organised the whole thing for us, called The Best of the Big Shows with Jerry Bosman. We held it in the Alhambra. It had two and a half to three thousand seats, but somehow we managed to sell the tickets. When it came to the Yom Kippur War the Bnoth Zion decided to hold a sacrifice sale at the Temple Israel hall assisted by the Union of Jewish Women and Kenny Finberg agreed to be the auctioneer. The Jewish community was approached to donate objects of value and they responded with open hearts – we thought we would never sell some of the things that were handed in. We decided to ask people for their campaign money in advance, even asking, in view of the war, if they would agree to double up. Mrs X was childless and lived in a smart flat beautifully decorated with antiques, and had a very spoilt poodle – she used to ask my husband to look at its eyes. She always gave a minimal amount. When I asked her if she would double up, she said to me, “Mary, are you trying to bankrupt me?” Her husband who was standing in the doorway said, “Give Mary what she wants.” She turned on him, “This is women’s business. Just get out.” She did not increase, but her personal circumstances were not my business. When Mr X let me out of the front door, he said, “It is hard asking for money, isn’t it, Mary?” Twenty years later my daughter phoned me on the First of April to say that someone had told her that a lawyer was trying to find “the woman who runs a charity group virtually single handed.” “Isn’t that your Mother? Phone the lawyer”, the man had said. Gwynne thought it was a practical joke but suggested that I phone just to be on the safe side. I said to the lawyer: “I know it is April Fools’ Day, but I have been asked to phone you.” He told me that I had been left a large sum of money for my ‘charity’. I told him I would only believe him when I saw the cheque. When it arrived I really could not believe my eyes – it was for a very large sum of money indeed, and it came from the estate of Mr X, his wife having died before him. The next day I went to our Bnoth Zion Association meeting waving the cheque. Our branch, Kenilworth, had decided we wanted this money to go to a specific project. The home in Neve Amiel in the Jezreel valley which we support needed a dental clinic, so today there is a clinic with a plaque saying that it was erected by the Kenilworth branch of the Cape Town Bnoth Zion Association through the generous donation of Mr X. I think he expected a similar story, but I added that I was that stupid old lady, and the money was not for a charity, it was for Israel and if he went to Neve Amiel he would be able to see his uncle’s name memorialised on a plaque in a dental clinic which treats disadvantaged children from the slums of Tel Aviv, from Ethiopia and from Russia. He turned the colour of the borsht.
Some years later I was at a dinner party where the conversation was about ingratitude. One man told the story of his childless uncle to whom he used to give lifts and when he died, what did the old man do? He left his money to “a stupid old lady for her stupid charity”. I turned to him and said “I feel sorry for you. I know exactly how you feel.”NOTES
