From 1795 to 1918, Lithuania was part of the Russian Empire. After that, it became independent until 1940. From the 1880s onwards, many Jewish people, including my father’s parents, left Lithuania to settle in what is now South Africa. This is relatively well-known. But what they left behind them in Europe is not as well recorded. However, while researching my family’s histories, I came across a few accounts of life in the places from which they moved. In this essay, I will share with you what I have found out.
Carl Joubert, who was, if not Jewish by birth[1], certainly sympathetic to Jews. He wrote this in 1905, after having lived for nine years in the Russian Empire:
“Has the world forgotten the massacres in Kieff in 1880, 1881, and 1882 …or in Kischinieff and Gomel in 1903? In Kieff the houses of Jews were fired and pillaged. The children were torn from their mother’s breasts and dashed to pieces before their eyes. Four hundred souls were destroyed in two days. … Then at the massacre at Kischinieff last year the young Jewish girls were outraged before the eyes of their parents. One frantic woman tore herself from her captors and rushed to her daughter’s rescue, but a blow from the butt of a soldier’s rifle scattered her brains. The Pristav and the Politzmaister, with police and soldiery, looked on at the slaughter.[2]”
Apart from the places mentioned by Joubert, which are in Ukraine and Belarus,, there was also much antisemitic activity in Lithuania. This, alone, must have influenced Jewish people to think about leaving Lithuania.
Most Lithuanian Jews (‘Litvaks’) arrived in South Africa from about 1880 onwards. A few Lithuanian Jews may have arrived earlier, but as Saron and Hotz wrote in their book The Jews in South Africa:
“Louis Herrman … asserts that before 1880 there were barely half a dozen Yiddish-speaking Jews to be found in ‘such records as there are of Jewish communal activity’. He adds that before 1870 ‘not one is to be found’. It can safely be accepted however, that there were a number, though they probably escaped notice because the Yiddish-speaking Jew of the time was not likely to take an active part in the affairs of the anglicized congregations. Moreover, strange as it may seem, formal affiliation to congregations was not a part of his tradition. The Lithuanian synagogue did not have a formal system of membership. Again, those who had stopped in England on their way to South Africa often adopted English-sounding names and were, therefore, not recognised as Yiddish-speaking.”
All my father’s ancestors, including his parents, were ‘Litvaks’, born in Lithuania. I have never visited Lithuania or, for that matter, any other parts of the Pale of Settlement. My impression of it, derived from what little I have read, is that it was not a wonderful place to live for Jews or anyone else. Romantic images of it conjured up in films like Yentl and Fiddler on the Roof are probably almost completely fanciful. The few books I have read written by Isaac Bashevis Singer and by Esther Kreitman do not paint an agreeable picture of it. I can well understand why so many people were happy to leave it when they were able. But what was the place like?
The following description from Heshel’s Kingdom by Dan Jacobson, a South African born novelist who revisited his Litvak ancestor’s homeland, gives an idea of the landscape which my father’s ancestors populated:
“Ploughed fields turned into pasture lands, pastures into woods, woods into water, water into tussocky heaths and marshes … There were no mountains; hardly any hills. Dirt roads stretched between one cluster of steep-roofed habitations and the next.”
Mike Braude (1910 – 1985), my father’s first cousin once removed, wrote about his birthplace Girtegolla[3] in Lithuania in his autobiographical work The First 30 Odd Years. Although Girtegolla was not Plunge or Telsiai, places from which my father’s family hailed, Mike’s descriptions give an idea of what these little places with large Jewish populations might have been like. He wrote:
“A wavering zig-zag line of business establishments loosely connected the two impressive ends of the square. There were the saloon, feedstore, and inn. There were the dry goods emporium, blacksmith’s shop and apothecary. The same side of the square also accommodated the half dozen or so residences of the local aristocracy, such as it was. All the others, the artisans, peddlars, the poor, lived on the few unpaved streets that bracketed the square in such a way to suggest that the surveyor who laid them out had a severe drinking problem. A rough count may have produced some eighty, ninety, such homes, with one or two rooms each, lean-tos and outhouses, with backyards that trailed off eventually to merge into the corn and wheat fields of adjacent farms”
Usually, Braude continued, Girtegolla had:
“… all the animation of a well-managed cemetery. My eyes might follow the slow progress of an occasional peasant cart as it trundled and creaked on its lumbering passage through town, pausing perhaps for a moment or two at the apothecary for spirits of camphor, or at the saloon for the comfort of spirits. My attention might shift to someone on foot who had the effrontery to invade what would have otherwise remained an almost perfect still life. … I might have concentrated on the exact center of the town where, under the cooling shadow of a huge elm tree, the bulk of the town’s canine population was gathered in more or less solemn assembly, no doubt discussing the increasingly grim prospects of the world going to the men.”[4]
Braude continues his description of his hometown by describing how:
“Market days produced an incredible change in the scene. The square underwent a complete transformation. It became a stage with the curtain rising on a gay, colourful pageant, alive with the teeming presence of vendors and customers bargaining over open cases of bright gingham shawls, glistening metal trinkets, sturdy iron cookware. Farm wagons loaded high with redolent baskets of apples, carrots and onions, attracted with magnetic force crowds of peasants, soldiers, and townspeople, all milling around and jostling one another in a confused babble of barter and trade.”
These excerpts help me to visualise village life in Lithuania before WW1. Mike, who was a small child then, remembered it when he wrote his book in the 1970s from the comfort of his home in the USA.
Several extracts from an un-published memoir (dated 1967) by my father’s grand-uncle Elias Chaim Halperin (1889-1977) illustrate an aspect of Jewish life that many Litvaks recall fondly, namely scholarship – studying , discussing, interpreting, and analysing Jewish religious texts. He wrote:
“My Uncle Chaim sat and studied and my aunt made a living.”
Also:
“My grandfather sat and studied all day and my grandmother had a store and ‘made a living’.”
Lest that makes a poor impression, it would only be fair for me to quote the sentence that follows:
“In addition to studying, my grandfather devoted himself to the sick of the shtetl[5]. It is told that one year when there was an outbreak of cholera in the shtetl, my grandfather didn’t go to shul[6] but went to visit the sick to bring them food and medicine.”
Furthermore:
“My father spent his days studying in the yeshivas[7]. They made a living from an inn which was left to them by my mother’s father, my grandfather. My father spent all year studying at yeshivas outside of Telz but he came home for all of the holidays.”
These extracts reveal what many Jewish men did – devote themselves to religion – in Lithuania while their womenfolk toiled to earn a living.
Halperin’s memoir includes the following:
“My grandparents had four sons. The oldest was Rafael Hirsh. He was a carpenter and he had many children. From what I hear, some of his children were in Baltimore under the name of Hirshon. The second son was my father, Meyer. The third was called Chaim and the fourth was my uncle who lives here (in America).
Because of the military service laws of the time, one of the brothers went by the name Hirshon, two other brothers by the name of Halperin (and the third by the name of Harrison).”
The surname changes described above were to mislead the Russian officials into thinking that the younger brothers of Rafael Hirsh were not eligible for service because they were all ‘first born’ (from different families) rather than siblings (from the same family). First born Jewish boys were exempted from military service in the Russian Army, but the younger ones were not – and they had to serve for 25 years[8]. Evidently, this ruse worked.
It should be evident that there were plenty of reasons – persecution, economic, military – for Jews wanting to leave Lithuania. Many like Elias Chaim Halperin and Bill Braude went to the USA, but others – a significantly large number – chose to head for South Africa. By the late 1880s, when Litvaks began arriving in South Africa, diamonds and gold had already been discovered, and back home there were many pogroms. A few Jews arrived to prospect for these treasures but most of them came to enjoy the economic opportunities offered by South Africa’s recently found wealth. As family members settled in South Africa, others followed in their wake. Other Litvak Jews were attracted to the country by articles that they read about it in newspapers[9] such as Hamelitz – a Hebrew daily published in the Russian Empire.
The benefits of migrating to South Africa became well-known to those in the homeland, but reaching the place was far often from being an easy ride. Not only were there the physical hardships of travel and difficulties related to bureaucracy, but there were also the surprises that the migrants encountered as they emerged from a materially backward part of Europe into the modernised world beyond it. Mike Braude wrote:
“… my first encounter with a flushing toilet in a Mazhaik[10] hotel was … serenely reflective. … In the palaces of oriental caliphs the worthy pulls a cord and instantly a troupe of dancing girls emerges from behind damask curtains to regale and entertain their master. In the villas of wealthy Europeans and middle income Americans a cord is pulled and a valet materializes with a silver tray bearing a decanter of brandy, a siphon of soda and a baccarat tumbler … In Mazhaik one pulls a cord and water comes rushing from a pipe into a porcelain basin.”
Rosie Kaplan, whom we met in 2003 at Tulbagh, where my father’s father had a general store until the early 1930s, described to the how her elder sister Goldie discovered the delights of electricity when she spent a night in London on her way from Minsk to South Africa during WW1. She told me[11] that her father:
“… was Charles Kaplan. He came to South Africa from the Russian city of Minsk. He left his pregnant wife, Sara, behind in Minsk. She followed him to South Africa 6 years later with Rosie’s elder sister Goldie who was born in 1912 in Minsk. They got stuck in Warsaw for a long time during the First World War. At night they would be locked into the ghetto in Warsaw. She had to sell all her gold jewellery to buy a false passport to get them to London. On arrival in London, they were put up in the Poor Jews’ Shelter[12]. Goldie had never seen electric lights and spent all of her first night there playing with the switch!”
Apart from demonstrating the new experiences that Goldie had after leaving Minsk, this illustrates some of the hardships experienced during the journey.
My father’s parents and grandparents were amongst the multitude who made the difficult journey from hostile Lithuania to South Africa. Dad’s maternal grandfather, Joseph Halperin (1870 – 1949) was born in the Lithuanian town of Telsiai (‘Telz’). His wife Dvora was born in Plunge (‘Plungyan’)[13] three years before him. They were married in Plunge on 5 April 1891. Joseph arrived in the Cape Colony in 1897, aged 27. Their future son-in-law, my father’s father Solomon Yamey, arrived in South Africa in 1900 from Lithuania. His story and those of his in-laws provide a good illustration of the lives of Litvak immigrants after they arrived in the Cape. One day, I will relate the story of their lives in South Africa.
Writing about the difficulties and hardships faced by the Litvaks migrating to South Africa and elsewhere reminded me of the waves of migrants trying to enter Europe from places in Africa and Asia. Unlike my father’s ancestors and their fellow Litvaks, who were welcomed in their new homes – at least until the 1930s in South Africa, only a small handful of today’s migrants are made welcome after their usually arduous journeys to Europe.
[1] He died in 1906. Albert M. Hyamson wrote in the 23 February 1906 issue of the Jewish Chronicle that Carl Joubert, whose father’s surname was Grose, had no Jewish ancestry. He was most probably a Jewish proselyte, having been converted by a Rabbi in Warsaw. [From: http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/authors.php?auid=56940, accessed 19th April, 2015]
[2] See: The Truth about the Tsar and the Present State of Russia, by C Joubert, publ. by J.B. Lippincott Co, Philadelphia: 1905.
[3] Now known as ‘Girkalnis’.
[4] This description reminded me of what one of my uncles told me about the outer suburb of the Australian city of Perth, where one of his children lives. He told me that the most exciting thing that happened there was when the one car of the day drove past the house.
[5] Village or small town
[6] Schul = synagogue
[7] Jewish educational establishment
[8] https://encyclopedia.yivo.org/article/244
[9] “By 1884 a correspondent from the little Lithuanian town of Neustadt-Sugind…, writing to the Hebrew newspaper Hamelitz, was able to report that extensive emigration to South Africa was taking place from the towns and villages of Lithuania. He described how 2 000 people had left a dozen nearby towns for England and America, and ‘the majority went to South Africa’ … and that ‘majority had prospered in their affairs and become wealthy and respected merchants’.” The correspondent was Dov Baer Hoffmann from Lithuania. In 1889, he arrived in South Africa, and a year later began the first Yiddish weekly in the country, Der Afrikaner Israelit.
[10] Mažeikiai, a city in northwestern Lithuania.
[11] I recorded this in my travel diary a couple of hours after I met Rosie in Tulbagh in 2003.
[12] “The shelter was founded in 1885 as the Poor Jews’ Temporary Shelter to deal with the large number of Jewish immigrants arriving in London’s East End from Eastern Europe.” (http://www.jewishmuseum.org.uk/jb-Jews-Temporary-Shelter-deed-box, accessed 31st May, 2015). See also: http://www.jewisheastend.com/shelter.html (I accessed this on 31st May, 2015).
[13] Plunge’s Jewish community was one of the earliest in Lithuania. Its cemetery contains stones dating back to the 16th century. In 1897, 55% of the town’s population were Jewish (See: Lithuanian Jewish Communities by N Schoenburg & S Schoenburg, publ. by Jason Aronson, Northvale, New Jersey: 1996).
