Edelstein

Chapter 107 –DR MELVILLE EDELSTEIN- SOCIAL WORKER

Dr Melville Leonard Edelstein (1919 - 16 June 1976) was born to Nachum and Rose Edelstein in King William's Town. His Litvak parents had first travelled to the UK and then Cape Town in 1896 before joining the masses of "Boere-Jode" [Afrikaner or farmer Jews] where his parents had settled and Nachum started and ran a successful business.

Dr. Edelstein was a sociologist and respected academic and had devoted his efforts to humanitarian and social welfare projects in Soweto. Serving as Deputy Chief Welfare Officer, Dr Edelstein instituted many projects aimed at assisting youth, disabled, poor and marginalized communities within Soweto, where he worked for some 18 years. While employed as a social worker for the Welfare Section of the Non-European Affairs Department, which fell under the City of Johannesburg, he showed great concern for the people of Soweto, where he served for 18 years.

Dr Edelstein was one of only two white men who died in the Soweto Uprising of 16 June 1976. He was stoned to death by a mob who did not know the work he did in the community of Soweto.

Earlier on the fateful morning, he greeted students as they passed his offices on Mputhi Street. However once the shock of the police shooting spread through their ranks, high spirits turned to anger, and Dr Edelstein was killed for being a white official in the wrong place at the wrong time. That morning, Dr Edelstein was hosting the official opening for a branch of his Sheltered Workshop Programme in Orlando East, designed to provide employment for disabled people.

When news of the student protests reached the project, the ceremony was brought to a hurried end as dignitaries and workers were ferried out of the township. Concerned about the safety of a woman colleague, - Pierette Jacques, back at the Youth Centre in Youth Centre in Jabavu – Dr Edelstein drove through crowds of gathering students to get to her office. Edelstein then rushed through the offices, instructing staff to leave immediately. By the time he emerged from his office later that morning, the political temperature had been raised by deadly police shootings in the township. Edelstein walked straight into an enraged crowd of students, and in the heat of the moment, following the shock of the killing of schoolchildren by the police, he was stoned to death.

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Arcadia Connection

Melville Edelstein was on “the after care committee” of Arcadia and in the late 1960s and early 1970s visited the Ex Arc Children who had recently left the Arc on Sunday mornings (about once every two or three months) to see how they were progressing.

He did not always get a good reception at around 9:30 am when he turned up unexpectedly to visit us. Sometimes we had had a late night or some boys thought “the Arc was interfering in our lives” and they

M L Edelstein

did not open the door. Other times we would be away for the day or weekend on the Vaal River with Les Durbach and family.

I remember several of his visits where he tried to tactfully in his quiet manner find out how we were and what we were doing. Sometimes I enjoyed his visits but sometimes his questions were cutting and I responded accordingly. Once I remember him explaining at length to me using statistics that if a person were richer they would have a better chance of attracting the opposite sex.

On another occasion when he visited us at the boys’ hostel in Raedene he tried to ride on Ronny Schreeuwer’s motor bike and managed to damage it as it was too powerful and too responsive.

Besides being on the aftercare committee of Arcadia in 1968 Melville formed the Club Hatikva which was a social club for ex-Arcadians and others of the Jewish Community to help them assimilate into broader society. by David Solly Sandler

I recall Melville visiting us at the Birt Street house doing aftercare. One Sunday he loaded Graham and I into his car and drove us into town and pointed out some hobos sitting on a pavement. He turned to us and said, very seriously: "Do you both want to become like those guys?". We replied simultaneously: " NO !!!! ". Reality check for us both.

After the Birt Street house closed down he continued to visit me when I was boarding with an elderly couple in Brenthurst Court, Killarney. Then he was murdered and I was on my own, receiving no further aftercare.

So, from being in the Arc with 60 brothers and sisters, to Birt Street with six brothers, to being on my own in Killarney! Scary and lonely indeed! Max Goldman

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(The next page is courtesy Max Goldman)

Forty years after Meville Edelstein’s death, on 16 June 2016, a memorial was unveiled in his honour in Soweto and his grandson had his barmitzvah in Soweto

On Youth Day this year, one of South African Jewry’s most unusual, as well as symbolic and emotionally charged barmitzvah ceremonies took place in Soweto’s Western Jabavu suburb.

The Shacharit service was held at the site where Dr Melville Edelstein became one of the first victims of the 1976 Soweto Uprising when he was attacked and fatally injured by enraged protesters. Forty years to the day since the grandfather he never knew lost his life, 13- year-old Levy Rosenthal read the day’s Torah portion.

With him were family, friends and community members, including rabbis, SA Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) representatives and Jewish day school prefects. Prior to the service, a memorial plaque to Edelstein was unveiled by his widow, Rhona, daughters Shana Rosenthal and Janet Goldblatt, Minister Jeff Radebe and Gauteng Premier David Makhura.

That Melville Edelstein was killed because he was a white man in the wrong place at the wrong time, is one of the great ironies of the Soweto Uprising. As chief welfare officer of the (then) West Rand Administration Board, his dedication to bettering the lot of Sowetans, was well known and appreciated in the wider community.

Through his research work as sociologist, he had also long warned about rising levels of black anger over the regime’s apartheid policies, most notably in his 1971 MA thesis on opinions and attitudes among matric pupils in Soweto.

Executive Mayor Parks Tau at the Youth Day ceremony, described Edelstein as “a peace loving man who dedicated his life to the service of the poor in the then dusty township streets of South Africa”.

He went on to quote the famed press photographer Peter Magubane, who on finding the fatally injured Edelstein after the attack said: “If they had known who

he was this never would have happened. Not at all. He was part of the community.”

Through the SAJBD, 20 King David Linksfield and Yeshiva College prefects were among the Jewish community representatives taking part in the Youth Day commemorative events in Soweto.

S A Jewish Report Staff Reporter June 22, 2016

Rhona, Shana. Janet

Barmy boy Levi Rosenthal and his father (Shana's husband)

L to R: Mayor Parks Tau (sunglasses), Rhona, Janet, Vivienne (Melville's daughter from first marriage), Shana, Back (L to R): Jeff Radebe (Minister in the Presidency), David Makhura (Premier of Gauteng)

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COMPILED BY DAVID SANDLER
EMAIL sedsand@ca.com.au