Kimberley, South Africa

Klewansky, Theo

I was born in Kimberley in 1939 as my mother returned to her family – the Blumenthals – to give birth. We left Kimberley in that same year 1939 – when I was five months old, because my father got a job as head of the cheder in Germiston. I studied Engineering at Wits and live in Florida. This family history is from me with considerable contributions regarding our former life in the Lithuanian shtetelach of Radvilishik and Zagare from my cousin Myrna Gower

My Father Jack (Yechiel) Klewansky, was born in December 1903 in Radvilishik, Lithuania. He went to South Africa aged 20 in 1924. He was brought out by his older half-brother Max Klewansky b 1890 who was 37 when he bought out his siblings except the youngest half-sister, who perished in Radvilishik with my grandmother during WW2.   (Here is a typical wooden house in Radvilishik, taken by my cousin Myrna Gower on a visit to Lithuania in June 2017.)