Kimberley, South Africa
Kimberley ExPats Newsletter no 20
25 January 2019
Compiled by Geraldine Auerbach MBE, London
In this issue we look at
1. Hatches, Matches and Dispatches
2. New Family entries, which if not already on the website, will be there soon: (Diamond, Hecht, Moross; Senderovitz Aaron and Raphael and others)
3. Kimberley Cemeteries – special offer for pictures of family graves
4. Kimberley Synagogue and its origins – and plans for the future?
Hatches Matches and Dispatches
We have some good news and some sad news in this issue.
First of all, ‘Hatches’, I am pleased to say that Jeff and Pamela Hammerschlag are proud grandparents of a son born to Gabi and David Najar in London in December. Jeff is the son of Joan Gershowitz of the famous ‘Frank Family in Kimberley’ so expertly written about by ‘Bobba Sheila Grant’. You can see it in ‘Families’ under ‘Grant’. Jeff’s parents, Joan and Dennis Hammerschlag’s photo is also on the wedding gallery in Volume 1. There may be many other hatches that I am not aware of – but if you send me information, I can include it in our Newsletters.
Now ‘Matches’: If you subscribe to the Kimberley shul Facebook group, you will have seen Barney Horwitz’s notice that his dear daughter Ida has got engaged to her long-time partner Zach Lieberman of Johannesburg. This means a wonderful nuptial celebration in the near-future in the beautiful synagogue. The first wedding in the Memorial Road synagogue was in January 1903, soon after it had opened when Aaron Rauff married Selina Satisofsky. The last one was apparently in 1989, 30 years ago. I don’t know whose wedding this was.
You can read about when Cecil was Mayor of Kimberley and about their farms, which include many San people’s engravings and the development of the Premier Meat Supply here
https://kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/kimberley/Sussman_Cecil.html
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Kimberley Wedding Registers
As you know we have an ever-expanding Wedding Gallery on the website – of pictures that ex-pats have sent us of their weddings – mostly of groups on the steps outside the synagogue. This gives a great insight into members of the community at their happiest hours.
Here you will recognise Shirley Isaacs and David Allen’s wedding in 1958. It has long been my ambition to have every wedding in the Kimberley shul documented on the website in some way.
I was concerned when Barney said he came across by chance a wedding register from the 1920s, lying on a shelf under the tahara robes. This just goes to show how important it is to have this information digitized and safely stored on the Kimberley Jewish Community website.
I was delighted to hear that Lisette Datnow in visiting Kimberley recently, was able to access the wedding registers. She says: I typed up the marriage records from 1924 to 1930 and from 1956 to 1971. These records besides having the full names and dates of the marriage, have country of birth, either date of birth or age at the time of the marriage, profession of the people getting married and address at the time of the marriage. It was quite emotional as there are the signatures of the couple and each couple has a story. This information would be very informative for your genealogical research and assist the once thriving Griqualand West Hebrew Congregation.
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Surnames found in these records include:
I am hoping that Barney and Lisette will soon pass those details on to me, however, in the meantime, if you want a copy or details of your own – or your family’s marriage that took place in Kimberley (and sometimes near Kimberley) please contact Lisette at arcade@yebo.co.za
For a donation of your choice, towards the upkeep of the Kimberley Shul she and Barney Horwitz would be happy to assist.
This beautiful Synagogue is 116 years old. It was opened on 14 September 1902. It has held services continually until today, even though the community has dwindled.
You just need to make a bank transfer of whatever you feel is appropriate to the synagogue account. Use your name and M Reg as reference. The synagogue banking details are:
Griqualand West Hebrew Congregation
Standard Bank : Branch 051001
Account 040054446
Swift Code SBZAZAJJ
When you tell Lisette at arcade@yebo.co.za that you have paid, she will send you the information.
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Ex-Pats who have passed away
Sadly, last year, Natalie’s sister Estella Clingman, lost her husband Norman. Stella was one of our first correspondents with her story about a growing up in Kimberley and her exploits at GHS with Miss (Slimy) Southern. Stella and Norman’s was also the first wedding picture on our Gallery of . Hopefully Stella, as well as their Australian son Jeffrey and children and grandchildren will all join Natalie and Cecil’s in Cape Town in March to celebrate 70 years of happy marriage.
There were other losses to Kimberley families that I am sad to report. Marilyn Shalkoff sister of Sheila Grant and Colin Frank, passed away last month (December 2918.) Marilyn was widowed and had three sons. She lived in Cape Town. I hope Sheila will write something about Marilyn for the next Newsletter.
I have just heard that my cousin Lola Waks (nee Hendler) passed away on 9 January 2019. She was the daughter of Hilda and Nate Hendler, born about 1933. She grew up and married Simmon Waks in Kimberley and went to live in Carletonville. She and Sim had 3 daughters, Karilyn, Jennifer and Megan.
Another sad loss is Sandra Finkelstein (nee Diamond). Sandra was ill in the end and died last November (2018) in Melbourne. (You can see pictures of Sandy as a child in Habonim in about 1955, and as a teenager at the matric dance 1963, with Alan Huth, a boarder at KHS, near the end of the Kimberley youth pages here https://kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/kimberley/News_15.html Her brother David Diamond in Cape Town, and Sandy’s husband Peter Finkelstein in Melbourne, have put together this short tribute, and sent one of their favourite pictures of Sandy in recent times.
Sandra Finkelstein (nee Diamond)
She passed away on the 20 th November 2018 after illness.
She will be remembered with love as a wonderful sister, wife, mother and grandmother.
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New Family Entries (which if not up already, will be posted soon)
It’s been exciting to see how Kimberley people are discovering or hearing about our website and through contacting us, they are re-connecting with previous friends and relatives. When we have uploaded the new ones, we will have over 80 family entries on the website.
Diamond Family: I have been able to piece together, with the help of their niece, Shirley Talerman in London, a story about the whole Diamond family of Kimberley two sisters (one being Shirley’s mother, who lived in Johannesburg) the other Ray Diamond, who in the early days, kept house for her four brothers Saul (Solly), Barney, Aaron (Beady) and Ivan Diamond. You will soon be able to read in the ‘family’s’ section to see what they got up to in Kimberley, eg Solly supplying horses for the Royal Family’s visit to South Africa in 1947.
Harry Hecht, who in celebrating, in Melbourne Australia, the anniversary of his barmitzvah in the Kimberley shul in 1956 with Rabbi Bloch, was steered to our site by his Rabbi. He has now re-connected with Marion Lewis,(nee Schild) also a part of the small German Jewish community who managed to escape the Holocaust to the safety of Kimberley. Harry was also thrilled to read about Dr Solly Perel from Mike Dalrymple’s reminiscences on the website. And he says, ‘Marshall Hotz may be interested to know that I had his old Latin textbook from school in which he wrote something to the effect of "in memory of Marshall Hotz who died at the sight of the matric Latin paper!” I'm pleased to know he is alive and well.
Harry has sent us a picture of a ‘do’ in the Communal Hall in 1948 to celebrate the Founding of the State of Israel. I wonder whom you can spot in the picture which will be on his family page. He says: ‘At the 1st table 2nd on left facing the camera is a picture of Marion Lewis's mother and at the 2nd table facing the camera 1st 2nd and 3rd from the right are my parents and grandmother. I'm sure you'll recognise a lot of others’.
We have also been contacted by Shirley Olsfanger, from Israel, the granddaughter of Rev Joseph Zvi Moross who was (Barney Horwitz, Chairman of the Congregation, confirms) a Minister of the Kimberley Hebrew Congregation, also a Hebrew Teacher and Shochet, sometime in the period between the 1920s and 1940s. Shirley has written information about the Moross family including her Aunty, Miss Nina Moross, who taught generations of primary schoolchildren and was affectionately known as (Mrs) Chips. Nina died in 1995 and is buried in Kimberley.
Jane Beth Cantor contacted me searching for information of her Grandfather Aaron Senderovitz who settled in Taung. She has since been in touch with the Jocum and Bayer families who also settled in that area. I have found out that there was an alluvial diamond digging proclaimed there – which was in a ‘native reserve’ which made complications. The Jewish families had trading stores and provided other services in the area serving the diamond diggers. You will be able to read about the Jewish families in Taung under Senderovitz, Aaron
There is also another Senderovitz story. This is Raphael Senderovitz, (no relation as far as we know) who was a very successful and wealthy businessman in Kimberley in the early years of the 20 th century. This story is already up on the website with pictures and documentation under the name of Robins, Gwynne (nee Schrire) – it’s her great-grandfather! We are now adding a link to the Raphael Senderovitz story under his own name, and also a link for his grandson, Louis Schrire (Gwynne’s father) to this story, so it will be easier to connect and find.
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I have also put together a story about Anna Cvi (now Teper) and she writes about her family’s faith in my father, Dr Noel Kretzmar.
Several people, I am delighted to see, have uploaded their own family history and stories directly via the ‘contact page’ on the website. In this way we welcome Cherille Berman (nee Brown, sister of Delia Benn,) also Marc Sacks grandson of Julius Sacks (the brother of Bertha Sacks who married Max Blumenthal grandparents of Trevor Toube and Daphne Gillis) and Zafarine (known as ‘Girlie’) daughter of the revered Rev Harris Isaacs. Marc’s children are in North America, and he is a coffee producer in Rwanda! Kimberley-ites do get around!
And just before going to press I received a surprise letter from Bernard Werner, son of Rabbi Werner who was our second longest serving rabbi from 1957 to 1970. Bernard and his sisters grew up as part of the Kimberley community. It was lovely to hear from him (several of you have been asking about Bernard) and read his tribute to his father. We will soon post his letter along with Leon Chonin’s tribute to Rabbi Werner on the Werner family page. I also found that Delia Benn had sent me the picture below of the first ever Kimberley Batmitzvah group – a ceremony that the Werners introduced in 1959 (or so she thought).
Batmitzvah group 1959: Pearly Goldenbaum, Shelley Hotz, Delia Brown, Jose Shapiro, Madeline Hammer, Sharon Werner, Brenda Frank in the foyer of the Kimberley Shul.
Kimberley Cemeteries – pictures of your family graves.
Sadly, most of the people we, as Ex-Pats, know, are resting in the Kimberley cemeteries. Creating a ‘virtual cemetery’ was one of the driving forces in making the website in the first place. How amazing was it then, to find that Jono David (a British
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American who had been living in Japan) had visited Kimberley, met with Barney Horwitz and others and had carefully photographed all the buildings and graves in both the old and the new cemeteries!
When I contacted him, he was most accommodating in allowing us to link to the Kimberley cemetery galleries he has, as part of his Jewish cultural heritage site on the internet. How exciting then was it when I actually met Jono at Limmud in Birmingham last December. He has now come to the UK.
If you would like to have a clear picture of your family grave (without his watermark all over the names), Jono has offered he will gladly supply a digital format picture at a LARGE SIZE resolution/dimensions for personal use only, but with a specific added permission to use it on the Kimberley Jewish Community ‘Family page’ for £18. If you would like additional images, he would charge just £15 for additional photos ordered by the same person at the same time. This is a very fair offer for his effort and professionalism, and we are lucky indeed to have this opportunity. I hope you will take advantage of his offer. (If you feel moved to make a similar donation to the Kimberley community to help them care for the cemeteries in the exemplary way they do – this will be invaluable and very welcome.)
To find the pictures you want, you will have to carefully scroll through the images on his gallery and jot down the numbers of the pictures you need. You can peruse them here and order directly from his website:
http://jewishphotolibrary.smugmug.com/AFRICA/AFRICASouth/SOUTHAFRICA/NorthernCape/ZAKimberleyOldJewishCemetery/
http://jewishphotolibrary.smugmug.com/AFRICA/AFRICASouth/SOUTHAFRICA/Northern Cape/ZAKimberleyNewJewishCemetery/i-R2PgvDH
Was the Kimberley Shul like one in Italy?
Barney Horwitz wrote to me saying “Some years ago I discovered that contrary to the legend within the community that our shul was modelled on “some shul in Venice”, our shul is in fact a replica (albeit smaller) of the Semper Shul in Dresden which was burnt to the ground during Kristallnacht in 1938 in Germany never to be rebuilt. All that remained of it was the Magen David which had been affixed above the
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Entrance and of course, the replica in Kimberley.
The Semper Synagogue in Dresden: Well into the 19th century, the Dresden Jews continued to struggle for equality and integration. In May 1837, finally, a law was passed which permitted them to form a religious congregation, clearing the way for construction of a communal synagogue within the walls of Dresden. The 682 members of the community had for a long time been split between four private synagogues. When permission was given, the planning for the new building was placed in the hands of the famous architect Gottfried Semper. Under his guidance, a powerful, but for the most part stylistically neutral design was realised. Decorative elements demonstrate a blending of Oriental and European cultures.
Barney writes, “The Semper Shul was completed in or about 1842, ours in 1902. If we consider the two together, Ashkenazic Hebraic devotion has been practiced in these two houses of worship continuously for 170 years and given the nature of the destruction of the first, I have felt for some time now that the preservation of the replica is indeed essential and a symbol of the indestructible nature of Am Yisrael. Those who burnt the Dresden shul went home feeling confident they had blotted out that symbol of Judaism. Unbeknown to them that was not so. Its twin still stood and now they are all dead but the twin still stands and I have to use all my ingenuity to ensure that we raise funds to keep it standing and in Jewish Hands”.
Plans for the future?
Barney says, as we all know, “We are a tiny community, but we still carry the expenses of a large community caring for two large cemeteries and a shul that is priceless. We have very limited income from subscriptions”.
I often wonder if there is a plan for when the inevitable happens, and when there are not enough people left in Kimberley to care for and look after the beautiful and historic synagogue?
Let’s hope that this is far in the future and long may it remain a place of Jewish worship under Barney’s care, but, like making a Will, everyone should do it in good time. What is in the Will for the synagogue and cemeteries in Kimberley? What could happen to the shul? and what should happen? Is there a conversation going on somewhere – by whom and with whom? Perhaps, Barney you can share with us the thoughts you and your cohorts must surely have about the ultimate future. And perhaps we as a large body of Ex-Pats and interested people, might even be able to help you in some way – and share the responsibility. What kind of help would you want from the Ex-Pats Barney?
Good wishes for 2019
We wish all those still in Kimberley as well as all our Kimberley Ex-Pats a happy, heathy and pleasant 2019. Please let us know what you and your family are up to, and what you remember from your Kimberley days.
Best wishes
Geraldine Auerbach
London, January 2019
Page 8 of 9 See the Kimberley Jewish Community website here
https://kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/kimberley/Home.html
Newsletter no 20
Compiled by Geraldine Auerbach MBE, London January 2019
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