Schrire

Robins (née Schrire), Gwynne

Compiled by Geraldine Auerbach, London October 2019

from information and pictures sent by Gwynne Robins (née Schrire) Cape Town.

This page contains

•My immediate family tree

•How we got (back) to Kimberley

•My Batmitzvah and memories of Chagim in the Kimberley shul

•Life in Kimberley 1949-1955

•How my mom became Chair of the Women’s Zionist League in Kimberley

•Why we left Kimberley

•Connections with the Kretzmars

I was born in Johannesburg in 1943.

We came to Kimberley in 1949 when I was six years old. We stayed until 1955.

My father, Louis Schrire (Yehuda Leib), was born in Kimberley on 29 September 1914. He was a brilliant scholar and sportsman at Boys High School as was his younger brother Velva. He became an Ophthalmologist. In 1941 he married my mother Mary Katz from Johannesburg, whom he had met on holiday in Muizenberg. When I was due, my parents were living in Piet Retief where my father was posted in the army. My mom went home to her parents in Johannesburg to have her first baby. My father was then posted up north. He got a foreign body in his eye in the train going up and was sent back. (His replacement later died of dysentery.) My Dad was then posted to the Wynberg army camp and they moved into a flat in Wynberg belonging to his father. After the War, my father went to England and Cardiff to specialise. My mother followed in a troop ship with their two small children - my younger brother and myself – along with lots of soldier’s wives. We will read how my father came to set up in practice in Kimberley from 1949 to 1955; my memories of Kimberley; and how we came to leave Kimberley for Cape Town.

My paternal grandfather was Samuel Schrire a lawyer, (who never practiced law, but gave legal advice freely when needed). His father had arrived in Cape Town in 1897 bringing the family over soon after. Samuel arrived back in South Africa in 1913, fresh from his law studies in England, not quite decided what to do. Lampy Maresky’s father (from Kimberley), who was boarding with Samuel’s widowed mother in Muizenberg, told her of this wealthy, but jilted, heiress in Kimberley Sara Neche Senderovitz, (born 11 November 1893). She sent Samuel post haste up to Kimberley and they were engaged a few days later. They were married in the Roeland Street Synagogue, Cape Town, on 18 December 1913, with prominent MP Morris Alexander and Rev Bender as the witnesses. They settled down in the prestigious Kimberley home, at 17 Carrington Road, of Sara Neche’s parents,

my great grandfather - Raphael Senderovitz and

my great grandmother Ite Chaie Senderovitz (née Epstein).

Grandfather Samuel Schrire proceeded to manage the thriving businesses of his father-in-law Raphael Senderovitz in Beaconsfield.

Samuel and Sara Neche Schrire, Gwynne’s grandparents, had two sons by 1916: Louis (my father) born September 1914 and Velva born December 1916. Both were brilliant scholars, achieving the top marks in matric in the whole province. They were each presented with gold medals from the Kimberley City Council in 1931 and 1933 for this achievement. My father also came first in Latin and second in Greek in the College of Preceptors exam, an Empire wide exam. They were great sportsmen too. my father was presented with the Dux medal for all round achievement from the Kimberley Boys high School gave him in 1931 – and my uncle Velva achieved the same.

Here we see the brothers aged about 8 and 10, all togged up for cricket at Kimberley Boys Junior School in the 1920s. (Louis also played cricket for Varsity). Velva was also the first pupil in Kimberley to study modern Hebrew for matric. They both went on to study medicine. My father became an ophthalmologist. Velva was to instigate and create the first Cardiology unit in South Africa at Groote Schuur Hospital. He was THE key partner in enabling Christian Barnard to accomplish the first and subsequent successful Heart Transplant operation in the world.

See his story here: https://kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/kimberley/Schrire_2.html

There were three more children for my grandparents Sam and Sara Neche Schrire by 1924. Here they are with their two sons and three daughters, Ruby, Edna and Cynthia. All of this generation have now passed on.

How Gwynne’s family got back to Kimberley

As we have seen, after the war, Gwynne‘s family went to England for her father Louis Schrire to specialise in Ophthalmology, studying in London and then in Cardiff. They arrived back in Muizenberg where the Schrire parents were now living. Her father Louis could find no consulting ‘rooms’ there to set up his practice.

Gwynne recorded her mother Mary saying: ‘He met a man who had been in the army with him who told him they needed an eye specialist in Kimberley. He said, “You will not only get the job as eye specialist for De Beers mine, you will also get it for the Railways, so while you are sitting waiting for patients, you will straight away be earning an income.” So, Daddy went to Kimberly to find out and got the job. Grandpa lent him money to buy a motor car and he motored back to Kimberley – he could not be a specialist without a car. Using the dispensation as the Railway Doctor, Daddy got us railway tickets and so the family joined him in Kimberley.’ My parents had a very happy marriage with never a cross word.

Gwynne says: ‘Although I had started school in London when four and could read and write, the teacher in Kimberley said my handwriting was so bad it would do me good to spend another year in Sub A. I remember the teacher holding my work up in class to ridicule and saying ”Look children - Gwynne’s writing looks as though a spider has been walking all over the page.” the following year they moved me straight up to Std 1 missing out Sub B - but my handwriting has never improved’

My Batmitzvah in Kimberley

Gwynne wrote that: ‘After seeing a picture in the Kimberley Ex-Pats Newsletter no 20 (January 2019), that Delia Benn had sent to Geraldine, of seven little girls at their Bat Mitzvah Ceremony in 1959 – claiming it to be a first for Kimberley and a ceremony that the Werners had introduced – I had to put the record straight.

I do not intend to boast, but mine was the first Bat Mitzvah in Kimberley. My Mom used to keep the clipping from the Diamond Fields Advertiser ‘Kimberley Girl Makes History’ and there was I with my thick plaits! This was four years earlier, in 1955. My Mom had decided I should have a Bat Mitzvah. She persuaded two other mothers to join. It was winter and she took me to a tailor to have a white suit made with a jacket and pleated skirt in a thick material – I hated it. Fortunately, the other two girls pulled out, the event was moved to summer and my Mom, who used to make my clothes, made me a pretty, white summer dress which I much preferred.

The rabbi (must have been Rabbi Bloch) had never conducted a Bat Mitzvah before. I would visit him once a week and he would read me a chapter from a thin book called something like ‘What Every Jewish Girl Should Know’. The only thing I remember was that the Jewish wife should not gossip when they sat down at meals and the only conversation should be about the Torah. Our family was Jewish, but we used to discuss all sorts of interesting things at the table.

I do not remember getting fountain pens as gifts. Because of my thick plaits, lots of people decided that the most suitable present would be a dressing table set with a hairbrush, comb and mirror. We left Kimberley at the end of that year”.

Memories of Chagim in the Kimberley Shul

Gwynne writes in response to Newsletter 24 (September 2019)

I remember sitting upstairs in a fluffy white angora bolero my Mom had knitted for me and pulling off bits of fluff and watching them floating down to stick onto the men’s hats and jackets below. And worse – the pictures here seem to show that the railings upstairs have been changed. They used to be of brass with solid brass balls on top, here and there and I remember playing with the ball, screwing and unscrewing it until – oops – it fell out of my fingers! I watched in horror. Fortunately, instead of braining some unfortunate soul underneath, the heavy brass bullet landed onto an empty hat placed on a seat.

Memories of life in Kimberley

We used to go to cheder five times a week – the Reverend used to complain bitterly when the children chewed chewing gum, comparing us to cows with the cud. He had taught my father Louis and used to compare us unfavourably to him. I remember picking the pepper corns off the pepper trees while waiting for my mother to fetch us from cheder. We joined the Bnei Zion youth movement and made a guard of honour when their madrichah got married.

I also attended dancing classes with Miss Hooper- she would hold a concert- one year we needed five changes of costumes – that certainly kept our mothers busy sewing. Miss Hooper used to show off with solos until one year my little brother walked onto the stage when she was dancing to look at her - that was the last time she included herself in the programme.

I also used to go to piano lessons with a very fat woman next door to the wonderful Kimberley library, which had beautiful wrought iron balconies upstairs and ladders to reach the books. My mother would spend the afternoons lifting us to and fro in the car. I remember when my mother heard that the convent nearby was screening the 1936 film ‘The Rainbow on the River’, she sent my brother and I to see it and we were to walk home afterwards. Everyone sat on the floor in the darkened hall, the film strip kept on breaking and having to be repaired – so by the time we finally got home, my mom was in a panic.

On the weekend we would drive to ‘the koppie’ for a picnic tea and look for shells from the Boer War. Or we would drive to a pig farm on the outskirts and get out of the car to look at the pigs – my little brother loved this. Or we would drive to the Modder River or the Vaal River. When the Vaal River came down in flood one year, we drove out to look at it and returned some weeks later to marvel at the grass and refuse stuck high at the top of trees no longer submerged.

One holiday my cousins came to stay with us when their parents were overseas. Robert was keen on insects and spent much of his time digging in the compost heap to collect the ants. Our ants apparently were much bigger than his, in Cape Town. He wanted to find a queen ant, My parents always encouraged us in any of our Interests, so my Dad drove us out into the country where Robert tackled an ant hill. We soon gave up, when the soldier ants came pouring out, leaving him manfully banging away until he too decided that discretion was the better part of valour. My father brought him many small test tubes and formaldehyde and put him back on the train with his treasured box of specimens – which his mother threw away as soon as he arrived home. She was furious with my dad for aiding and abetting him. (Perhaps that is why he became a professor of political studies, not of entomology)

We started a little museum with bird’s nests, stones, and rock engravings a farmer had given my father. The museum was in a large budgie cage. My grandmother loved animals and had sent the cage up to us to look after the birds when she went overseas. One night was bitterly cold and all the birds died. My grandmother was angry with us when she returned but the cage made a fine museum. When we moved to Cape Town, I sneaked some of my favourite stones into the furniture van. The driver was very worried when he heard things shifting up and down as he went over hills on the way to Cape Town - he thought the furniture was shifting.

Here is how Gwynne’s mother Mary Schrire

became the Chairlady of the Kimberley Women’s Zionist Organisation

She told Gwynne, ‘We had spent two years in London and one in Cardiff after the war. The antisemitism was horrific – I thought I was living in Nazi Germany. At the end of the war the United Nations were meeting and to their horror they discovered that there were Jews in Auschwitz the Germans forgot to burn – NO ONE WANTED THEM – NOT EVEN USA! 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, killing some of them. The British did NOT want Jews there – it would upset their friends, the Arabs, who were giving them oil!!! I decided if the United Nations gave the Jews their land, I would use every bit of my energy to work for it.

‘Three weeks after arriving in Kimberley I was invited to a meeting – World Jewry had decided to form a women’s campaign and Doris Lankin came to Kimberley speak about it. They needed someone to take charge in Kimberley. She asked the lady who ran the Blue Box and 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!!). She asked other women, but all declined.

‘Doris looked down, I was sitting in the front row, and she recognised me, we had been to university together., so she just said “Mary Katz” will do it! “But,” I said, ‘I don’t know anyone – 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 vow to help my fellow Jews hounded out of Europe and here was the opportunity. “Yes,” I said, “I’ll do it!:”

‘They made us promise to collect money, the only way we could do it was to have functions, there were quite a lot of boys due to have barmitzvahs so I suggested we cater kosher and we would cater for barmitzvahs and that was how we raised money. It was an advantage that I was a newcomer as half the women did not talk to the other half and they were all prepared to share their recipes with me, but not with the others. I soon leant who made the best kichel, the best chopped herring etc.

‘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 at the end of 1955.’

Leaving Kimberley

Leaving Kimberley was also a professional decision. Gwynne’s mother said: ‘One day a Dr came to see Daddy, an Afrikaans man, who said, “Look, I have a farm in the district. I have just become an eye specialist and I am going to set up here. This town is not big enough for two eye specialists. I shall go to the two Afrikaans churches and the minister will announce that there is an Afrikaans man here, a good Nat and now you must support him and who do you think the patients will go to after that? I shall take away your patients from you. What is more, I shall even buy your house from you if your like. I drove past it and I like it and I believe it has a swimming pool.”

‘Daddy said let me think about what you have said. He discussed it and said “Gwynne is now in std.6. In another four years she will leave school and will not be coming back to Kimberley. She will be coming back for the winter holidays and that is all – in summer we go away, and she will spend the rest of the time as a boarder in the university. So, we realised it was not a bad idea to move to Cape Town and with their savings from Kimberley my parents felt sure he could build up a practice from scratch there.” We said OK to the man, we put the house on the market, he bought it. Daddy went off in October to start a practice, I made this man wait for the house till the end of the school year 1955. A wise decision.

Gwynne and the Kretzmars

Gwynne (Schrire) Robins lived in Kimberley with her family from age 6 in 1949, to age 12 in 1955 when they relocated to Cape Town. Geraldine says her parents Noel and Beryl were friends of the Schrires. We used to meet up with Val (Velva) in Cape Town and Geraldine was friendly with his daughter Tamar. (It could well have been Noel that had suggested there was an opening for an eye specialist in Kimberley in 1949 – as he himself had just gone on the specialist register as a general surgeon in 1948 with a railway practice etc). Gwynne told Geraldine (née Kretzmar) that her parents were friendly with her uncle Julius and Althea Kretzmar both in Kimberley and later when the moved to Cape Town, and often had them round. She says: ‘I adored Julius – he had so much wisdom. I used to visit them in Dennekamp, their flat in Wynberg, and take him to meetings of the Jewish Seniors to talk about his Dad’s letters from Cape Town in 1899 to 1903 to his wife Taube in Birzh Lithuania The Kretzmar had moved house several times and every time a large trunk came with them. Finally, once retired, Dr Kretzmar decided to open his late father’s trunk and found it stacked with letters in Yiddish.

When Tevye Kretzmar had left home in 1899, he had told his wife Taube that he would write every week and she was to do the same and they were to keep each other’s letters to serve as a diary. She arrived with all his letters intact – but her letters had sadly not been kept. Julius Kretzmar and Nathan Stein used to meet after shul every Thursday morning in Wynberg and he would translate the letters – they form an invaluable record of life for the ‘greeners’ in South Africa. Gwynne used to work in the old Jewish Museum and when the curator of the Malmesbury Museum, the former shul, wanted to start a Jewish section, Gwynne put her in touch with Julius (whose parents had set up home in Malmesbury – where he was born). He was a great resource to the museum and donated family Jewish artefacts to the ark area of the old Malmesbury synagogue.

You can read one of these letters here

Gwynne is now (2019) the Deputy Director of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies in Cape Town. She is described by SAJBD as, ‘Indispensable and erudite and an expert on the Jews of South Africa and Cape history, she is a fountain of knowledge that keeps us informed.’

Read the story of Gwynne’s Great Grandfather Raphael Senderovitz