Muizenberg, South Africa
Avra J. Margolis’s
Muizenberg In The Forties
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With thanks to Avra J. Margolis
AVRA J. MARGOLIS
In retrospect, growing up in up in Muizerberg was an unusual experience because we enjoyed far greater freedom than most of our contemporaries in the other suburbs of Cape Town. We could play hopscotch or ‘hussy updoor’ (yes, I know no-one else has ever heard of it) in the street without traffic problems & watch the pink haze of departing flamingo wings at sunset while picking sour figs at the edge of the Vlei. During the day front doors remained unlocked so that we were in & out of each other’s homes constantly. The early morning ‘snake walk’ to school would start at the bridge collecting pupils from Clevedon, Cromer & Wherry Roads on the way. We went home for lunch & returned to school for afternoon classes.
I refused to change schools at 12 because I had heard that certain teachers at Wynberg Girls’ High went through the girls’ pockets searching for notes from the adjacent boys’ school. No such nonsense at our co-educational Muizenberg High where the atmosphere was so laid back that Mr Matz read O’Henry & Thurber to us during the maths lessons. On the other hand, our English teacher Mr Hillhouse, gave us a thorough grounding in spelling & grammar for which we remain grateful. It remains a mystery how any one passed in science subjects because there was hardly any basic equipment in the lab but with our home-grown musical shows, school magazine, mountain climbing expeditions & visits to the theatre, we actually enjoyed our schooldays.
But it was ‘The Beach’ which became the social centre in our teens, namely the Triangle Beach, Snake Park or Snake Pit depending on your ‘generation’. ‘We’re going for a swim’ quelled all enquiries about our destination when we left the house. We would walk to the Promenade to survey the Snake Pit from above & note where everyone had settled before going down the steps to join our chosen group. Access to a bathing box was a bonus for changing but we were all experts from an early age. As a small child I can remember a long towelling tent with a drawstring top which could be pulled over the head so that a damp bathing costume could be dropped & dry clothing passed modestly through the bell-shaped lower end. In those days, bathing costumes were worn only on the beach & the Pavilion pavement &, apart from the occasional ice cream, eating & drinking in the street while walking was frowned upon.
Our normally parochial existence changed dramatically during Muizenberg’s famous ‘Season’. It spanned the six weeks of summer holidays in December & January. The resident population was swollen by the influx of visitors from the rest of the country seeking cooler climes & to enjoy the famed medicinal properties of seawater bathing. The hotels & boarding houses were filled & local families coped with a never-ending stream of relatives & friends who felt entitled to available spare beds or sofas.
Our father, Johnnie Weinreich, then president of the Cape Town Jewish Orphanage, oversaw the annual relocation to its Muizenberg camp from its Oranjezicht home. My youngest sister, Rena, moved to Lakeside as a volunteer at the Bikur Cholim Camp often bringing other volunteers back home including the deaf, saintly Mr Hahn. On one occasion, my girlhood friend, Rica, was returning to Johannesburg by car after spending her annual holiday at our home. During the overnight stay at Beaufort West she met friends travelling in the opposite direction towards Cape Town. She promptly changed cars & returned to continue her holiday in Muizenberg where the season was in full swing. During the summers of the 1940’s, it was the place to be.
The local inhabitants observed the visitors’ choices of hotels, boarding houses, rented houses or flats plus length of stay to assess subtle degrees of affluence. Unspoken, but universally accepted rules dictated the amount of permitted social intercourse between the temporary & permanent residents. Some associations were merely ‘beach only’ friendships but there was a considerable amount of fraternisation including home (or hotel room) visits among the younger set. Prominent Muizenberg families hosted annual cocktail parties for selected visitors occasionally repaid by invitations to dinner at hotels. These were mostly declined because the food was awful.
The visitors’ holidays were spent in a predetermined pattern. The older generation tended to bathe in the morning. Their favoured method of ‘swimming’ was to stand in shallow water (no deeper than calf-height at low tide) throwing an occasional cupped handful of sea-water over their left arms. This was known as ‘dunking’ – pronounced doonking. Left hands bearing large diamond rings were never lowered into the water in case these valuables were swept away. It was not unusual for husbands to clasp their wives left hands possessively while they paddled. While their elders spent the afternoons resting or playing cards, the younger ones gathered in the Snake Park to assess the available talent on display. Some of us actually swam & surfed. At some point during the day almost everyone would visit the photographer’s booth on the steps down to Balmoral Beach to view the photographs taken on the previous day & buy the most flattering images. The heady combination of skimpy bathing costumes, warm sun & soft white sand encouraged both holiday & long-term romances (including my own) to flourish & always provided plenty of juicy gossip for the evening rounds.
Every one dressed smartly for dinner at the hotels & the evening parade along the Promenade was obligatory. The gusty south-easterly wind blew salt-laden spray towards the promenaders so that the women needed to wear their fur wraps. They would inhale the ‘luft’ vigorously & pause to admire the moon’s reflection on the water, The beach was now deserted as the young ones left to find amusement at the Blue Moon in Lakeside, the Hamburger Hut, His Majesty’s cinema or go for drives while their elders attended an event at the Pavilion or played cards.
The grand, but already crumbling, Pavilion was well-used during the summer. Its large hall hosted Vic Davis’s Dance band, fund-raising balls, theatrical performances, variety shows, fetes & even symphony concerts. Once a year the pianist, Anya Polyakoff Pevsner, would walk down the steps of her Beach Road mansion to be driven in her Rolls Royce (registration no.CA 10000) across the road to the Pavilion to perform a Mozart Piano Concerto with the Cape Town Symphony Orchestra. ‘Not very well’, commented my sister Tamara. Between the Pevsner & Schlesinger mansions on Beach Road there is a modest house where the noted English painter, John Amshewitz, had his studio up a flight of external stairs. Like many others, he had come to Muizenberg for health reasons & would hold court surrounded by admiring female patrons during sittings. I accompanied my mother on several occasions to monitor the progress of Lily Shawzin’s glamorous portrait. My mother bought a small landscape he painted of a windswept Hout Bay which hangs in my living room today.
During the Second World War the Pavilion was in constant use. The indefatigable Australian, Enid Alexander (widow of Morris Alexander KC MP & spitting image of Barry Humphries’ Edna Everage) organised numerous fund-raising events. She used members of the exiled Greek royal family then living modestly in Heathfield to open these events. Titles always help & to this day King Constantine retains the slight South African accent acquired in his childhood. The Pavilion also served as one of the designated reception centres for the young men from the troop ships for their brief stay in Cape Town. These enormous pop-up canteens were mobilised by the members of SAWAS & Jewish women’s organisations to dispense hospitality to the bewildered young men travelling half-way around the world to fight in the war. Individual volunteers would select servicemen to take to their homes for a proper home-cooked meal & most families (& their cooks) were familiar with the drill. Some local teenagers were stigmatised for exhibiting more than patriotic enthusiasm. Muizenberg was a very small, gossip-fuelled village & it was wartime. Only later did we discover that the enemy was nearer than any of us imagined.
Large posters were exhibited everywhere warning the public not to talk about shipping. Our father owned laundries which worked 24 hours a day while the convoys were in Cape Town. Occasionally, after the evening meal, my sister, Tamara & i would accompany him to the factory to ‘help’ the welcoming Malay women who folded the high quality First Class sheets (now being used by the officers) as they emerged from the rollers of the large mangles. One evening, in unnatural silence, we drove along De Waal Drive overlooking the harbour. In clear view were the three largest ocean liners in the world lying outside the docks which could not contain them. No one mentioned their names.
Most able-bodied young men we knew volunteered to join the armed services while the older men who formed the Civil Guard spent their evenings on duty checking blackout precautions or scouring False Bay for enemy submarines. My father later confessed that many times they either slept in their cars or chatted. The women, freed from household chores by employing domestic staff, were very active. They were constantly collecting fabrics, wool & craft materials to make objects for the endless fund-raising activities. They gathered at each other’s houses to knit socks, balaclava helmets, & pack gift parcels for the troops or to send to England. As 11 year-olds my friends & I enrolled in the St John’s Ambulance Brigade, learned first aid & did duty at public functions. We could turn the heel of a sock on four needles like seasoned experts. It was a daily ritual to gather around the radio to listen to the six o’clock news from London. One Sunday morning my father’s Uncle Kalman, came to our house after hearing that France had fallen. His sister, Zara, lived with her son’s family just outside Paris. They perished. Even as very young children we understood the implications & feared for them & ourselves.
Our wartime air raid shelter was Muizenberg mountain. When the siren sounded, we ran down the stairs, out of the gates & ran up the mountain. One lovely morning, a small training plane flew low over the school. We teased the temporary teacher that it was one of her boyfriends & ran to the windows when it happened again. We then watched with horror while the pilot looped the loop over False Bay & nose-dived straight into the calm blue sea.
Both our father, Johnnie, & our mother, Fanny, were extremely active in Jewish & general communal affairs. They had moved with their two small daughters, Avra & Tamara, from Oranjezicht to Muizenberg in 1933 & rented a succession of flats & houses. The arrival of another daughter, Rena, & later a son, Leonard, made a move to a larger house imperative. They were tempted to move closer to my father’s business & nearer the centre of Cape Town as they attended committee meetings most evenings. The matter was settled when they bought a plot in Mount Road & had plans drawn for a new house to be built by McCarthy & Flegg. I became fascinated with the whole process of building & visited the site every day on my way home from school. Having won a sand-modelling competition as a six-year-old, by the age of twelve this experience was to influence my ultimate choice to study architecture at university.
Fanny & Johnny named the new house ‘Yuval’ & decided to have an open house every Friday night for friends & visitors. As growing children we were privileged to meet visiting dignitaries, religious leaders, diplomats & politicians. The Minister of Justice, Dr Colin Steyn & his wife, ‘Auntie’ Rae, became close family friends & later she regularly visited us in London on her annual trips abroad. These visits would be preceded by a letter with precise instructions to us for escorting her to the opera, theatre & other black-tie events. Just before a performance of Fidelio at the Opera House I noticed Auntie Rae fiddling in her purse for a pill. I asked whether she was all right & she replied in her booming voice that she was taking an opium pill to prevent her from coughing. She added that these particular pills had been bequeathed to her late husband by his father, the Boer War President of the Orange Free State. Sol & I slunk lower in our seats. Our musical education was also enhanced by visiting musicians who used our grand piano for practice while in Muizenberg & we had many enjoyable musical evenings at home.
One Friday evening a stranger arrived & asked to see Johnnie Weinreich. This was not an unusual occurrence. The man introduced himself as Abner Soriano, originally from Rhodes but then living in the Elisabethville in the Belgian Congo. Having received a warm welcome, Abner asked whether he might return to the Bay View Hotel to fetch a ‘few friends’. He returned with 30 people. This event introduced us to many new & fascinating experiences. ‘Yuval’ became a combination of a consulate, information centre & postal address for these refugees from war-torn Europe. They comprised a rich mixture of Sephardi Jews from the eastern Mediterranean island of Rhodes & Egypt with Ashkenazi Jews from Poland & Belgium. Each family had been through unspeakable horrors & most suffered post-traumatic stress. Somehow, after dodging bombs, artillery fire & being strafed from German aeroplanes, they managed to find exit ports where they boarded unseaworthy ships of dubious nationality. The captains then stopped the engines during the voyage, demanded to inspect all their luggage & stole their valuables. We never actually worked out how they had landed in the Congo & it seemed insensitive to ask.
Their individual stories emerged much later when we had earned their trust. Their reason for coming to Muizenberg in October was to avoid the ‘suicide’ months in the Congo. Some families stayed at the Rio Grande Hotel while others rented, & even bought, family houses for the summer months. The teenage girls had ‘duennas’ who actually shared their bedrooms. I discovered that Shula Nehama & Katie Bernstein would go to night clubs with young men telling their duenna that they had ‘gone to visit Avra’ which was permitted. I warned them to advise me in advance in case their parents turned up at our house unexpectedly. Many of these children attended school & university in Cape Town & our parents acted ’in loco parentis’ for several families & the children stayed at ‘Yuval’ during the shorter holidays. Eventually, some families including the Sorianos & Benzakens settled in Muizenberg permanently.
Initially, we found their European habits curious. They used the seashore in a completely different way by winkling out mussels from the mud as the tide receded & foraging in the rock pools for edible sea creatures. I was fortunate to have many meals at one of the houses shared by several families overlooking the Rock Beach. The women took turns to cook the meals which were eaten on the verandah overlooking the bay where I was first introduced to Eastern Mediterranean delicacies. There were unconfirmed rumours that the Cafe De Luxe was serving prawns to them.
Our lives became increasingly intertwined with our Congolese friends. Their visits became extended as they became more familiar with the language & the variety of activities available in Cape Town. After European city life, the Congo offered little in the way of cultural stimulation. Fanny organised an exhibition in a Cape Town gallery for the refugee artist, Mme Vamos, who was working in pastels as oil paints were in short supply at the time. As a gesture of gratitude Mme Vamos did a portrait of my mother which my brother now owns. As a self-conscious teenager, I regret not accepting her offer to do a portrait of me in a particular dress she liked.
The deputy head of the police force in Elisabethville, M Delport, approached my father after learning that he was on the committee (among many others) which vetted conversions to Judaism. M Delport was married to a beautiful Sephardi woman who wore a very long gold filigree necklace which was only part of the original used by her ancestress fleeing the Spanish Inquisition. The family’s jewels had been secreted in small beads with minute screws which punctuated the chain. Mme Delport was the member of a distinguished intellectual family in Amsterdam who had married a handsome & suitable young man who proved to be a ‘gentleman thief’. When the police were about to arrest him, he escaped with his wife & their baby son. A Swiss detective from the forerunner of Interpol, M Delport, was sent to find him. He apprehended & arrested his quarry in Egypt &, in true Hollywood style, fell in love with his prisoner’s wife as the ship proceeded along the Nile towards Cairo. With the husband in jail, the now ex-wife married M Delport who subsequently adopted her son. When the war started, the prisoner was released & apparently served in the army with distinction.
Although Johnnie dutifully played devil’s advocate during the process of conversion, the delightful M Delport finally won his support & several years later, as the first & only Jewish Chief of Police in Elisabethville, greeted my father on a his fund-raising trip to the Congo.
The old Park Hotel near our home was being used as a military convalescent home & our mother managed to ‘adopt even more young servicemen who spent many evenings with us playing board games & enjoying the family atmosphere while they recuperated. Two RAF men, in particular, Leslie Rubie & Harry Harrison became good family friends & we were reunited after the war. Our windows had blackout frames covered with hand-painted taffeta fabric as Fanny maintained the shops had run out of any other suitable material. Imitating Scarlett O’Hara’s example in ‘Gne with the Wind’ I later used the taffeta to make a ball gown.
One Sunday morning i opened the front door myself. Our tall, Angolan major domo, Thomas was nowhere to be seen. We had never fathomed his job description but it would certainly not have included running a shebeen with the cook from the staff bathroom (another story). Against the sun I saw a very tall, large man wearing a green towelling T-shirt & ill-fitting trousers who asked to speak to Johnnie Weinreich. I called my father & watched while the man introduced himself as Lt. Commander Miller RNVR, late of the Haifa Nautical School & now recalled for active service. He had been told that my parents were founder members of the Palestine Maritime League (later the Israel Maritime league) & had been told to make contact with my father (whose nickname was ’Admiral Johnnie’) if ever he happened to land in Cape Town. He then introduced us to Commander Roberts who had commanded the warship which had taken King George VI & Queen Elizabeth to the USA shortly before the beginning of the war. We could not know at the time that in 1947 we would meet the King & Queen ourselves & I would be invited to meet Princess Elizabeth at her 21st birthday party at the Cape Town City Hall.
We eventually learned to our horror that the ships commanded by these two sailors who had become our friends had been torpedoed by U-boats just outside False Bay & limped in for repair in Simonstown’s naval dockyard. Once again, these men became regular visitors & family friends. Commander Miller, resplendent in his replacement uniform, became a valuable fund-raiser for my father’s naval pre-occupation. Another committee member’s daughter & I were invited to attend a dinner at the Muizenberg Pavilion for the entire complement of both ships as personal guests of the two Commanders. We sat with them at the top table – two female teenagers with hundreds of young sailors.
I still have the invitation but we were sworn to secrecy because it was really their farewell party & we dared not talk about ships.
My class at Muizenberg High School matriculated in December 1944. With the end of war in Europe in sight, our immediate concern was for the fate of the survivors & the creation of a sanctuary in Israel for the displaced people. Many of us had been schooled from an early age to do voluntary work & the Muizenberg Young Israel’s unique Youth Aliyah Ball at the Pavilion was an annual institution. Each new teenage committee made comprehensive notes & lists of donors, caterers etc. & in 1946 under the chairmanship of Denis Krikler, we raised £1200 – a fortune in those days.
In 1948 many of us went to a remote farm near Paarl to receive clandestine military training to serve in Israel’s war of independence it required. It was then against the law for any South African to serve in a foreign army. The girls demanded the same commando training as the boys & trained under ex-army officers including Bertie Stern 7 earned their respect. This also triggered a wave of emigrants from South Africa to the new State of Israel.
We still participated in musical shows at the Pavilion & were delighted when, in an uncharacteristically sober moment, the maverick but brilliant producer, Cyril Chosack, formed the South Peninsula Dramatic Society. His motive was to have a company to perform his choice of unusual plays (often without copyright permission) which gave us some exciting theatrical experiences.
Now, in different places all over the globe, our grandchildren listen to the stories & see the pictures of our youth as we reminisce about what now seems to have been a unique shared childhood & adolescence at the foot of a mountain, on a white, sandy beach under blue skies.
