Seymour Hoffman was the district surgeon and later a GP. He was an integral part of the Jewish community and broader Vryburg community. He arrived in Vryburg in 1946 after an 18-month internship stint at Congella Hospital for Bantu and Indians in Durban. He was joined in Durban and Vryburg by his UCT classmate and friend C.J. (Stollie) Smit. The two served the public health care system and then bought a private practices. Dr. Hoffman left Vryburg in 1956.

 

Seymour Hoffman was born on 11 November 1920 and raised in Paarl. After matriculating from Paarl Boys High, he studied medicine at UCT. Seymour graduated in 1944. He was the second son of Louis Hoffman and Emily Hoffman (nee Cohen). Emily and Louis had three sons, Sydney Godfrey, nicknamed Bom, who was born in Johannesburg 1918, Seymour, Jack (Harold Jacob), born in 1922 in Paarl.

 

Louis Hoffman was born in Rezekne in Latvia. Part of the Hoffman family migrated to America in the 1880's.  Louis’s father Abraham and his wife Slata remained in order to manage the family affairs. As the plight of Jews worsened in Eastern Europe, Abraham migrated to South Africa and later sent for his son Louis and the rest of his family. Louis's siblings were: Rose (married a Rechtman), Isidor and Seymour. Seymour died a bachelor in the Belgian Congo, aged 30, in 1918. Seymour Hoffman was presumably named after him.  

 

Emily Cohen’s family hailed from Courland. She was the daughter of Rachel (nee Kahn) and Zalman Joel Cohen, who had twelve children. The family settled in Alexandria in the Eastern Cape, near Kenton on Sea. The Gluckman family from Courland we also located here. Emily Cohen and Louis Hoffman met in Clocolan in the Orange Free State, Harry was working in Heilbron at the time. They married in Johannesburg in 1917 and settled and made their lives in Paarl.

 

Whilst on a visit to Vryburg in 1950 Louis Hoffman passed away. He was an asthmatic and hoped that a Vryburg stay and the “drier climate of the Kalahari might be beneficial for his condition.” Sadly, his ailing health was compromised by acute pneumonia which led to his death. Following his father’s death Seymour Hoffman planned a two-year sabbatical, to pursue post-graduate studies. In 1952 he commenced a degree in general medicine at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh University. Seymour obtained a Diploma in Child Health from the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons and then interned at the Rotunda Maternity Hospital in Dublin and the Hammersmith Hospital in London. After his return to Vryburg, Seymour Hoffman stayed a further three years. He left for Cape Town working in private practice and then assumed an anesthetists post at the Somerset Hospital. Seymour decided to make Aliya and recognizing a pressing need for anesthetists in Israel, he joined a three year program in anesthesiology at UCT. He moved to Israel in 1961. He subsequently joined anesthetic department of Beilinson Hospital, where he met his future wife Ronit and then moved to Meir Hospital in Kfar Saba. Ronit and Seymour had two children, Yeela and Aviad. Seymour played a pivotal role in the evolution of Meir Hospital.