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Early Jewish Settlers

Jews reach Vryburg:

Amongst the first Jews recorded to have arrived in the Vryburg area seem to have been the Isaacs family. I presume they were not the only Jews. What we do know from War Records is that Albert Isaacs, the son of Pauline and Samuel Isaacs, was born in 1880 in Vryburg. Pauline was not Jewish.

 

The reason we know so much about the family is that Albert, tragically, took his own life. His sister Lillie, who was born in Vryburg in 1887, married Max Sonnenberg in 1906. In April 1898, an Archibald Isaacs passed away in Vryburg. It is not clear if her was related to Samuel Isaacs. He was 24 years old and working as a bookkeeper. He was buried in Vryburg, in a funeral ceremony conducted by a local priest. Albert's father, Samuel Isaacs, would later move to Johannesburg and become a stockbroker. He passed away in 1924 and was buried in Brixton Cemetery. On his death certificate he is listed as being born in England. 

 

Crucially, Charles Sonnenberg and Samson Solomon reached the town in 1884 with the invading Warren War party. This is the second   documented Jewish presence. The two literally set up shop, founding a trading entity that would define the town and the allow the emergence of a Jewish community. Isaac (Ikey) Sonnenberg also reached Vryburg around this time but left soon afterwards for Barberton. Charles was joined by his siblings. They in turn were joined by relatives. The first local wedding of a Jewish couple confirms this. Caeser Gers a local auctioneer from originally from Sondershausen in Germany (which is not far from Kassel) wed Mathilda Wallach on 12 September 1885. The Wallach's were related to the Sonnenbergs and Matilda's aunt, Amalia married a Rosenblatt.  

 

Millicent Rosenblatt and Josephine Rosenblatt were also born in Vryburg around this time. They were the daughters of Herman and Jeannette Rosenblatt. The couple were married on 26 October 1886. Herman was by then an established lawyer, who would go on to become mayor of the town. Herman was a partner in a law firm called Rosen & Wessels, which later became Wessels, de Kock and Frylinck. Rosen may also have been a Jew. Julius Rosenblatt, his brother, was involved in S Solomon and Company. To confound matters, a different Jeanette Rosenblatt married Charles Sonnenberg in 1866, after meeting in Queenstown. As we will repeatedly discover, the German Jewish families were intertwined. 

 

In 1895, the Jewish Chronicle of London announces the birth of a son to Harry Sonnenbrg and Rosalie Abrahams. Though the birth took place in Cape Town the couple were by then Vryburg residents. They were in fact married in Vryburg on 17 September 1894 and according to the wedding certificate, Harry had been living in Vryburg for two years. Rosalie was a resident of Kimberley and the daughter of Reuben Harris Abrahams (from Poland) and Miriam Cohen (from Bohemia). The parents were married in Saint Louis, Missouri in 1872. Rosalie's siblings were Lilian Charlotte, the eldest child, and her younger brothers Lionel, Alfred and Arthur.

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Jeanette Sonnenberg and Herman Rosenblatt were most probably cousins. They were married in Vryburg in October 1886. Jeanette was the child of Louis Rosenblatt. Based on Herman and Jeanette’s marriage certificate, we see that Louis was present at the wedding ceremony. Louis passed away, aged 70, in 1896 and his death certificate lists him as a general dealer (algemeene handelaar) from Calvinia. He also had a son called Julius. Both families were from Germany. In 1895 Maurice Sonnenberg married Betty Sonnenberg in Vryburg.  

 

Years later, Fritz Sonnenberg, the eldest son of Theodore Sonnenberg and Bertha Sonnenberg (nee Bing), returned to Vryburg, after serving in World War One in Namibia, in order to do his articles at the firm Herman founded. Julius Rosenblatt who worked at S Solomon (the firm was later re-branded as Solomons Stores) and later bought into the business, was married to Max Sonnenberg’s half-sister Lina – the sister of Theodore.

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The Blum brothers, Alphonse and Arthur, also German Jews seemed well entrenched in the district. Alphonse Blum passed away in 1896 and from his estate records we learn that their business was called Blum Brothers. According to his death certificate, Alphonse was born in Dublin to parents Gobert and Wilhelmina. Alphonse, a trader and farmer, was married with four children, Gobert, Mila, Charles and Leve. His wife was Blanche Bora Marcelis. The Blum brothers featured in the Bechuana Rising of 1896, also referred to as the Langeberg Rebellion. As recounted by Max Sonnenberg (pp. 38-40), Arthur was a field-cornet and Alphonse was held hostage by the rebellious indigenous population at his store in Phokwane stad (Hartswater). As noted, the rebellion was triggered by the killing of cattle in order to stem the spread of Rinderpest.

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Legal proceedings were initiated against Ludwig Solomon in 1901. According to court archives from a case between Willemina Hendrika Lotter and Hamburg born Solomon, the latter fled from Sweitzer Reineke during the Boer War and rented a farm and store called Mooifontein. The same farm was owned by Julius Rosenfels (see below). Solomon later had the license to operate a bottle store at the Vryburg Hotel until 1910.

 

Other Jews who arrived before and around the time of the Second Anglo Boer War (October 1899 to May 1902) at this time include the Blumgart family (German), the Abt brothers (German), Albert Elkan (Courland), Morris Silverman (Lithuanian), Joseph Bein (Polish), and Pinkus Goldberg (Polish). In 1898 Herman Abt applied to establish an irrigation scheme near Geluk and the Abt brothers, Daniel and Herman, were movers and shakers. They established the first hotel in the town. In the section on Germán Jews we will return to them. Moritz Heiman Kallmeyer from Talsen. Bramie Lenoff, who has chronicled the Upington Jewish community. shared a copy of the Vryburg Town Guard and a few names are mentioned. 

We start to see the arrival on East European Jews. 

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There is also reference to an AP Velenski (a farmer and speculator) in a case related to Boer War High Treason charges initiated in 1902. Velenski sought to supply 100 head of cattle to besieged Mafikeng.  Abraham Phineas Velesnki, whose wife Fanny passed away in 1903 in Oudtshoorn was an active member of the Oudtshoorn community (Aschman, p. 124). His second wife Theresa (nee Hut) was from Koblenz in Germany. She was a widower and was married to Isaac Rosenblatt.  The couple were married in Durdan in 1910. What is plausible is that Velenski had partners / acquaintances in far-afield Mafikeng. In 1911, AP Velensky passed way in Baden-Baden. 

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Julius Rosenfels appears, from his estate, to have had a share in farm called Mooifontein near Kuruman, purchased around 1888, in partnership with a JC Chase. Julius Rosenfels and his brothers Max and Jacob were from Forchheim in Germany and were the children of Sigmund and Regina (nee Bergman) Rosenfels. The three were active in the Free State - Rouxville and Hoopstad. Forchheim is near to Nuremburg and south of Kassel. In the ensuing section we will explore the German Jews who made Vryburg their home and the familial and geographic ties. 

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The Senderowitz family was in Taung in the early 1890s and in 1896 a daughter Eliza passes away in Vryburg- only a few months old.  There are 1899 death certificate for William Ruthenberg and Hannah Marks. Both could be Jewish. The Smollan family (Lithuanian Jews), seem to have opened a trading post in 1902. Isadore Blumgart, a German Jew, married Hannah Annie Solomon. Isadore and Hannah Annie's eldest son, Cecil Leonard Bernard Blumgart was born in Vryburg on 21 January 1899. Their next two children, Harold Herman and Marion were born in 1901 and 1905 respectively. Isadore Blumgart was in 1900 accused of treason for supplying goods to the Transvaal during the Boar War.

 

Other Jewish we come across in the first decades include: Rosenblatt (Germany), Blum (Germany), Seagull (Germany) Klisser (The Netherlands), Hammerschlag (Germany), Philip Jacobson (Russia), Seligmann (German), Ludwig Salomon (German), and Moses Lemkus (Courland). There were also Jews in places like Pokwani (Hartswater), Taungs and Pudimoe. Names from these surrounds include Julius Kovensky (Lithuania), Israel Jacob Blumberg (from Talsen, I think), the well-known Bayers, Raufs and the Senderowitz families – all Lithuanian. Then there were the Lithuanian Solomon’s. These names come from the important SA Friends of Beit Hatfutsot study and random searched in the Cape Archives and the Government Gazette. I assume numerous Jewish pioneers slipped through the net. Pudimoe also had a number of Jews: Golstruter, Gould, Cohen Brothers and Rosenthal around this time.

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The allure of rural South Africa:

Thought seeming counterintuitive to us, who live in an era of urbanization, there was an economic logic to starting out in the rural towns like Vryburg. Joe Davidovitz, who was born in Vryburg in the early 1930's, notes that his father once explained that when he arrived in South Africa the opportunities were in the Platteland. Herrman (p. 224) reminds us that the dynamic existed as early as the 1860's. The Cape Town community saw its members leave for "districts where competition was less to seek their fortunes." Later, Herrman (p. 256) notes: They went into remote districts and traded. They opened shops where there was no population, and farmers came from miles around and bought their goods." Herrman adds, "frequently villages grew up around them. More than one South African town started at the place of a Jewish storekeeper, as witness the town of De Aar, built on the farm and around the business place of the Friedlander brothers, who settled there in 1880, and Garies in Namaqualand, which grew up round the store established by Maurice Eilenberg."

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The story of South Africa's German Jews is inextricably linked to that of the Mosenthal family. They also emulated the Mosenthal story. The erudite and more liberal Yekke (German) Jews built the local economy, but like so many other communities, the Jewish soul of the community was shaped by the Griner (East European) Jews. Common to both would be the intricate familial old-country links and networks thar would shape their lives in Africa. 

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