The first Jews came to Vryburg from Germany around 1880 and in the decades that followed Jews came from Eastern Europe - Poland, Latvia (Courland), and Lithuania. Their journey to South Africa heralded a new beginning. They were fleeing 25 years of conscription, economic misery, the clash between a reactionary regime and its opponents and, oftentimes anti-Semitism. Once in South Africa, the allure of the diamond rush drew them to the Kimberley and Barclay West area. From there, they moved further north. Vryburg was, in the early 1900s, a focal town: economically, agriculturally, and logistically. Jews would punch well above their demographic weight in the public and commercial life of Vryburg. 

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The Jews made livings in Vryburg as farmers, smouses (peddlers), shopkeepers, hoteliers, and later in the professions. Their personal stories are awe-inspiring. Most arrived with limited resources and were unable to speak either English or Afrikaans. Many arrived alone. They often faced adversity. They were tenacious and prevailed. 

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Above all, most resolutely maintained a sense of community and Jewish identity. A few assimilated. Many times, they were unable to find a Jewish partner in remote places like Vryburg and its remote district farms. Some had non-white partners. Many Vryburg Jews who married out maintained some connection with their identity, the community and their families. Assimilation is not binary.

 

Identity in South Africa was a loaded concept. Jews were part of the dominant White minority, which enjoyed tremendous privilege. We enjoyed far better health care and education than non-Whites. We had unfettered access to the town’s two tennis clubs, the hockey club, the two rugby clubs, the bowling club and the golf course. Amenities that Black South Africans, so-called Coloureds and Indians never had admission to. Driving past Huhudi, the vast gulf between our homes and those of the Black townsfolk was in plain sight. We could trade on Market Street after 1950, when the Indian community was dislodged.

 

Anti Semitism:

Yet, we were also outsiders and not always fully accepted by some Whites. Many of us recall a snide remark about the Jews and some of us bore witness to more overt acts of anti-Semitism. Scholar Marcia Leveson (p. 3) captures the predicament of the Jew is South Africa at the time so vividly: "Coming as immigrants to South Africa, worshipping differently, sometimes dressed in the clothing of eastern European shtetl (village) of their origin, speaking a foreign language or with a foreign accent, the Jews were obvious candidates – second only to the blacks – for the role of outsider, the other, in the cultural imagination of white South Africa."

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Vryburg's Jews were not cowed. In an article that Anney Garnett unearthed from the Northern News of 1915 (20 November) a George Green – who managed a C. Stark and Company (Curnow Siding branch), published an apology to the local Jews for an offensive advertisement in the Northern News. This apology would indicate that the local Jewish community protested and may have threatened a boycott. The fact that the local community was willing to flex their economic muscle, would seem to indicate a level of mobilization as a collective and a growing sense of confidence - economically as individuals and as a collective.

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In 1916, we have Woolf Friedman rebutting a letter penned by a "British Born." The author had taken issue with Russian Jews, who had not joined the war effort. The implicit and familiar canard was that of Jewish dual loyalty. During the Great Depression, the situation became ever more precarious. Jews had to contend with Greyshirts and rising anti-Jewish agitation from the Nationalist Party.

 

The Immigration Quota Restriction Law:

Reverend Bernard Wulf shared with Eve Horwitz (a former Vryburger who moved to Cape Town) his perspectives of growing anti-Semitism in the late 1920s, which culminated in the passing of the Quota Act in May 1930. The law was championed by the Minister of Interior D.F. Malan. Though Wulf was based in Upington, I think it gives us a good sense of the atmosphere in Vryburg. It is taken from his amazing Kaplan Centre interview.

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BW: Their argument was Eastern European Jews are tainted with Communism, they said you come from Russia, everything is Russia, you come from a little shtetel from what's name then you are a Russian and maybe there was that anti-Semitic feeling against the Jews, and afterwards when Malan came to power and he was minister, he brought in the Quota Act, he said God forbid not against the Jews, it was against the Eastern Europe which was communistically ... and he excluded the Jew~ but he had to take in a lot of German Jews afterwards because the Act was not.

EH: Do you think politicians would gain favour by being anti Jewish, would they gain favour by being anti Jewish?

BW: Don't forget it was a time of Depression, a very big proportion of the Afrikaner were the poor whites, life is difficult then you look for scapegoats and the Jew is a scapegoat, in yiddish there is a saying "Ven orem keit cumt arayn in hoyse, der sholem beis geyt aroys" (When poverty come into a house, peace goes out) that's the way we must look at it ..

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This law froze the flow of Jews from Eastern Europe to South Africa and towns like Vryburg. One wonders how many Jews may have been spared from the Holocaust. 

 

After the Great Trek Centennial of 1938 and the outbreak of World War Two, a year later the local Jews faced the Ossewabrandwag. Anti Semitism was further exacerbated by South Africa's decision to fight with the Allies against the Nazis. In a 2021 book, entitled Hitler's South African Spies, author Evert Kleynhans, discloses that Vryburg was a hotbed of pro-Nazi activity. An Israel Times new article notes that the Ossewabrandwag leader, Hans Van Rensburg "worked with German confederates — including an Abwehr German military intelligence recruit named Hans Rooseboom who reported on political intelligence within South Africa. After Rooseboom fell out of favor with Van Rensburg, a different German operative took over: Lothar Sittig, code named “Felix.” From his base in the town of Vryburg, Sittig established direct two-way radio contact between South Africa and Germany, bypassing the need for a relay station in nearby Mozambique, then a colony of neutral Portugal." Five decades later the Afrikaner Weerstands Beweeging (AWB) loomed large in Vryburg. 

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In the end, the community folded, as Jews left for the larger towns and later cities. Often, they followed their children.

 

The story of Vryburg's Jewish community is special and unique to those of us who come from the town. It is however not dissimilar from the history of several score communities in rural South Africa and indeed smaller towns in other countries. The Vryburg Jewish story is also part of the wider Jewish story and exodus from Eastern Europe in search of greener pastures. Sadly, the Vryburg story is now being played out in the larger Jewish communities as South Africa's Jews migrate, again. 

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