Milton Shain
Antisemitism in South Africa: A Perfect Storm, 1930-1948

Milton Shain - Antisemitism in South Africa: A Perfect Storm, 1930-1948

- Last week, we looked at the evolution of an anti-Jewish stereotype in South Africa from the late 19th century, taking it to 1930, when something of a bombshell was dropped with the Quota Act, in which the lifeblood of South African Jewry was blocked, the artery from Lithuania. And Jews no longer were able to come in any substantial numbers to South Africa. It came as a great shock. But if you look at the notion of the Jew over the previous 40 years, it’s not a complete surprise. However, the attitudes towards the Jew were very much in the minds of people. There was no Jewish question, as such. That was going to change. And today, I’m going to discuss that change. It’s the idea of moving from private antisemitism into programmatic antisemitism in a particular context. Let me say something about that context. The background, the envelope in which what I’m going to talk about operates. Firstly, there was the Wall Street collapse in the Great Depression, that factors in. In addition, one has social and economic and political turmoil in the South African body politic. The ruling government had been a coalition between labour and the National Party, under General Hertzog, the powerful party. And they’ve come together in 1924. And that would end in 1933. And the National Party would get into a coalition with Jan Smuts. In addition to the instability of a political and social kind, there was also the rise of Afrikaner nationalism. And that was a long time in coming, but by the 1930s, all the gears were in action to bring into focus ethnic mobilisation.

It was a particular moment of folkish Afrikaner nationalism. It’s the nationalism that eventually led to the 1948 victory for the National Party. The whole idea was to mobilise ethnic-speaking Afrikaners, who up to then weren’t all in one camp. And increasingly, they became so. In the story, it was possible to use the Jews, not only the Jews, but it was possible to use the Jews as a way of papering over class divisions and to help in the ethnic coherence of the Afrikaner. And I’ll say this because the Jews numbering about 4.7% of the White population, and again, on Thursday, I’ll talk about Black attitudes, but at this point, Blacks saw the White population as oppressive and they didn’t break things down into ethnic groups. But the small Jewish population was largely moving towards the cities and had quite a high profile in South Africa, insofar as they were visible in the urban centres. And against that, the Afrikaner nationalists could mobilise and talk about the Jews dominating the society. And this appealed particularly to the so-called poor White Afrikaner. Poor White Afrikaners had their origins in the late 19th century, people who for various reasons moved off the land, unskilled in many cases, into the cities where the Jew seemed to be dominant, in their minds, or one could at least tell them that it was the Jew who was exploiting them. And this is important in the 1930s.

Another feature was there was a tussle over the notion of South Africanism. There was a search for what it means to be a White South African. And the Jew was certainly, for most people, seen as a race apart, part of that evolution of the stereotype earlier on, which we spoke about last week. So all these factors came together. And added to that was the Jew who was seen as subversive. And we spoke about the Rand Rebellion, we spoke about the Bolshevik Fear, the Red Scare. There were Jews, many of them immigrants, with a Bundis background or even a Bolshevik background, who had come to South Africa, were fairly visible on the left. And what particularly concerned the Afrikaners or the Afrikaner nationalists was that these working class activists were doing their best to bring in Afrikaner workers into the fold on the left. In other words, to break them away from the folk. And this concerned those folkish entrepreneurs who were doing their best to mould all Afrikaners under one umbrella.

So that’s the broad context in which we see the evolution. It’s interesting that just after the Quota Act of 1930, D.F. Malan, who will become Prime Minister in 1948, D.F. Malan gave a long interview in the “National Party Daily de Berger” in 1931, in fact, in which he spoke of concern that the Jews were angry at the Quota Act and were maliciously trying to undermine him and his party, particularly his own constituency. And he said the following words, “It’s very easy to arouse opposition against the Jews in this country.” And that was disturbing. We are talking about 1931. Shortly after that, a professor of engineering, of German extraction, who had come to South Africa via Bradford, professor of electrical engineering at the University of Cape Town, a fellow by the name of Hermann Bohle, he started forming Hitlerist societies. This is before Hitler becomes chancellor in Germany. And Professor Bohle was a serious Nazi. And he started moving around the country and creating these small societies, which got some press attention, but nothing too serious. Interestingly, his son was at SACS, the South African College School, in Cape Town, and his son would go on to become a famous Nazi, ending up in the Nuremberg Trials and showing some contrition and spending a few years in jail because his son became the head of the Auslands-Organisation, beginning with Southwest Africa, which was old German territory taken over by South Africa. The League of Nations gave it as a mandate to the Union government. Well, his son began to run the overseas empire for the Nazis, was very close to Hitler’s deputy Hess, and had quite a stellar record in the 1930s, joining the SS and rising to some fame within those ugly circles. That was Wilhelm Bohle.

His father kept on pushing the Hitlerist idea, getting some traction in the media but nothing too much. The real moment in which one sees the impact of European fascism can be dated. It’s the 26th of October, 1933, when Louis Weichardt holds a meeting at the coffee house down the road from Parliament, a well-known place in which parliamentarians would get into discussions and whispers about matters of the day. When Louis Weichardt, who had been born in Paarl, outside Cape Town, whose mother was widowed, she married a German teacher, and Weichardt went to a German school in Natal until the age of 12, 13, and then went to Germany and fought in the First World War for the Germans. Came back to South Africa a rather disillusioned man. He felt that the Jews were controlling this country, South Africa. And he launched the South African Christian Gentile Movement with rowdy applause and people giving Heils and screaming with all those stereotypes we spoke about last week. Peruvians, when it came to the Jews. He spoke about the disproportionate involvement of Jews, how well they were doing at the expense. They were involved in illicit diamond buying, illicit gold buying. But the people who got caught were the non-Jews. All those sort of ideas permeated the discussion that night, which was very, very rowdy at the coffee house, late October, 1933. He began the movement by travelling around, and a year later, formed the South African National Party with a swastika on its emblem. Meanwhile, the followers wore grey shirts.

So they were a shirtist movement, patently following the Brown Shirts or the other shirtist groups in Europe at that time. It was unabashed. He had no problem saying he supported Hitler and Hitler was very good. He travelled around the country, remarkable amount of travel he did, forming this party, but not getting all that much traction. And then in 1934, his movement, the Grayshirts, one of his followers, one of the important people in it, a fellow by the name of Johannes Strauss von Moltke, also with a father of German extraction, but English-speaking, he gave a talk for the Grayshirts in Aberdeen in the Eastern Cape, the central marketplace, hot day. And he spoke about a major conspiracy in South Africa, led by the Jews conspiring to take over. And he would give the full story the following week in Port Elizabeth, where there’d been many rowdy Grayshirt meetings, some with blood on the floor. And a week later, the details were spelled out absolutely in full that they had found this document, signed by the rabbi of the synagogue in Port Elizabeth. And of course, that led to the Grayshirt Trial because they had libelled the so-called rabbi, it was actually Reverend Levy. But because they had libelled an individual, in terms of our law, this could be a perfect test case.

So the Jewish Board of Deputies got behind it and it went to the Grahamstown High Court and was shown in quite a dramatic trial to be a fabrication. And I think many of you will have listened to Dennis Davis talk about the Grayshirt Trial. So that was in 1934. Showing that it was a fabrication had no impact on these far-rightists, nothing whatsoever. They continued to move around the country in great numbers. One particular fellow I’ll talk about on Thursday night, fellow by the name of Ray Rudman in Natal, a horticulturalist, he was horrific in what he said about the Jews and how they’re trying to, as he put it, “Enslave the goyim.” And they like snakes. And the Talmud is a tome of great danger. The usual stuff, this is European antisemitism in its classical sense. Ray Rudman becomes an important figure, very uneducated, but well-connected and absolutely obsessed by the Jew. Ray Rudman is moving around Natal. There are quite a few German areas where he speaks because there’d been a German migration there in the 19th century. And there’s quite a bit of traction. There are a lot of meetings. And in fact, rather than dampen these far-right shirtist movements, by 1936, there were about five or six major shirtist movements. The Grayshirts were the major ones. And if you talk to elderly Jews in South Africa today, they still recall the Grayshirts. They were often fights at the city hall steps in Johannesburg, the Grand Parade in Cape Town.

These were very concerning times for Jewish leaders. And these movements, all one kind or another of a fascist variety. One of the people who broke away from Weichardt was von Moltke, who formed his own fascist society. Often they fought with each other, these people. They were not particularly clever, they were ambitious, but they formed their own groups very often. They were the Black Shirts, there were a number of them. And coming into the mix was Johann De Waal, who was a more important figure because his father had been a prominent political figure in the Cape. And De Waal wrote a book, , “My Awakening,” in which he explained how he came to understand what the Jews were doing to the non-Jews, brought into whole of conspiracies, and included “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” in his book. So what we see now is that that far-right movement is spreading across the political spectrum and influencing those on the right. The one person they began to influence, in terms of politics and in terms of his own interest, was D.F. Malan. D.F. Malan, as I said, had been a cabinet minister in the PAC government, the Labour National Party Coalition.

He had been the one who introduced the Quota Act, the quota call. And D.F. Malan began to look to his right. He was worried about what’s going on behind his shoulders with these extremists. It’s very difficult to gauge whether Milan began to believe in these ideas, or if for simple political reasons, and he was something of opportunist, if for political reasons, he turned to the far right and began to ape some of the worst of the ideas expounded by these shirtists. And he certainly did this. It was quite ugly. And you could say he came out of his shell on the Jewish question by about 1936. At the same time, in this quest to mould the Afrikaners into a powerful folk that would capture power at some point, at the same time as this was happening, the ethnic entrepreneurs, as they’ve been called by some historians, began to focus on the Jewish question. And a lot of that’s settled on the University of Stellenbosch, where key Afrikaner intellectuals, some of them are educated in Germany or Holland, were among those concerned about the influx of Jews. Now, that influx was very important. Firstly, must appreciate there were Jews on the left, or at least visible on the left.

There were Jews who were upwardly mobile, undeniably so. The mid-‘30s, it’s still early days. By the '50s, '60s, it’s much more so. But by the mid-'30s, it was quite clear that Jews were climbing the ladder in many cases. And this was of concern and could be used to mobilise Afrikaners in the quest for power. The National Party began to recognise this. Now, let me just spell out the National Party. I pointed out that there was a PAC government between '24 and '33. Soon after that, the Labour Party drifted away, some absorbed by the National Party, and under the instability of the early '30s, Smuts and Hertzog got together to form the United Party with Hertzog as the prime minister. This was too much to swallow for D.F. Malan. He was not prepared to be part of this movement. And he turned towards the ethnic direction and became the leader of the Purified National Party. That’s the party effectively that comes into power in 1948. And in that process, the Jews, at least for some people, loom large. As I’ll say, the ethnic entrepreneurs included a number of intellectuals, among them H.F. Verwoerd. H.F. Verwoerd, professor of sociology, very well trained in psychology. At Stellenbach, a young man, had been involved in looking at the poor White problem, would go on to become the editor of the “Transvala,” a National Party publication in the north.

His first op-ed that he wrote was on the Jewish question. And he wanted to curtail the power of Jews while denying that he was antisemitic, but having quotas on their involvement in certain professions because they were becoming disproportionately powerful in certain areas of life. That was Verwoerd writing that in 1937. But things had happened before then which stirred the pot. The German-Jewish influx. Remember, up to 1930, it had been East European immigrant movement to South Africa that was stopped. But once Hitler came to power, German Jewish refugees were looking to get out, and South Africa became a possibility. And that alarmed the White South African population in great numbers. It really did alarm them. The foreign office in Germany spoke about their concern. Eric Lowe, who we’ll hear more about just now, Eric Lowe became a foreign minister. He was an important person in the foreign ministry, minister plenipotentiary in Europe. He actually wrote and warned about this potential influx of more Jews who would now really take over South Africa if they came in. So there were increasing calls to plug the loophole that existed in the wake of the Quota Act, which only focused on Eastern European Jews. And that became a debating point, a very serious debating point. At Stellenbosch University, the professors regularly held meetings.

The far-rightists, the shirtists I’ve spoken of, Weichardt, van Moltke, De Waal, they went around the country warning against Jewish immigration. This became a hot political potato, something to be used by the purified National Party under Milan. And Milan started aping the language of the far right. The professors gave intellectual ballast to the whole anti-Jewish immigration movement. The United Party was now under serious stress. It knew that it was losing ground to the National Party. It certainly was. There was the potential for danger. They could be ousted. And they did their best to engage with this question. But they didn’t want to be anti-Jewish, certainly not upfront. The Jewish establishment, the Jewish Board of Deputies, the representative voice of South African Jewry, they understood the problem. And they began to advise people abroad to try and slow down on German-Jewish immigration. Eventually, the United Party began to look at the idea of assimilability. We mentioned this in the 1920s, last week I mentioned the notion of Nordicism. There was the sense across the White political divide that South African Whites inherited Nordic traditions, the English and Afrikaners, and came from a particular group, whereas the Jew was a race apart. And this came to the fore in the 1930s. The Jews were unassimilable. Of course we saw that in the 1920s. We saw it in the Cape Towns of BK Long. But now it became a big issue.

And they began to work around the notion of not mentioning Jews by name, but rather talking about Jews as being unassimilable, without mentioning them. And we can’t have unassimilable aliens entering the country, or we must have some test to get them in. The pressure was building. Stellenbosch was bubbling. Mass meetings at Stellenbosch. Eventually, under pressure, the United Party introduced financial strictures on immigrants coming in. It became very difficult for them to come in. They needed a certain amount of money. They couldn’t bring money out of Germany so easily. And under that pressure, it was going to… The new immigration plans were going to begin in November, 1936, one November. At that point, the board of deputies linking up with Jewish organisations, the overseas, organised for a ship to Stuttgart, with swastika on its flags, to bring South African… All 537 Jews to South Africa. And they got out and they were on the high seas on their way. And of course, the rightists, the Weichardts knew about this. And they were due to dock in Cape Town 27th October. There was a mass meeting at the coffee house again. Seemed to be a place where everyone launches the extremist movements, mass meeting. They said, “The ship is actually come in early,” and they rushed off. Hundreds rushed off to the Cape Town dock.

But the weather was poor and the ship was outside the dock, didn’t come in. But when it did come in, there at the side were swastikas and opposition. And among those was Hendrick Verwoerd, architect of apartheid later. Interestingly, this morning… I’d never been sure that Verwoerd was at the dockside. And I asked his latest biographer, a colleague in Germany, if he was there. And he assures me he was there and he used to brag about it. But he was there. The mob, many of them drunk, as I say, rushed to the docks, didn’t… Weren’t there. It was just a paltry few the following morning when the ship did dock. But certainly, the memories of Jews on that ship wondered what on Earth they were doing in South Africa looking over at the crowds on the key side with swastika flags. That was the Stuttgart. The fact that they had increased the financial demands on immigrants was not going to be enough. A few months later, in January, Milan introduced a private bill as a member of the opposition, the leader of the opposition, in fact, with his own immigration restrictions. And it was more than immigration. I mean, he wanted to actually marginalise these alien Jews. He wanted limitations and things like… This had been coming from the writers. If you look at the actual programmes of the far right movements, they wanted to curtail the power of Jews. It was not simply stop them coming in, but actually limit their rights in South Africa. And Milan was beginning to think in that direction as well. Well, this was a sudden private member’s bill, which had some debate in January, '37.

And under pressure, the United Party got together and introduced its own Aliens Bill, in which this notion of unassimilability was the criteria. The word Jew wasn’t mentioned. One knew who the targets were. The Jews knew who the targets were. But the Jews also recognised the potential for real trouble in this country with the Jewish question. That was in 1937. It didn’t stop the route. And one saw this in the 1938 general election. The Jew was used by many as a football for political gain by the far right talking about the Jewish question. It was quite a big issue in that election. Smuts won and won comfortably, but it was a moment that showed, revealed the temperature at the time in South Africa, as far as the Jews were concerned. This continued in 1930. At the same time, more or less around '38, Hans Van Rensburg, the administrator of the Orange Free State, a close friend, in fact had worked with Hertzog, the prime minister, he began to share his love for Nazism. He had been in Germany, travelled there, had been at the Olympic Games in Germany. And he fell in love with the Nazi idea. He was part of those pushing, again, to take the story even further. Then in 1938, the centenary of the Great Trek, the Ossewabrandwag, sort of paramilitary movement, supposedly a cultural movement, but part of this folkish Afrikaner nationalism, celebrated the centenary with an ox-wagon trek, march to Pretoria, to the Voortrekker Monument.

Van Rensburg was very involved. He wasn’t the leader at that point, but he would become leader a couple of years later, of the Ossewabrandwag. So when it came to South Africa entering the Second World War, in support of the commonwealth war effort, it was a very divided society. And in fact, it was only a few votes that saw South Africa go into the war and join the commonwealth effort. This was too much for many South Africans, particularly the far right. They would not be prepared to fight against Germany. On the one hand, they had memories of British oppression, colonialism, world war. On the other, they had very good relations with Germany. And so the entry into the war saw Hertzog join Milan. Hertzog was very old at that stage, and he joined Milan and the opposition party, now fed by the ideas of the Ossewabrandwag. And within that, you have a sort of intellectual think tank within it called the Nouveau Order, under Oswald Pirow, who had become a lead prosecutor 20 years later or so, in the treason trial. We can mention that in a couple of days time, when I speak. But 1939 sees a struggle for the soul of Africanism. And the seductive noises from Germany are heard far and wide, at least until 1942, '43, when the war turns.

But the idea of Nazism and the idea of fascism is expressed in many documents and it just didn’t end up directly that way, although nothing to write home about in apartheid period, but it wasn’t classically fascist in that sense. But these early periods in '39, '40, '41 were serious fascists with Van Rensburg leading the Ossewabrandwag, people being interned. The Nouveau Order giving intellectual ideas to a new South Africa and Milan towing the line. Interestingly enough, Hertzog many years later gets interviewed… Not many years later, around that time. Gets interviewed by one of the British consuls about the Jewish question. And it’s quite apparent that he had bought into the idea of the Nazis vis-a-vis the Jews. He saw them as being too dominant, of causing the first world war, of exploiting during the war. It’s quite fascinating. It’s a little-known document, but Hertzog was on board. But he was a little bit old and out of it. But Milan was young, ambitious, and there was a major battle for the soul of the Afrikaner between 1938 and I’d say 1943. And by '43, with the war turning, Milan turns away, and even Verwoerd, from the corporate fascist idea of a single-party state, towards parliamentary democracy. He does accept it as being important. The actual later war years, as things turned and as the revelations became obvious, and immediately after the war, when one saw the photographs that we all know so well, of the campus, et cetera, this was denied by the far right. They simply didn’t believe that this had happened. And the press played it down or they relativized it and said, “Look what the British have done and the bombings of the city’s Hamburg or Dresden. Or look at, how can they talk after Hiroshima and Nagasaki?”

So that became an important dimension of the post-war period. But the Jewish question somehow receded. The measurements of anti-Semitism at university were high. People investigated that. But the Jewish question, as such, as a great pool were… Somehow reclined and declined. And it became easier, although it was still pretty terrifying for those Jews in 1946 and '47. So what we’ve seen then, if we look back at what I’ve called the Jewish Question or the Jewish Problem in South Africa, we see that the context was perfect for the far right. They could build on it through their folkish institutions that had already been established decades earlier. The , the , all these movements, Afrikaner business was developing. That was the context. And the Jew became something of a political football to be used in mobilising the poor Whites, particularly, but Afrikaner nationalists as well. Not every Afrikaner was part of that, but increasingly they came under the fold, as we know, by 1948 and thereafter. The upward mobility of the Jew was for all to see. The threat of German-Jewish refugees coming into the country was not imaginary, in the sense that they would come. But the numbers, by the way, were really small. We’re talking about a few thousand. Not talking about what we see in Europe today with refugees moving in tens and even hundreds of thousands across. It wasn’t that. But it still worried the South Africans who were struggling for a sense of White identity. I also want to point out that the early fascist movements under Weichardt and others, particularly Weichardt, were trying to incorporate English speakers.

Weichardt ran a newspaper from 1934, called , slash “The Truth,” in English and Afrikaans, and edited secretly by another professor from University of Cape Town, the Shriner chair of law, Ker Wiley, who was a rabid anti-Semite. And Ker Wiley was secretly editing but they want to bring in English people. They want to have a corporate state along the fascist model. And it was not part of the Afrikaner folkish movement. But they were worried about the folkish movement. And despite someone like Weichardt standing in Port Elizabeth in early 1936 in the constituency of North End, despite Weichardt not doing well, it worried the mainstream, and they set the agenda. It’s a little bit like South Africa today with immigration and these targeted immigration movements who moved towards the centre and worry the centre. That extreme right moved across. We see, in this period, '30 to the early '40s, a Jewish question which is on the fringes of society, rapidly moving to the centre of South African politics. Not the only issue, obviously not, but certainly an important one, one that could be used, mobilised, and with some very, very ugly characters. They’re not all going to disappear. We are going to hear more of them in my next lecture. I think it’s a good time to take questions. Can the questions be read out?

Q&A and Comments:

Q - [Moderator] Yes, they can. Sorry, I was just in the toilet. I was like “Quick!” Bad timing. Right, okay, thank you so much for that. So first question is from Shelly and she said, “Did White Afrikaners think they were Aryans because of their Dutch roots?”

A - Yes, Shirley, they had a connection to Europe. Nordic stock was the notion they used. Aryan came up occasionally, but the notion was Nordic. And they certainly thought in racial categories. And of course, looking at the Jew as a race apart, in some ways presaged notions of separate development, different ethnic groups. The Jews were an ethnic group and a race. And the documents showed, if you saw some immigration forms, they spoke about groups, including Hebrews as a group.

Q - [Moderator] Fabulous. So next question is, what attracted the German migration in the late 1890s? I thought the Dutch we were… I don’t think he meant to say were. The prevailing population. And I always thought that the Dutch were more tolerant.

A - I’m sorry if I gave the impression of a massive German presence. There was obviously a colonial presence in German southwest Africa. Before the first World Wars settlers took off from Germany to southwest Africa. There was a constant German migration into parts of South Africa, Northern Natal, you see it in the names of small towns. That’s, by the way, where Weichardt goes to school, near Hanover, to a school there. But the Jewish migration has its origins of Afrikaners with the Dutch. The Dutch were tolerant in times in history, particularly relative to some of the other powers. And we know this with the Jewish migration, Spinoza’s period in Amsterdam. And there was a greater sensitivity. But right from the start, the Dutch East India company would not take non-Protestants. It wasn’t an anti-Jewish measure, it was anti-Catholic as well. So that tolerance didn’t go too far there when it came to their settler outposts.

• [Moderator] Fabulous. Next question is, and don’t know if it’s more of a question or a statement, but I’ll read it out to you anyway. So it says, “Monty, I grew up in a town in the Eastern Cape of South Africa in the '40s and '50s. My family were constantly subjected to hard anti-Semitism. When I moved to Cape Town in the '60s, I told people I was going to leave South Africa because of that. They looked at me in bewilderment, saying that they had never encountered anti-Semitism. How foolish not to realise that soft anti-Semitism was all around. I left in January, 1975 for London with my family.” So that was just a-

• That’s very interesting, Monty. Port Elizabeth was the home of the Grayshirts. The board of deputies estimated that there were about 4,000 members. Whether they were doing that for political reasons, I don’t know. But Port Elizabeth Hill, Monty, you’ll remember the Feather Market Hall. They had fights there and the Grayshirts were very upfront in Port Elizabeth. That’s where Weichardt stood and that’s where the leader of the Eastern Cape Grayshirts, von Moltke, who I mentioned with the Grayshirt Trial, he was working there. Another young leader, Harry Inch, had come from Port Elizabeth. So you were right in the thick of things. By the 1960s, as we’ll talk about in two days time, things had changed, although some ideas still persisted.

• [Moderator] Fabulous. Next question is from Bob. It says, “Please comment on the effect of Nambia,” I think it says, “On antisemitism for South Africa.”

• I think you mean Namibia?

• [Moderator] Namibia, yeah.

• Is that… The South African government really cottoned on very early on after Hitler came to power that there were Germans working on behalf of the Nazis in German southwest Africa, and trying to infiltrate South Africa. I mentioned Wilhelm Bohle, the son of the professor of electrical engineering at UCT, who became the important player in the Auslands-Organisation, in fact, the head. He started off working in southwest Africa, obviously feeling at home there. And there was a lot of connection between Weichardt and the Nazis in southwest Africa. In fact, money was coming through them as well, and there were investigations into southwest Africa. They exposed the Nazi links and they controlled it. They took it very, very seriously, the South African government under Hertzog, and Smuts as his deputy. Smuts in particular was concerned.

• [Moderator] Great. So Lorraine said, “My father left Poland and wanted to join his two brothers in Joburg in the '30s but couldn’t get in because of the quota, so I had to settle in Rhodesia.”

• That’s right.

Q - [Moderator] Yeah, then we’ve got, “Amazing talk. This was the story worldwide. The St. Louis was an example and they definitely were not welcoming into the U.S. The story does not change, tragically.” That was Rose. Then Ken has said, “What role, if any, did the Broederbond play in antisemitism in this period?

A - He’s referring to the Broederbond, which was a secret cultural organisation which had its hands in everything Afrikaans. Worked behind the scenes and continued and continues today under a different name. I don’t mean to say that it has the nefarious operations it had in the past, but it continues today. And it made sure it tied up with the Dutch Reform Church and it did everything to coordinate and get into gear the policies that allowed the National Party to come to power in 1948. But they originate in 1917 or '18. By the '30s, they’re pretty powerful. And you had to be a Broederbonder, a member of the Broederbond to really get somewhere in South Africa. It was what in today’s parlance, we talk about cadre deployment, well, that was cadre deployment, in capital letters.

Q - [Moderator] Okay. The next one is, "My late dad told me that as a young man, he and some of his friends had taken part in breaking up a fascist meeting in Klapmuts outside Paarl. Was this pre or post World War II?”

A - The Klapmuts meeting was outside Paarl, it was in early '30s and it was Weichardt’s crowd. Smuts did his best to stop public meetings with Weichardt. And they would go to private homes. But at the same time, Smuts kept on asking the Jewish leadership to tell the Jews not to go break up meetings. They’re drawing attention to the issue and must rather keep quiet. I must say, the record of Jews, anti-fascists, not only Jews, but Jews prominent in breaking up meetings, was substantial. In Johannesburg, the city hall became a site of physical struggle through the '30s, with these meetings. You had the Brown Shirts of Braverman and others, Haberman, sorry, and Vessels. You had the grand parade in Cape Town, those of you who know Cape Town, in front of the city hall. The Grand Parade saw serious fisticuffs at the time. It’s the shirtist movements that really attracted them. They didn’t go to mainstream National Party meetings to the same extent, but they were the key targets of the far-rightists or the shirtists.

Q - [Moderator] Great, next question is… Oh, it’s just more credit to you, saying, “Thank you for an excellent and clear presentation. I really learned a lot.” The next question is, what happened to the Jews on the ship?

A - The Jews on the ship were very well cared for by the local Jewish community. They were really cared for. Some went on to Durban, to Port Elizabeth, others in Cape Town. There was a huge luncheon for them. They were really cared for, and huge credit must go out. I don’t know if anyone in the audience remembers the Rafellis. The older Rafelli was very involved in helping these people. People often get jobs, got put onto trains to go up north. So they were cared for. But I can tell you, within days, there were the outcries against Jewish immigration. It continued very, very much so. And as I said, Stellenbosch University, with its intellectuals, Deidrichs was one of them who became president of South Africa, and other big names, Schumann, an economists at Stellenbosch, these were people ranting and raving in mass meetings while Weichardt was travelling around the Western Cape, in particular, and up in Piketberg having fights. It was a very rough time. It’s not for nothing I’ve referred to this being the Jewish question. Very, very different to the period we spoke about earlier where the ideas were percolating but no one was acting on them. You may recall that I spoke about the notion of private transferring into public or programmatic antisemitism, using an idea written about by Todd Endelman, the historian. Well, this was the moment of transition from private to programmatic.

Q - [Moderator] The next question is, “What about the response from the Jewish Board of Deputies? Our parents moved through South Africa to Rhodesia or warned they would be sent back by the South African government. Did Jewish authorities give approval, as we were meant to believe, led to believe?”

A - It’s the same story of when one reads about what happened to the Jews of Europe, and particularly Germany, and the question of getting out and the question of passing judgement on the receiving side. Everyone was closing the doors, as you know. No one knew what was coming. With hindsight, we see what was coming and it gives a different light to what was happening in the mid-'30s. No one could conceive of death camps or where it was going. And the Board of deputies could only, as a representative voice of South African Jewry, look at conditions in South Africa and recognise, rightly or wrongly, and I stress that, recognise that there may be far greater problems if they allowed more Jews in. They were pushed to get the Stuttgart going and did well in organising that with the Hillfaran in Germany. But they were very ambivalent about it. And they were trying to send messages back. With hindsight, it’s callous, it looks awful. But as an historian, one needs to get into the shoes of the actors at the time, not knowing what was to come. I’m not letting them off the hook in that sense. And there is some writing on questioning their judgement and decision making, but they were also concerned about the local community and picking up the vibrations of the far right.

Q - [Moderator] So the next question is from Howard. He says, “I matriculated,” is that how you say it? This is very challenging for my English. “At Herzlia in 1968, took history. We were taught nothing of what you’ve covered so well. Thoughts?”

A - Well, funnily enough, there was a very good teacher at Herzlia who started around then, Michael Cohen, who eventually got a doctorate on antisemitism in the '30s. He did an honours dissertation in the early '70s on this antisemitism, one of the first to really look at it. It was not ignored in the past, but it didn’t get that much attention. And Michael Cohen went on to teach in Australia. And in the latter part of his career, he’s still alive now, he did the dissertation which I saw. And in fact, I know Michael Cohen. So you might have just been on the cusp of when he was becoming aware of how bad it was. By the way, Michael Cohen originated in the old Rhodesia.

Q - [Moderator] Fabulous. The next question is, what role did Jewish organisations play at the time?

A - The Jewish organisations did very well, in the terms of help for jobs for people for raising finances to get through there initially, the strictures. There was always a very warm reception for Jews. There were some division between the German Jews and the established East Europeans. The Germans were known as , a notion that goes beyond South Africa. But generally, they integrated well. The German Jews built up their own institutions, later their own old age home. But the Jewish organisations were fully behind them and helped them integrate. I’m sure there’ll be some memories where people felt they weren’t treated as well as they ought to have been, but there was no real divide.

Q - [Moderator] The next question is, what was the position of the Dutch Reformed Church?

A - The Dutch Reformed Church, it’s a good question because that was another arm of Afrikaner nationalism. It was the National Party at Prayer, as someone said. And it drove an agenda, a political agenda. And within it, there were many voices that were opposed to immigration. Its periodical, made this quite clear. And I’m going to have more to say on that on Thursday. But the Dutch Reformed Church, the Broederbond, and these arms like the , the Federation of Afrikaner Culture and other groups are all part of a matrix that goes into the making of Afrikaner nationalism. It wasn’t just there, it had to be mobilised, and didn’t have to go the way it went. But the so-called ethnic entrepreneurs did very well, including the businesses, the Afrikaans business, like Sand Lam and so forth. And they also did a lot to uplift the poor White Afrikaner with the and other organisations to help Afrikaners in the city.

Q - [Moderator] Great. Lots more positive comments about your fantastic talk. The next one is, what was the role of the DRC during this time and what influenced the subsequent support of Israel after the Nats took power?

A - DRC, I presume, is the Dutch Reformed Church, that’s being referred to, I think, and then I’ve answered that earlier. As far as the Israel connection and what happens later, I’ll be talking about that on Thursday in some depth.

Q - [Moderator] Great. Was there any encouragement of Jews as a skilled asset to South Africa by the body politic?

A - Sorry, can you just repeat the question?

Q - [Moderator] Sure. Was there any encouragement of Jews as a skilled asset to South Africa by the body politics?

A - And you say, was there anyone pushing for Jews to bring their skills in? Is that what’s meant?

• I’m not sure.

• I’m not sure.

• [Moderator] I’m not too sure on that one. Should I go into-

• If the question is concerned with recognising what Jews can contribute to society, there was never any push to bring Jews into the country in that sense. There were people who praised Jews for their entrepreneurship in all White politics, but they didn’t have any policy of let’s attract Jewish skilled entrepreneurs, et cetera.

Q - [Moderator] Okay, the next one is, did the Jews speak English and Afrikaans equally?

A - The Jews that came to South Africa settled in urban areas and in the small towns in the countryside. The latter learnt Afrikaans very often as a new language and a first language in South Africa, in that sense. But they soon began to move to the cities. They soon realised that English was the language of commerce. Afrikaners had to learn English, so that became the dominant language for the new immigrants. But many still were called , sort of Afrikaans Dutch Jews. And they spoke Afrikaans comfortably. But that increasingly died out as urbanisation takes hold and the move to this large cities and commerce. And most Jews moved into professions and into commerce. And so English became their language. And politically, they supported Jan Smuts as well. The United Party was their party at first. Smuts was seen as a great friend of the Jews and a great friend of the incipient Jewish state.

Q - [Moderator] Okay, so did D.F. Malan send some of his people to Canada to learn how the Canadian dealt with their indigenous population, and this resulted in the creation of the Bantu stands in South Africa?

A - We know that Hendrick Verwoerd, the architect of apartheid, and there’s some debate of this in the literature, but Verwoerd got some ideas from the United States. Canada does not come up in any great way as a model in that sense. Not either for or against. But there is a trail of some connection with the United States and it’s race problems. Many of the Afrikaners also studied in Germany, where they imbibed the folkish ideas. And in some cases, as we’ve seen this evening, they imbibed the notion of the corporate state, the opposition to British-Jewish liberalism. They called it that, that was the attack. British-Jewish parliamentarians, those were the being flown around throughout the '30s.

Q - [Moderator] The next question is, when was the large immigration of Jews out of South Africa? Many came to the U.S.

A - South Africa has waves of immigration, beginning after the Sharpeville Massacre in early '60s, they began to move. Many went to the United Kingdom. The '70s, after the Soweto Uprising, they began to move more to North America, Canada, and the United States. The instability of the '80s saw many Jews move again, to Australia. Now of course, I haven’t mentioned Israel. There’d been a steady flow to Israel all the time, in these various migrations, but it became very noticeable with the North America and Australian moves. But Israel continued to get Jews. And in later study, for those interested, there seems to be an increasing number who choose Israel as a destination, should they immigrate.

Q - [Moderator] Lovely. You’ve got a lovely, another comment that says, “Thank you so much, you are an amazing teacher. I have learned so much.” The next question is, my father and uncle served with South African forces in World War II. Was there discrimination against Jews in the forces at that time?

A - There was no discrimination. Jews served with great pride and success. The numbers were high. Many died, including my late father’s brother in Italy. But many others did, and they fought, and they have a proud record.

Q - My father was an immigrant from Germany to South Africa and then ended up in South Africa army, fighting Rommel in North Africa. How did that happen?

A - Well, they were part of the South African forces and South African forces were involved in the battles of North Africa, El Alamein and others. And Rommel was of course on the German side. And they would’ve been fighting there, it’s not surprising.

Q - The next one is, there has been an attempt to remove Rhodes’ statue at UCT. Has there been an attempt to change the name of De Waal Park in CT?

A - De Waal Park. It’s not the same De Waal who I mentioned with the book , but there’s been no talk of change in De Waal Park. I live very nearby and I would hate to learn another word to take my dog for a walk.

Q - [Moderator] The next question is, what happened to the fascist anti-Semitic Afrikaans during World War II, given South Africa was in the Commonwealth, were they considered dangerous?

A - That’s a good question. Especially the vocal ones and ones that the security forces were watching. And I’m thinking of the Ossewabrandwag, those people, many were interned, including our friend Ray Rudman. And they were watched very, very carefully. And there’s an interesting literature on that.

Q - [Moderator] I think we may have covered all of the questions. There’s quite a lot of comments, I’m just checking. An eye-opening, absolutely outstanding presentation. Oh, I don’t think I’ve asked you this one, have I? How Zionist was the Jewish community of South Africa in the 1930s?

A - Relatively exceptional. Right from the start, Zionism had been accepted by the broader White population. You recall a few minutes ago, I spoke about the battle for South Africanism and the Jews being a sort of race apart. There was never an objection across the White political spectrum to the Zionist idea. So Jews felt comfortable. It wasn’t a case of having to melt away or assimilate. They could have dual loyalties and they were encouraged in this. And that’s an important dimension of South African Jewish identity. In fact, one may go so far as to say it’s the civil religion of South African Jewry. It’s been under assault in the last couple of decades, quite powerfully from all sectors, and the perhaps greater divides today within the Jewish community of a political kind on Israel. But historically, and as you’re asking the 1930s, the community was taking off. Of course there was an opposition to Zionism as well, on the left, the old Bundist tradition, which was hostile to Zionism. The Austria communist tradition was hostile. And they existed. And perhaps understated in the history. But it would be silly to ignore how powerfully Zionist the community was.

Q - [Moderator] Jews had first to pay in Germany to get out, then have enough money to get into South Africa. In Joburg, German Jews had to put an official identification paper inside their front doors for inspection. Would this have been one of Malan’s structures or strictures?

A - It was probably the security people looking at enemy aliens, it’s possible. I don’t know about that. I’m assuming it’s something to do with internship of enemy aliens who would be from Germany, not necessarily Jewish.

Q - [Moderator] And I think this is the last question, which again, my apologies for the pronunciation, is can you tell us about the Ossewabrandwag?

A - The Ossewabrandwag, which means Ox Waggon Sentinel, formed by Afrikaners to celebrate the centenary of the Great Trek, that seminal moment in South African history in 1838, when Afrikaners moved from the Cape Colony into the interior. And they built the Voortrekker Monument outside Pretoria and they marched from Cape Town in ox waggons. They went across by ox waggons. Grew beards like the fur trackers of old, as they were called, in the 19th century, those people moving out. It was a key moment in Afrikaner cultural history. The first leader of the Ossewabrandwag, a fellow by the name of Laas, L-A-A-S. But Hans van Rensburg took over and he, as I said, was a great lover of Nazism and quite open about it. The movement captured the attention of both Afrikaners and of the security police. Many were interned during the war. And many were involved in subversive activities. And there was even the attempt to consider overthrowing the official government under Smuts. And the most important attempt was that of Robi Labrot, a South African who was in love with Nazism as well, being a famous boxer. And he was dropped off the coast of southwest Africa to get across and foment a revolution.

Q - [Moderator] Great, and I do think this is actually the last one, which is, growing up in Oudtshoorn from 1938, I remember Jewish shops being burnt down. Which fraction of the Afrikaans was responsible for this?

A - Those shops in Oudtshoorn in the Southern Cape, it’s the ostrich feather centre. It had had its heyday until the Great War, 1914. There was trouble and there was mobilisation around Oudtshoorn. And shops were burnt down. And the people doing it would’ve been mainstream Afrikaner nationalists, not necessarily the shirtist movements, although one can’t be sure some weren’t involved. But the mainstream nationalists were very involved and hostile to Jews in Oudtshoorn.

Q - [Moderator] We’ve also just had two more questions come in if you are okay for time. The first one is, did you go to Highlands?

• Did I go to Highlands?

• [Moderator] Yeah, that’s the question. Did you go to Highlands?

A - I think you mean Herzelier, the school in Highlands? No, I didn’t.

Q - [Moderator] Okay, and then the other one was, “I understand that Afrikaans admired Jews as the People of the Book, no?” Question mark.

A - That was one of the opening things I explored last week, insofar as I spoke about a revisionist historiography that has undermined the notion of Afrikaners, wall to wall admiring the People of the Book and having very warm relations. I did stress that there were many instances of goodwill shown by Afrikaners towards the peddlers in the country areas, accommodation given and help given and respect. There’s no doubt about that. On the other hand, there was another dimension to the story in which the poor Jew peddling his goods in the countryside was a figure of fun at best, and often seen as an exploiter. Once they had opened a store, which was not seen as entrepreneurial success, it was rather seen as exploitative success. The man with a pack on his back only got there because of dishonesty.

• [Moderator] And the final question, they love it, they’re coming in with the questions, was there any antisemitism amongst non-Afrikaans, as in South Africa.

• Amongst non-Afrikaners, I think it’s meant.

• [Moderator] Yeah, I think that’s what it said.

• Certainly so. As I mentioned, the far-right Grayshirts tried to incorporate English speakers. At a subtle level, social ostracism and so forth. There was support. The 1930 Quota Act was across the language and political divide. The 1936 developments and immigration showed no distinction, English were behind stopping unassimilable Jews. But that didn’t mean to say that they were out on the walk off against Jews all over. Certainly not.

Q - [Moderator] Lovely, and I think that is… Oh, another one, we’ve got another one. My dad emigrated from Germany to South Africa in 1937. Would they have had to pay, and if so, how?

A - Well they were… Very few got in from ‘37 to '40, but some did. And they would’ve had to hand over some money when they docked. And it wasn’t simply the Jews offering a job or proving that they’re going to be employed, they had to have a cash amount. But your father was lucky to get in.

• [Moderator] Okay, I think that is all of the questions and all of the other comments are just complimenting you on your fabulous teaching and your lecture. So-

• Thank you.

• [Moderator] Thank you very much, and apologies for my pronunciation for any of the questions.

• You’ve done very well with it.

• [Moderator] It’s very challenging. Thank you so much for your talk and for joining in this evening. Have a lovely rest of day and evening, wherever you are tuning in from.

• Thanks for attending.

• [Moderator] Thank you so much, bye-bye.