The legacy of immigration
Exploring the legacy of the political ideologies and organisations that Jewish immigrants brought with them from Eastern Europe
“It was very interesting that Eastern European Jews who had arrived in South Africa understood Marxism and Communism and the politics of race in European terms. In Europe, they were excluded from the society, and lived in ghettos set aside in practice for them. In SA, they were part of the dominant society.
"But they saw things in terms of Europe, not in terms of the national oppression of all South Africans who were not white. The impact, despite the differences, was that they [immigrant Jewish activists] understood a lot and their natural sympathy was to organise amongst African people.”
Denis Goldberg
Jews made up a disproportionate percentage of white South Africans who identified unreservedly with the national liberation struggle, and in doing so, played a vital role in ultimately overthrowing the Apartheid regime. These Jewish radicals did not act as representatives of the Jewish community, but were nevertheless connected by a set of cultural practices, personal connections, and historical memories that shaped their ideological foundations.
During the early 20th century, Jewish communities across the Russian Empire experienced virulent anti-Semitism, discrimination, social isolation, economic hardship and harassment. In this milieu, socialism gained traction with some members of the Eastern European Jewish community as a mechanism to achieve political and social equality. This ethnic political connection, conceived in the struggle against Tsarist tyranny, was the catalyst for many Jews in Eastern Europe to join trade unions, and to identify with socialism.
Jews immigrated to South Africa in significant numbers from the 1870s, to escape grinding poverty and racially-fueled violence in their home countries in Eastern Europe. [numbers of immigrants and origins] Some brought this heritage of socialist politics — and communal values of respect and kindness — with them, and settled in South Africa with an openness to radical positions, and a historically-informed capacity for empathy with the oppressed.
Though Jews who immigrated to South Africa ultimately came to be regarded as white, some transplanted traditions of radicalism to their new homeland. New arrivals and offspring could imbibe these values from their social environment, and from Jewish ethnic institutions through which consciousness and community was expressed, such as book clubs, boarding houses, synagogues, schools, youth movements, trade unions, etc.
Growing up in one of South Africa’s Jewish immigrant neighbourhoods — in Johannesburg’s working class areas of Doornfontein, Yeoville, or Hillbrow, for instance — Jews were frequently exposed to socialist beliefs and to communist tendencies inspired by their own, or their parents’ experiences in Eastern Europe. In many cases, this exposure later transitioned to radicalism.
Drawing of the Lion’s Shul in 1907, from O. Norwich’s ‘A Johannesburg Album’. (source)
Photograph with Doornfontein in the background, Johannesburg Saga. (source)
These processes characterized the journeys into radical activism of a number of prominent activists in the SACP, many of whom were involved in the Treason Trial of 1956.
Similar trajectories were followed by a number of other prominent activists:
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Born in 1915 in London, to Russian-Jewish immigrants Simeon and Dora Schwarz. When Hilda was 10 years old, her father, a committed Bolshevik and secular Jew, who had been the Russian Trade Attaché to Britain, was recalled to the Soviet Union. He could never return to Britain, and so after his death, when she was 18, she emigrated to South Africa. She became active in radical politics, becoming a member first of the South African Labour Party, and later the SACP, where she served on the Party's district and national executive committee. Through her political activities, Hilda met Lionel "Rusty" Bernstein, whom she married in March 1941. In 1943 she was elected to the city council of Johannesburg by a then all-white electorate, the only member of the Communist Party to do so. She used this position for three years as a platform for publicising the injustices of apartheid. She was a founding member of FEDSAW (Federation for South African Women), the first non-racial women’s organisation in South Africa, and was one of the organisers of the Women’s March in 1956.
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Born in Lithuania in 1921, Pauline emigrated to South Africa at age 11, although her father had immigrated a few years earlier. Her father was involved with an influential group of socialists, and she remembers this having a significant impact on her political development: “I grew up in an atmosphere of communist ideology. My father was a very positive - not socialist, not liberal, but communist…he was very uncompromising, and in our family home they used to have discussions at night, a group of men would come ‘round (Lazar Bach, Eddie Roux, Ronnie Fleet, Adler) who used to meet and talk communism. I was supposed to be in bed and I wasn’t allowed to listen in but I used to sneak up to the door outside and crouch on the floor and listen. And was very influenced by what I heard. I made up my mind to be a communist too, like my father.” She joined the CPSA in the mid-1930s, and became very involved with trade unions. During this time, she met H.A. Naidoo, a prominent Indian trade unionist and CPSA leader, whom she married in 1950.
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Rowley was born in 1918 to Lithuanian immigrant Jews who lived in Ermelo, Mpumalanga. Conscious that his parents had fled to South Africa to escape from pogroms and political persecution in Eastern Europe, Rowley naturally gravitated towards the anti-Fascist, non-racial struggle that was led by the Communist Party. He grew up to be a prominent attorney, a leading SACP member, and a leader of the Congress of Democrats. He joined the Communist Party in 1938, and became a prominent organizer for the Durban branch of the Party. He was banned under the Suppression of Communism Act in 1953. He suffered the longest period of banning in South African history (28 years) and endured the longest house-arrest (18 years), but during this time, Rowley continued in his capacity as a lawyer to defend persons accused of political offenses.
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Born in Latvia in 1913, where she became involved in the underground Latvian Communist Party. She immigrated to South Africa in 1929 where, embedded in the Marxist tradition rooted in her Latvian origins, she joined the CPSA — and the liberation struggle — within 5 days of her arrival. She rose to prominence organising workers in the 1930s, and later served as secretary of the CPSA. She was also the General Secretary of the Food and Canning Workers Union, and a founding member of the Federation of South African Women (FEDSAW). She remembers growing up in a cultured home, with a committed socialist father who introduced her to the writings of socialist and Jewish leaders and thinkers, and raised her awareness of the importance of the advancement of workers’ rights.
Clockwise from top left:
Portrait of Hilda Bernstein. (source)
Close-up of Pauline Podbrey, from a photograph of her and her husband, the SACP activist H.A. Naidoo, in Budapest. (from her autobiography, White Girl in Search of the Party)
Close-up of Ray Alexander, from a photograph of Food and Canning Workers Union officials taken by Eli Weinberg in the 1940s. (SAHA Archive for Justice)
Photograph of Rowley Israel Arenstein. (SAHA Archive for Justice)
For all these individuals, the political memories of their (or their parents’) experiences in Eastern Europe — and the ideological climate that flowed from those memories in the immigrant communities they created — exposed them to political tools and values that prepared them for, if not lead them onto, pathways into radical activism.