For two years during the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902) the small South African town of Rouxville was deserted. All its male residents had been called up for active duty, and soon it was a ghost town.
Forty years later, it was only the Jews who left the Orange Free State town of Rouxville.
The very descendants of those earlier Afrikaaner warriors who fought for freedom from the British, now denied that right to their Jewish neighbours.
The painful memories of those turbulent times were related to me by one former Rouxville resident, now a retired gynecologist in Israel – Dr. Teddy Edelstein.
Jewish children of Rouxville, OFS in the 1930s with Reverend Mandelbrot.
Balancing the Books
Teddy relates of a trip to South Africa in 2006 when he saw an insertion in The Jewish Report that startled him. Staring at him was an appeal by a Prof. Gustav Du Plesis to the descendants of the Jewish families who once lived in Rouxville to contact him.
Teddy did not hesitate. He remembered the surname from his youth and met the aging professor living in a retirement home in Cape Town. “It turned out that after matriculating in Rouxville High School, Gustav moved to Amsterdam to further his studies. There he met the family who were the last to see Anne Frank alive as the Gestapo arrested her family.
This had a profound effect on Gustav and he began to question what became of the Jewish families in Rouxville that had left – never to return!”
Dark Past Revealed
The Edelstein & Reisner General Store in Rouxville, OFS.
Teddy recalls fondly the first nine years of his life in Rouxville. “It was wonderful. We had a strong Jewish community; had our own shul (Synagogue); our food was strictly kosher and on Fridays, my Dad and his partner closed their business – ‘Edelstein & Reisner’ – early in preparation for the Shabbat (Sabbath). The Jews were so respected in the community that Dad at one time had been the Deputy Mayor. Two families that Teddy singled out as being particularly friendly with his own family were the Fouchés and Du Plessis’ – Gustaf’s family.
The Parents of Jacobus “Jim” Fouché (second State President of South Africa from 1968 to 1975)
History has an interesting way of playing out. While one of the Fouchés, Jacobus Johannes, served as the second State President of South Africa during the Apartheid era, the Du Plessis boy, Gustaf, would be investigating a half century later, the behaviour of his kin that drove the Jews out of Rouxville.
Teddy at that time spoke only Afrikaans and Yiddish and the amiable relationship that existed between Jew and Gentile meant that there was no problem for Jewish youngsters belonging to Afrikaans youth movements. “The main youth movement in Rouxville was the ‘Voortrekkers’ – the Afrikaans version of the scouts. My twin brother Wolfe and I belonged to the youngest group, called the Penkoppe.”
However, there were already signs afoot that the friendly atmosphere would change, “but we were young at the time and did not take the incidents seriously.”
The Rouxville-Smithfield district would emerge as a hotbed of Nazi subversion. The future Prime Minister John Vorster, who was interned during the Second World War, came from this area as did other prominent Afrikaaner families, whose members were Nazi sympathizers. Teddy rattled off family names that included “the Hertzogs and Havangas, whose members were or would become big shots in the future Nationalist government and the Leibbrandts, who ran a boardinghouse in the district.” Robey Leibbrandt, who went for sabotage training in Nazi Germany, was smuggled back into South Africa in June 1941 with the mission – “Operation Weissdorn” – to overthrow the government of General Jan Smuts. He was arrested and sentenced to death which was commuted and was later released when the Afrikaaner Nationalist Party came to power in 1948.
Anti-Semitic Stench
Long before this, Teddy recalls listening to Robey Leibbrandt at Voortrekker meetings raving about working “towards a pure white race and that Hitler was doing the right thing. Still, like most Jews of Europe in the 1930s, we didn’t take him seriously.”
South africa’s Nazi Supporter- Robey Leibbrandt 1913 – 1966
However, things changed quite literally overnight!
Three days after Germany invaded Poland on the 1st September 1939, the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, broadcasted over the BBC that, “…this country is at war with Germany.”
Although the Edelstein family retired to bed that evening concerned about the future, they could not have foreseen what greeted them the next morning.
“As we opened our front door to go to school, what hit us first was the vile stench. Piles of dead chickens with their necks wrung, were strewn across our veranda, and our lawn was covered with mounds and mounds of sewage. In those days, we did not have toilets like today, so carts used to come collect the sewage. Instead of taking it to the central deposit area, they unloaded in on our property.”
But this was not the worst of it.
“Painted in bold all over our front walls were swastikas and the most disgusting expletives relating to Jode (Jews).” The message deposited on the Edelstein family’s doorstep by their “friends” was clear:
Jews were no longer welcome in Rouxville!
“My dad made a quick decision. It was time for the family to leave Rouxville. He bought a house in Bloemfontein and enrolled us at school there. My older brother and sister preceded us. As Wolfie and I were only nine, we had to wait fourteen months until we left Rouxville. It was the worst period of our lives. Nearly every day we got into fights either on the way to school or at school. We were so bruised and battered that our dad arranged for us to take boxing lessons. We were fighting with guys who were once our good friends!”
Rouxville was gripped by anti-Semitism!
A ‘Credit’ to the Community
All these events, Teddy related to Prof. Gustaf du Plessis. It was then the professor’s turn to reciprocate with his own revelation.
“He told me that he had written a thesis on the relationship between Jews and Afrikaaners in the pre-and post-period of the OFS during WWII. He explained that the period between 1935 and 1939 was one of devastating droughts and that his research clearly revealed that there were it not for the Jewish merchants offering the Afrikaaner farmers generous credit, very few of the farmers would have survived financially.”
Edelstein family in 1931 in Rouxville, OFS.
None of this came as a surprise to Teddy.
“When we left Rouxville in 1941, my dad took the Edelstein & Reisner ledger, which we still have in our possession. It reveals that there were £300,000 outstanding in credit to the Afrikaaner farmers. This was an enormous amount in those days.”
It has never been repaid!
The Edelstein children. Teddy (left)
‘Mr Rugby’, Dr. Teddy Edelstein watching South Africa play rugby at the 2009 Maccabi Games at Wingate with Ruth Shakenovsky.
