My father in law Julius Goodman, who I am sure Richard remembers from Parow, had a very interesting story

He was a Yeshiva bocher and while layning tephilim one morning, the Russian soldiers burst into his home and he would not answer them while davening. They then left him alone calling him a stupid Jew and departed. Hidden under his mattress was a revolver and if discovered, execution would have been the result.

He always believed that Hashem had a hand in this act. He served with Richards father as Gabba of the Parow Shul

 

2. I did not experience any antisemitism growing up nor any direct antisemitism as an adult. 

I attended Herzlia - and in high school I did hear occasional reports about antisemitic remarks from my male rugby & cricket-playing classmates. 

At girl guide camp I found some curiosity about Jews - but no antisemitism.

My knowledge about antisemitism in general came from reading (novels); about antisemitism in South Africa ,first from school and later when I served on the SAJBD (Cape Council) for four years, and from focused reading as I became more interested.

 

As an aside, philo-semitism can also make one very uncomfortable. A colleague at the university used to ask me what days El Al flies and various other questions that took for granted I would know just because I was Jewish (there were two other biological jews, both of whom behaved as "non Jewish Jews".)

1.      Family’s stories about experiencing anti-semitism in SA.        

 I do not know of any of my father’s or mother’s experiences, if any of anti-semitism in South Africa. My father was born in South Africa and lived in Johannesburg until he died. My mother, a refugee from Berlin, married into my father’s family (from Lithuania). She lived in Johannesburg from 1936 to her death in 1987.

2.      My own experience of anti-semitism while living in SA

I never experienced any anti-semitism directed towards me. I was born and lived in Johannesburg for 70 years.

My two children were subjected to anti-semitic assaults while at school –

·        My son and his friend, at a government primary school in the middle 1980’s, were insulted by co-pupils for being absent on Jewish holidays

·        My son and another pupil, at high school, experienced physical assault (their arms were pulled through an open brickwork wall and their hands were tied with the ends of their ties pulled through the bricks) while being taunted for being Jewish.

My son did not tell either me or his father about either the incident at primary school, nor the incident at high school.

·         My daughter, in her first year at Auckland Park Preparatory School in 1994, found a typed note on her desk saying “All Jews must die”.  The whole class was horrified. The matter was immediately escalated to the principal and chair of the governing body. After break a girl came to my daughter and said she’d put the note there.  In the afternoon the principal visited our home. We declined the request by the girl’s mother to visit us.  The girls in the class responded by “sending her to Coventry” until after the school holidays.

In the coming months five or six mothers approached me to say how shocked they were. However, leadership by the Governing Body Chair and Principal failed, I felt, to use this opportunity by open discussion with the parents of this elite, multi-racial school.

There was only one other, younger, Jewish pupil at the school.