How Sarah and her branch of the Margolioth family arrived in Cape Town from Poland
Since the inception
of the name Margolioth, men who married into the family adopted the Margolioth
name. When Tzvi Hirsch sent his 2 sons to learn at a young age with the BSHT.
A strong
relationship developed with our Grandfather Meir Margolioth and the BSHT, many
of the stories of their special relationship have been published in Tales of
the Baal Shem Tov.
For instance, the
BSHT would keep them in mind in his davening, so he inscribed their names in
the margin of his hand-written siddur.
Since the attempt
was by the Vatican to purchase the siddur from the Rebbe`s nephew,
it has been
in an underground and sealed vault.
Dr. Trappler was
able to have the Curator of the Lubavitch Library make an electronic copy of
the siddur; the family now has access to the electronic file of the siddur.
In the book by Rabbi
Wunder, he documents an instruction made to Margolioth by the BSHT: “You are
only one of three families whose lineage is traced without interruption to the
12 sons of Jacob. Ensure that this linkage remains preserved”.
After Jacob Harris`s
tragic and untimely death, his brother was required by Jewish Law to marry her
and have a son in his brother`s honor.
Upon his refusal to
perform Chalitzah he abrogated himself of the responsibility of perpetuating
his brother`s name Harris.
Sarah was required
by Jewish tradition to then re-assume her maiden name of Margaliska.
This did not ensue
because of the overwhelming social and economic challenges and fear of losing
her legal status as an immigrant –for which she qualified under her late
husband`s name. In addition, the failure to do so extinguished the continuity
of the name:
She had 5 daughters
and no sons.
In addition, of all
the Margolioth extended family, only our line enjoyed the privilege of being in
the inner circle of “disciples of the
BSHT “, who, until today retain their dominance as Ashkenazi Kabbalists.
This should be kept
in mind as the family, unaware of this piece of history, continued to refer to
her (fondly) as “Grandma Harris”.
As a result, Dr.
Baruch Trappler`s weekly commentaries on the Parsha (published monthly in the
“Oholei Torah” Yeshiva Alumni publications in Hebrew and disseminated word-wide
to Chabad shluchim), his name is indexed as “Dr. Baruch Margolioth Trappler”
A bit of Polish history
At the time that my
maternal grandmother Sarah was growing up, Poland did not exist as an
independent state. It had been broken up into four main regions: two were ruled
by Russia, the others by Prussia and Austria. That part of Poland containing
Lodz and Aleksandrów – called Congress Poland, after its creation in 1815 at
the Congress of Vienna, following the Napoleonic Wars – lay under Russian
domination. So, strictly speaking, Sarah’s nationality was Russian (as it says
on her South African papers), but the family always considered itself Polish.
Aleksandrow itself was a major centre of Chassidism, a pious, mystical Judaism
that had sprung up in southeast Poland in the mid-18th century. Its
founder was Israel ben Eliezer (pron. Elly’ezzer), known as the Baal Shem Tov,
meaning ‘Master of the Good Name’. (In Hebrew, Ba’al=Master/Lord, Shem=Name,
Tov=Good). It seems our family had
strong connections with Chassidism, but the genealogy is very tangled and
complex.
Grandma Sarah early life in Poland is a mystery. However, much is known about Poland and
Russia at the time. It is worth noting at this point that, according to the
book Image Before My Eyes: A Photographic
History of Jewish Life in Poland, 1864–1939 (Schocken/YIVO
Institute),‘Polish Jewry, once the largest Jewish community in Europe,
constituted a world center of Jewish cultural creativity for centuries.’ In
1931, there were some three and a quarter million Jews living in Poland.
When Sarah was
about eight years old, in March 1881, the ruling Russian tsar (pron. ‘zahr’), Alexander II, was
assassinated. One of the plotters behind it was a young Jewish woman, Gesya
Gelfman. This was seized on, and weeks later, anti-Jewish rioting broke out in
southern Russia. The dead tsar’s heir, his son, Alexander III, introduced harsh
and discriminatory policies against Jews in the Pale of Settlement (a vast
territory in western Russia and Poland where most Jews were confined by law).
Jews were faced by economic hardship, repressive laws, anti-Jewish boycotts,
and – worst of all – ‘pogroms’ (organized attacks). In the Ukraine, Warsaw and
Belorussia, Christian mobs roamed the streets, looting Jewish homes and
businesses, and terrorizing Jews. Several hundred were murdered, with the police
only turning up days later. The climate of fear led to a mass exodus of Jews to
other countries, such as the USA, western Europe, South America, Australia and
South Africa. (As Tevye says in the film Fiddler
on the Roof, ‘May the Lord bless and keep the Tsar… far away from us.’)
Escaping Poland
In 1901, as a
28-year-old, Sarah Gieczynski (pron. Gee’chinski,
with a hard G) – this was her married name – left Poland with her four infant
daughters. They made their way – possibly via the port of Gdansk – to England,
where her uncle Eliyahu/Elias Pearlson lived in Hull, on the northeast coast.
Sarah’s husband Jacob Hirsch (or Herza) Gieczynski had left Poland a year
earlier, following a brother of his to a better life in South Africa. When
settled, he would send for his wife and children. In Hull, where there was a
thriving Jewish population, Sarah found she could help out by writing letters
(in Yiddish) for other people to their relatives back home in Poland.
Although most
Jewish emigrants from Eastern Europe went to the USA, South Africa, at the
bottom of Africa, had its own appeal. It had drawn a huge rush of new
immigrants after the discoveries of diamonds in the Orange Free State (1871)
and gold in the Transvaal (1886), the two inland Boer – pron. boo’er –
republics that later became two of South Africa’s four provinces. It still
beckoned as a land of opportunity, even though the country was in the last
stages of a bloody conflict – the Anglo-Boer War – which had broken out in
October 1899 between Britain and the Boers (or ‘farmers’, Afrikaners of Dutch
descent). Cape Town, beside Table Bay in what was then the British-ruled Cape
Colony, was the first and major port of call for British ships and troops, and
the city was bristling with soldiers. Their commander-in-chief was Lord Herbert
Kitchener. The actual fighting had not reached Cape Town itself, though in
December 1900, 2,000 Boer fighters had crossed the Orange River into the Cape
Colony from the north, followed in February 1901 by Boers led by General
Christiaan De Wet (pron. Vet). Both groups were soon driven back.
First years in Cape Town
After Sarah’s
husband Jacob died, in November 1901, Grandma Harris (with help from the Jewish
community) opened a small general store selling buttons, groceries, eggs,
kitchen utensils, brooms, aprons and so on, and was helped by her young
daughters. Evidence for this lies in verbal anecdotes and also a remarkable
photo showing Sarah and her five daughters – the fifth, Tilly, had been born in
February 1902 – plus Sarah’s brother Elias (standing far left), posed in front
of their shop, with a handwritten sign ‘S. Harris’ above the door. The picture
may have been taken in about 1906. They lived in the Kings Building, Canterbury
Street, in an area where most of the city’s Jews had settled (near the western
edge of District Six). They were very
close-knit and most probably spoke Yiddish to each other, as I remember Ma and
Aunty Polly (Pearl) talking in Yiddish together when I was growing up. ‘Mein schwester’ (My sister) is one
phrase I recall. And ‘kayna hora’
(‘No evil eye’) sprang to everyone’s lips all the time. ‘He looks so well, kayna hora’, said to ward off bad luck
when a compliment was paid or something positive said.
Sarah Margolioth
In 1930, at the time
of her naturalization, 57-year-old Grandma Sarah was living in 4 Faure (pron.
‘FORee’) Street, Cape Town, behind the present-day Mount Nelson Hotel in the
Gardens district. This was then the home of her married daughter Fanny – my
much-loved grandmother Fanny Block all moved to Muizenberg in about 1935. It was here that three of
her daughters, Fanny, Molly and Leah and their husbands, also settled.
Grandma Harris died, aged 78, on 15 August 1949, and is buried
in Maitland Jewish cemetery. On her tombstone is written: ‘She was too good
in life to be forgotten in death’.
