Theo Klewansky

I was born in Kimberley in 1939 as my mother returned to her family – the Blumenthals – to give birth. We left Kimberley in that same year 1939 – when I was five months old, because my father got a job as head of the cheder in Germiston. I studied Engineering at Wits and live in Florida. This family history is from me with considerable contributions regarding our former life in the Lithuanian shtetelach of Radvilishik and Zagare from my cousin Myrna Gower

My Father Jack (Yechiel) Klewansky, was born in December 1903 in Radvilishik, Lithuania. He went to South Africa aged 20 in 1924. He was brought out by his older half-brother Max Klewansky b 1890 who was 37 when he bought out his siblings except the youngest half-sister, who perished in Radvilishik with my grandmother during WW2. (Here is a typical wooden house in Radvilishik, taken by my cousin Myrna Gower on a visit to Lithuania in June 2017.)

My Mother Lily (Blumenthal) was from the Kimberley Blumenthal family (See Trevor Toube’s family story for more details or the Blumenthal family.)

My paternal grandfather, Hillel Klewansky (after whom I am named) was born and lived in the Shtetl of Radvilishik. He married twice. There were four children from his first marriage, Max, Harry, Meyer and Janie. I assume Hillel’s first wife died in childbirth, but I don’t know. Hillel then married Chasya (known as Chasya die Gute) and produced Yechiel (Jack, my father), Sydney and a daughter, whose name I never knew.

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His eldest half-bother, my Uncle Max, born in 1890, went to South Africa at the age of 15 (in 1905), and made his way eventually, to Brandfort, in the OFS (Orange Free State). When he arrived in SA, he was greeted with great respect by the Boers, who had not previously met a Jew, for they regarded him as a representative of ‘The People of The Book.’ Uncle Max was responsible for bringing out all his siblings, except for the last daughter. (She, and my grandmother Chasya, perished on Kol Nidrei night in 1940, when the Germans marched in and machine-gunned everyone in the Shul in Radvilishik). (See Myrna Gowers version of these events below)

My father, Jack (Yechiel) Klewansky, was born in Dec 1903 in the Lithuanian shtetl of Radvilishik. He was a brilliant student at the Yeshiva. When the First World War began, he and his family became refugees, and fled to Russia. At the end of the war, they were chased out of Russia and fled back to Radvilishik. (The Lithuanians pronounce it “Radvilishkis”). Clearly, my grandfather was no longer living by this time, since my father told me that he and his mother started a bakery. He related that he, at 3 in the morning, a diminutive man (only 5 foot 3) was carrying 100 kg sacks of flour on his back, so that, by the time others awoke, there would be fresh bread. When his older brother, my Uncle Max sent for him, my father, at the age of 20 (in 1924) went to South Africa by sea. He knew no English and, with his knowledge of European pronunciation, landed at a city whose name seemed to be Kappa Tovvin (Cape Town). 

When my father arrived in South Africa, they put him to work in a shop but, when he understood they expected him to work on Shabbos, he left and devoted himself to his particular area of expertise, Jewish Education.

He took S’micha in May 1962, when he went to Bat Yam in Israel, and met with Rabbi Pesach Kokkis. He returned after 6 weeks, with the title Rabbi. I understand it was formality, since my father had an enormous depth of learning, accumulated from his early studies in Yeshiva in his Shtet’l in, Lithuania. He was a very modest man and I remember him telling me, with a shy smile that, at the age of 9 or 10, he set himself the task of committing all 150 Psalms (Tehillim) to memory in a month, which he did! I saw a letter sent to him from his Rosh Yeshiva, in which the latter stated that someone like my father would not be seen again in that generation. Talk of a hard act for me to follow!

My father’s brother Harry had settled in Uitenhage, and that is where his sister Janie was introduced to Joseph Lande and married him in 1912. Joseph had come from Zagare – a town quite near Radvilishik. Janie and Joseph Lande later moved from Uitenhage to Bloemfontein, and still later to Johannesburg. I know of three offspring: Lionel, who worked well into his

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90s and died in 2009 aged 96, Goldie (Dorfman), and Lily (Entin), mother of Carol Arenson and Myrna Gower. (see Myrna story at the end)

My Maternal grandfather Max Blumenthal was one of several Blumenthal boys who came from Jacobstad Kurland, (Ger. spelling; Courland in Fr.), in the west of Latvia. I have a photograph of four of them as young men. (As an aside, the Shakespearean actress Claire Bloom is the daughter of brother Herman, and a niece of Max). When Max was 3 years old, his father was killed in a pogrom. His mother took the children and they fled to England. I have little detail, but my mother told me that, when Max was twentyish, he heard about diamonds being discovered in in Kimberley, and set sail from Liverpool for Cape Town. He made his way to Kimberley and was there during the siege by the Boers (Oct 14, 1899 - Feb 15, 1900). There he met, and married Bertha Sacks. They had seven children: Rose, the eldest, Lily (my mother), Violet (Daphne's and Trevor's mother), (then they ran out of flower names (;-)), Jack, Freda, Robert and Hilda.

The children were all encouraged to learn. Rose Blumenthal, the eldest daughter, became an accomplished artist. Around the time of the Great Flu Epidemic, (about 1920), Rose sadly succumbed to peritonitis from a burst appendix. My mother, Lily, the next oldest, at the age of 5, started learning piano and singing. She also found herself placed into Standard Two (= 4th Grade) at school. By the time she turned 9, she was in Standard Six, with 15-year olds, a child among adolescents. They then slowed her down a bit, and she matriculated at 15. The South African (Cape Province) university system wouldn’t accept students younger than 18, so she went to Teachers Training College and, at 17, started teaching at a High School, to students who were older than she was! (Again, a hard act for me to follow!) She was a Gold Medallist as a Dramatic Soprano at an Eisteddfod in Port Elizabeth in 1933. I have the Certificate still hanging on the wall. Sometime after that, probably 1935, she was waiting to catch a bus, at night, and was knocked down by a car. She was in a coma for 9 months and had to learn to speak again. She made a pretty remarkable recovery and was able to go back to teaching in later years.

She and my father met in Port Elizabeth and married in Kimberley in Oct 1937. They moved to Johannesburg, where my father taught Hebrew and Gemara to various students. Lily went back to Kimberley to have her baby in Feb 1939, thus I am a Kimberley native. My first five months were spent there. We then moved to Germiston, as my father became Head of the Cheder, but in 1943, he was appointed by the SA Board of Jewish Education, to become the travelling inspector of Hebrew Schools throughout South Africa and Southern Rhodesia, with the exception of Cape Town, which had its own Va’ad Ha’Chinuch (Board of Jewish

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Education). The Director in Johannesburg (1938 - 1948) was Rabbi Yehudah Leib Zlotnick, scion of a noted Rabbinic family from Plock, in Poland. Rabbi Zlotnick made Aliyah in 1949 and adopted the surname Avida. He was niftar in 1962, after serving as Director of the Rav Rok Institute in Jerusalem. Rabbi Isaac Goss, a talmid of my father, became the new Director of the SABJE. My father later became Regional Director for the Transvaal. He worked for the Board for 32 years, until 1975.

(Much more to come, to be continued “in our next”) …..

Myrna Gower’s research has led her to a different outcome of the family left behind in Radvilishik, grandmother Chasye die Gute and her daughter. Theo said: (She, and my grandmother Chasya, perished on Kol Nidrei night in 1940, when the Germans marched in and machine-gunned everyone in the Shul in Radvilishik). 

Myrna myrna@gower.me.uk writes (in July 2017) after a visit to Lithuania, about the Klewanskys.

I went into research mode as Theo’s information did not ring quite true given my recent journey to Lithuania. Jack Klewansky’s sister Janie (my grandmother), was introduced in South Africa by people from ‘der heim’ to my grandfather Joseph Lande. He came from the village of ZAGARE just about an hour’s drive away from Radvilishik. I visited Zagare earlier this year and have put together a more probable account of the demise of the two, family members, who remained in Lithuania as highlighted in blue above. 

I picked up some historical information (read below) that gives me to believe that Chasya der Gute (Theo’s Grandmother and my Step-Great-Grandmother and her daughter – Jack and Janie’s youngest sister) would have been shot in the square in Zagare and taken to be buried in the Naryshkin forest probably where we saw the memorial to the Jews killed on Yom Kippur October 2nd in 1941. It is unlikely that they were shot in the shul Radvilishik.

Here is what Wikipedia says for Zagare: During World War II and the German occupation, the Germans set up a Jewish ghetto in Žagare, to hold Jews from Šiauliai Ghetto. In a massacre of the Einsatzgruppe A at the Yom Kippur the 2nd. October 1941 all Jews were cruely killed by the Lithuanian population at the marketplace and buried in Naryshkin Park. The blood was flowing to the Svete River and the Fire brigade had to wash it away.[2]

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Above: Sign post as you enter Radvilishik

Above: The Square in Zagare, where Chasye and her daughter would have been shot on 2 October 1941

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Plaque and tree dedicated to Benzion Lande on the banks of the Svete River.

On the banks of this Svete River, I together with 7 cousins planted a tree in memory of our great grandfather Benzion Lande — Joseph Lande’s father. The plaque has Benzion's name as there is no record of his grave although we know that he died from natural causes and is buried in the village. Theo, you said that your father always said Kaddish for his mother and sister on Yom Kippur.  He knew of their tragedy. My mother talked of the miracle of

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none of the Jewish woman being infected with Typhoid (from a military camp where they were incarcerated where the disease was rife)

This correction is important because in Zagare (elsewhere too of course), they are trying to establish as many names as possible to be recorded as being buried there. We now can add Chasya and her daughter.

My apologies for this lengthy piece (see below) but felt if I were asking you to consider editing the historical narrative that you sent, I needed to offer support for my account. See my research from the Yizkor books below.

My best regards, Myrna (Gower) daughter of Janie and Joseph Lande)

Here is what Myrna Gower discovered from the Yizkor books about life in Radvilishik (called Radviliskis by Lithuanians) and Zagare during World War II

In 1940 Lithuania was annexed by the Soviet Union, becoming a Soviet Republic. The factories, some of which belonged to Jews, and the majority of the shops were nationalized in Radviliskis as well. All Zionist parties and youth organizations were disbanded. The Hebrew educational institutions were closed. The supply of goods decreased, and prices rose sharply as a result. The middle class, composed mostly of Jews, suffered a severe setback and its standard of living dropped gradually. On the day the war between Germany and the Soviet

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Union broke out, June 22, 1941, many of the Jews of Radviliskis fled to nearby villages. Several families were able to make it to the interior of the Soviet Union. The German army entered Radviliskis on June 26. All Jews were ordered to return to town. When they returned, they discovered that their homes were marked with the word “Jude”, written in chalk and in large letters. Each day the men and young women were taken to do different types of work, sometimes just in order to torture and humiliate them. The initiators of these acts were the Lithuanian auxiliary police. On one occasion, the men were ordered to draw water from a well, to pour it on the sidewalks and then crawl over it in order to dry it up. Orthodox Jews were ordered to pick up faeces with their yarmulkes and then put them on their heads. The town's Rabbi, Yitzhak Begon, had a part of his beard cut, which was then placed in the upper pocket of his coat as though it was an ornamental handkerchief. The women were forced to clean the taverns' floors of drunkards' vomit and to clean public buildings. The first victims were two Jews who were shot on the street for no reason at all.

On July 8, 1941, at 5 o'clock in the afternoon, all the Jews were ordered to report within 15-20 minutes outside the front door of their houses. The armed Lithuanians led all the Jews with their bundles to the old and deserted wooden barracks of the Lithuanian military. Here they were told that Jews are forbidden to have any contact with the Christian population. They were also ordered to wear a yellow patch on their chests and backs and were forbidden to walk on the sidewalks. The men and young women were still taken each day to do various types of work. Those who remained in the camp were ordered to build a barbed wire fence around it. Two policemen, a Lithuanian and a German, guarded the gate.

On Saturday, July 12 (17 Tamuz, 5701), after everyone returned from work, all men 16 years and older were ordered to go to the yard. From here they were led in columns to the grove next to the Jewish cemetery, where they were shot and buried. The number of victims was about 300.

The women and children remained in the camp. Some of the men who returned late from work and also those who were caught on the roads were brought to the camp. Lithuanians would come to the camp fence saying they have greetings from their husbands; they said they saw them working somewhere and were asking for money and clothing on their behalf, and the women gave them all they asked for.

One day an order was given under penalty of death: everyone must hand in all of their money and valuables. The frightened women gave all they had. On the very same day the women and children were taken from the camp and moved to the barracks far away from Radviliskis. This was the place where Russian prisoners of war were previously held, and where typhus broke out among them. By a miracle, none of the 500 Jewish women and children got typhus. Gradually, the women adjusted to life in this camp. They did different types of work outside the camp and organized a joint kitchen where they cooked soup for all the people in the camp. The camp commander permitted them to buy groceries outside of the camp. Work in the kitchen was by rotation. Those who had money paid for the soup, while those who did not received it for free.

On August 26, 1941, the people in the camp were told that the barracks were needed for the German army and that the Jews would be moved to Zagare. In order to meet this end, so the Jews were told, they would be transported there for free, but those who preferred to go to Siauliai would need a permit from the town's authorities. The majority, about 400, moved to Zagare, where the day after Yom Kippur, on October 2, 1941, they perished with all the other

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Jews that were brought there from the surrounding towns. Some of those who went to the Siauliai ghetto were murdered there, but some survived after being in concentration camps in Germany, where Siauliai Jews were taken in the summer of 1944 after the ghetto was liquidated. Among the survivors were also some who had fled to Russia and a few who were hidden by Lithuanians. The names of the Lithuanian murderers, and not to mention them in the same breath with the names of savers, are kept in the Yad Vashem archives.

http://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/pinkas_lita/lit_00625.html

Myrna writes from her side of the family

I knew that none of our family came from Kimberley but also knew that my mother had mentioned Kimberley in her writing. I went back to the book and then remembered that it was our 'Auntie Lily' Blumenthal who had married my Maternal Grandmother’s bother Rabbi Jack Klewansky who had come from Kimberley. He had a significant role in Jewish Education throughout South Africa and we were quite close to him. Auntie Lily herself was a musician and a significant mathematician, I presume educated in Kimberley where she grew up. She was a maths teacher about whom people still speak. They met in Port Elizabeth and married in Kimberley in October 1937. They went to live in Johannesburg.

Here is a small excerpt from "Wear a Jersey. It’s Cold" the memoirs of Myrna’s mother Lily Entin (daughter of Janie Lande (nee Klewansky) from Radvilishik – and Joseph Lande from Zagare. We were now permanently housed in York Street, Berea in the late 1930s. There were a couple of moves on the way. When we rented a larger property, my mother’s brother, Uncle Jack Klewansky made his home with us. He was then a Hebrew inspector, later he rose to be a director of Hebrew education. He went to Israel to re-do his Rabbinate and was then known as Rabbi Klewansky. During his stay with us he got engaged to Lily Blumenthal from Kimberley, a brilliant Maths teacher and singer. Hebrew Intellectuals, colleagues of Uncle Jack, often came to our home. I was indifferent to those whom I termed strange bearded characters. The cosmopolitan exciting city life and the people I met interested me much more. I regret to this day my youthful stupidity. I could have learnt so much. One of his friends was a well-known Hebrew poet. My Uncle Jack worked with a couple of intellectuals in the translation of English to Hebrew. He wrote some of the Hebrew school books. He was very modest and did not look for any accolades for this outstanding contribution. The late Rabbi Caspar spoke about him as a genius. He taught adults at the Oxford Synagogue Hebrew at night gratis and they were quite embarrassed that he would not accept fees. Uncle Max, Uncle Sydney (Klewansky) and I attended his marriage in Kimberley. Our car journey to Kimberley for the wedding was quite an adventurous experience. The roads were dusty and not tarred and unfortunately the tyres of Uncle Sydney's small Skoda were very thin. We were held up on route six times with punctured tyres, but we were young and exuberant and sang all the way despite the discomforts. After his marriage Uncle Jack and Lily made their home in Germiston. They had two children, Theo their son and a little girl who died very young. Theo was very clever and qualified as an engineer from Wits at an early age. In Uncle Jack's inspection days, he travelled the whole of South Africa and Rhodesia. Totally dedicated to Hebreweducation he was unique and remarkable in his field.

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