My memories of the Second World War as a child in South Africa

I was born in South Africa towards the end of 1940, so my memories of the Second World War are confined to some rather hazy glimpses of the war’s ending, filtered through my parents’ tight-lipped protective screen and the relatively sheltered environment afforded to me by my country of birth.

In the years that followed, my awareness grew out of a mix of guarded family conversations, hearsay and the torrent of news reports, film footage, photos, articles and books which poured out and probably engulfed every Jewish household in the land.

Inevitably, the war impinged on what was then the Union of South Africa, ruled in those days by Britain. The nation was divided, with the Prime Minister, General Smuts, determined to break with his fellow white Afrikaner countrymen and lead the country into an alliance with Britain against Germany. The ‘Nats’, as they were called, stood for neutrality, really a vote for Nazi Germany. Their ranks comprised a spectrum of factions driven mainly by hatred of the British. As well as constituting the main parliamentary opposition, they encompassed a range of paramilitary groups including the Greyshirts and the ‘Ossewa Brandwag’ (Ox-wagon Torchlight Vigil), the former led by a future Prime Minister and staunch proponent of apartheid, BJ Vorster.

My father, being too old for the regular South African Army, joined up with the Home Guard’, a sort of ‘Dad’s Army’, whose main function was to protect military and communications installations from sabotage. I remember putting on his pith helmet, which settled nicely over my face, blocking my field of vision unless lifted with both hands, and losing myself inside his khaki tunic, too big even to serve as an overcoat for his pint-sized son.

I have a clear memory of the announcement of VE Day over the radio (we called it the ‘wireless’). “This is the South African Broadcasting Corporation”, said the voice. “The war in Europe has ended”. My father brought home several small flags representing the Allied nations, which we hung up over our veranda (‘stoep’) and I laboriously copied them into my drawing book. The South African flag was a curious composition of the Dutch flag with its orange, white and blue horizontal bars and a cluster of three tiny flags at the centre, representing the Union Jack and the Boer republics. I also had a go at the Soviet flag with its sickle and hammer and the flags of France and the United States.

On a more somber note, it was the black-and-white photos of the concentration camps which upset me and which still remain engraved in my memory. The Johannesburg Star issued a glossy booklet marking the liberation of Belsen. I particularly remember the photographs of skeletal corpses piled into mounds awaiting burial in mass graves, and the emaciated faces of people barely alive, staring vacantly into the camera. Should I, aged four, have been allowed to see such images? I don’t think that my parents were aware of the impact that these pictures would have on me. Or perhaps I had sought them out surreptitiously.

Newspaper cartoons also worked their way into my imagination. I was fascinated by one cartoon in particular, depicting a giant ape wearing a swastika armband, surrounded by skeletons and cornered in a cave by an allied soldier. And I can recall an issue of ‘Life’ magazine which appeared shortly after the Nuremberg trials, with photos of open coffins containing the bodies of executed Nazi war criminals.

Like many Jews of their generation, my parents never spoke about the Holocaust, although their hatred of the Nazis was palpable and I don’t believe that they ever lost their antipathy towards all things German. It was only in my adult years that I learnt that they had been silently grieving for aunts, uncles and cousins murdered by the Nazis but I had learnt much earlier never to probe that forbidden area.

So how did those early childhood impressions shape my attitudes in later life? For one thing, they strengthened my belief that as Jews we would always remain vulnerable without an army to defend ourselves and I could quite easily translate that into support for the State of Israel. For another thing, my early exposure to horrific images, even by proxy, alerted me to the pervasive presence of antisemitism in the world in much the same way that early exposure to a toxin can sometimes strengthen the body’s immune system against disease.

The war cast a long shadow. Although I never experienced the bombings and shootings, the tramp of invading armies, the sheer physical persecution or the terror of mass roundups and deportations, I was old enough to identify with those who did. And I was close enough, through my parents, to have retained memories of the grief and suffering which enveloped them.

The fact that I could live through my childhood in safety, with only the memories of others to inform me, has given me the ability to reflect on the past without being overwhelmed by the unbridled emotions which accompanied it.