By Geraldine Auerbach, MBE (co-founder of CHOL with Eli Rabinowitz of Perth, Professor Adam Mendelsohn UCT, and Gavin Morris, Director of the SAJM)
The internet has provided unprecedented facilities for connecting people and preserving their stories. Recognising the potential of this, an organisation called Community History On-Line (CHOL) was set up in 2020 under the auspices of the Kaplan Centre at the University of Cape Town (UCT) and the South African Jewish Museum (SAJM). It brings together all those working on or interested in the history of Jewish communities in Southern Africa.
CHOL has created a website where, in one place, you can find links to activity of this kind. CHOL has already listed 42 communities with some form of online presence, the most comprehensive being Kimberley and Zimbabwe/Zambia, and with the latest additions being the small towns of Ceres, Laingsburg and Darling.
We have sections for family sagas and monographs of individuals and already there are 28 of these posted on the ‘Memoirs’ page of the site, ranging from eight pages to 300 pages each. They cover Jewish life in places like Upington, District Six, Malmesbury, Johannesburg and Pietersburg, as well as the role of South African Jews in the Second World War.
Share your stories
A special section is devoted to ‘Share Your Stories’, in which South Africans now living all over the world share their creative writing. An inspired idea of Gail Loon Lustig, a retired doctor who grew up in Bellville where her father was a GP, she worked as a family doctor in Tel Aviv. She has already attracted 34 writers and CHOL has uploaded over a hundred original stories.
Stories fill an important gap between history and biography, providing a true picture not only of the facts but also of the emotional elements associated with the facts. You can read more on the ‘Stories’ page.
International seminars and story-reading sessions
More than just a website, CHOL is a living and growing forum for interested people around the world. In line with this, CHOL organises regular international seminars as well as story reading sessions (which are also all recorded and posted on the website on the ‘Presentations’ page).
South Africans involved in music
Our next international Zoom Seminar sessions take place in November and early December and are focused on South Africans who have been involved in music. There will be four fascinating weekly two-hour-long sessions with two presentations in each session.
Presentations with illustrations and musical examples will cover subjects as diverse as Jascha Heifetz’s tour to South Africa in 1932; King Kong – the groundbreaking all-black musical cast with its all-Jewish production team; the Jewish music documentation centre at Stellenbosch University; and the story of the lyricist who wrote the lyrics for the English-language adaptation of the musical Les Misérables, Herbert Kretzmer – from Kroonstad to Victor Hugo via Fleet Street.
To be added to the Community History On-Line (CHOL) mailing list, kindly email info@chol.co.za or log in to the CHOL website: www.chol.website
• Published in the November 2023 issue – Click here to start reading.
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