By PROFESSOR PHILIP LANZKOWSKY
Professor Philip Lanzkowsky, now aged 93, was born in Cape Town in 1932 and graduated in 1954 from the University of Cape Town Medical School. He did postgraduate work in London, Edinburgh and in the United States. He married Rhona Chiat of Cape Town in 1955 and immigrated to the United States in 1965, becoming a Professor of paediatrics and a founder and the Chief of Staff of the Schneider Children’s Hospital in New Hyde Park, New York, a position he held for 40 years. He was a consultant in the building of the Schneider Children’s Medical Center of Israel, and has lectured extensively at various institutions and medical schools in the United States and in many countries around the world on his specialty of pediatric hematology oncology. He is the author of the standard text book on Pediatric Hematology-Oncolgy. Philip and Rhona live in New York City and have five children: Shelley, David, Leora, and Jonathan, who are medical doctors, and Marc, a lawyer. They have 16 grandchildren – two of whom are doctors – and three great-grandchildren.
Philip shares his memories of Cape Town in a bygone era. The Chronicle will run a series of articles reflecting his memories, and we bring you the first of these in this edition.
A journey to settle in Cape Town
Looking back at my childhood in Cape Town during the 1930s and 1940s, I’m struck by how closely our lives resembled those lived in the old Eastern European shtetlach.
The immigrants, whose common language was Yiddish, came to South Africa during the inter-war years, and brought with them the life they had experienced in the alter heim. We lived in a secluded community with very little social or commercial contact with the wider non-Jewish community in the city.
Our community was tightly knit, and most of us lived in the same square mile bordered by Roeland Street to the south, Mill Street to the north, Wandel Street to the east, and Maynard Street to the west.
My father, Abraham (Abe) Lanzkowsky, arrived in Cape Town in 1922 from Secemin, a small shtetl in Poland. He was just 18, fleeing antisemitism, poverty, and military conscription. He arrived by ship – steerage class – bringing with him a suitcase, a siddur, and a pair of tefillin. The journey from Poland to Cape Town took six weeks, and involved a long route via Danzig on the Baltic Sea and Southampton, England. He kept kosher on the journey, sharing his food with other Jewish immigrants.
My father left behind his entire family – and, but for one brother whom he brought to Cape Town at a later stage, he did not see any of his family members again.
He came to work at Toker and Lanzkowsky, a Jewish bakery owned by his uncle in Canterbury Street. Delivering bread by horse and cart – even on Shabbat – was deeply challenging for him from a religious perspective, and my father was concerned that he could not live an Orthodox Jewish life in Cape Town and so wanted to immigrate to Palestine. However, Reverend Bender of the Gardens shul persuaded him to stay here.
My mother, Lily Goldberg, came from the East End of London with five of her siblings in 1902. Her parents, originally from Lodz, Poland, ran a grocery store in Constitution Street.
Although her roots were Eastern European, my mother was thoroughly British in her manners. She instilled in me many British traditions: she dressed me in satin shirts with pearl buttons and velvet short pants with velvet suspenders. She insisted that when I walked with her I always walked on the outside like an English gentleman. and refined eating habits were instilled in me at a young age. I was probably spoiled as a child since I was nicknamed ‘Die Prins van Wallis’ (the Prince of Wales) by our domestic worker.
My parents married in 1926, the ceremony taking place at the Roeland Street shul. (The full name of the synagogue was the New Hebrew Congregation.) I was born in 1932. Like many Jewish families, ours lived behind the family business –
a grocery store on Buitenkant Street. The shop was in the front room of our modest three-room house.
I attended SACS, the highly disciplined, all-boys secular school in Cape Town from 9am to 3pm, and after school I walked to Cheder, which would continue until 6 or 7pm. At SACS, we were frequently caned for the slightest infringements. On one occasion, we began singing the latest Palmach Song. Our voices resonated through the school – which earned each of us a good caning. The school had a heavy emphasis on sports, particularly rugby and cricket, which I did not enjoy. But I participated in the marksman and cadet programmes.
I remember that we hosted Princess Elizabeth (who later became Queen Elizabeth) at the school on her 21st birthday while on a Royal Tour with her parents. As cadets, we practised for an entire year to be able to give her a proper royal salute with our rifles when she drove past in an open car to inspect the cadets.
My childhood was essentially a good one. Despite living under Spartan conditions compared to how we live today, I always considered myself more privileged than many of my friends. After all, I had toys, a Meccano set, a stamp collection, and a bicycle! ●
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