Letters of Stone

1 Letters of Stone University of Cape Town The copyright of this thesis vests in the author. No quotation from it or information derived from it is to be published without full acknowledgement of the source. The thesis is to be used for private study or non- commercial research purposes only. Published by the University of Cape Town (UCT) in terms of the non-exclusive license granted to UCT by the author. University of Cape Town 2 Letters of Stone Steven Robins RBNSTE005 A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of the degree of Masters in Creative Writing Faculty of the Humanities University of Cape Town 2015 COMPULSORY DECLARATION This work has not been previously submitted in whole, or in part, for the award of any degree. It is my own work. Each significant contribution to, and quotation in, this dissertation from the work, or works, of other people has been attributed, and has been cited and referenced. Signature: Date: 20 January 2015 3 ABSTRACT As a young boy growing up in Port Elizabeth in the 1960s and 1970s, Steven Robins was haunted by an old postcard-size photograph of three unknown women on the mantelpiece. Only later did he learn that the women were his father’s mother and sisters, photographed in Berlin in 1937, before they were killed in the Holocaust. Having changed his name from Robinski to Robins, Steven’s father communicated nothing about his European past, and he said nothing about his flight from Nazi Germany or the fate of his family who remained there, until Steven, now a young anthropologist, interviewed him in the year before he died. Steven became obsessed with finding out what happened to the women in the photograph, but the information from his father was scant. The first breakthrough came when he discovered facts about their fates in the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC and the Landesarchiv in Berlin, and the second when he discovered over a hundred letters sent to his father and uncle from the family in Berlin from 1936 to 1943. Steven was finally able to read the words of the women who before had been unnamed faces in a photograph. Letters of Stone tracks Steven’s journey of discovery about the lives and fates of the Robinski family. It is also a book about geographical journeys: to the Karoo town of Williston, where his father’s uncle settled in the late nineteenth century and became mayor; to Berlin, where Steven laid ‘Stumbling Stones’ (Stolpersteine) in commemoration of his family who were victims of the Holocaust; to Auschwitz, where his father’s siblings perished. It also explores the complicity of Steven’s discipline of anthropology through the story of Eugen Fischer, who studied the “Basters” who moved from the Karoo to Rehoboth in German South West Africa, providing the foundation for Nazi racial science; through the ways in which a mixture of nationalism and eugenics resulted in Jews being refused entry to South Africa and other countries in the 1930s; and via disturbing discoveries concerning the discipline of Volkekunde (Ethnology) at Steven’s own university Stellenbosch. Most of all, this book is a poignant reconstruction of a family trapped in an increasingly terrifying and deadly Nazi state, and about the immense pressure on Steven’s father in faraway South Africa, which forced him to retreat into silence. 4 Acknowledgements There are many people who assisted me in the research and writing of this manuscript. Ute Ben Josef translated family letters from German to English, but she did much more than this. She was also my guide as I stepped into the unsettling spectral world of shadows and silences. Robert Plummer, as my MA supervisor, went well beyond the call of duty and provided unstinting support and editorial expertise throughout the writing process. Although I take full responsibility for what I have written, the manuscript vastly improved under his attentive watch. Professor Etienne van Heerden was a wonderful teacher during the year of workshops I did as part of the Creative Writing programme at UCT. I am also indebted to him for directing me to his former student, Robert Plummer. Professor Imraan Coovadia also needs to be acknowledged for encouraging me to sign up for this writing programme. Likewise, Margie Orford inspired me to tell Edith’s story at time when this writing project still was very much in its infancy. Antjie Krog provided incisive comments and helpful suggestions on an earlier draft. Other friends and colleagues who have supported me in a multitude of ways include Martin Duspohl, Dr Heidi Grunebaum, Professor Aubrey Herbst, Nadia Kamies, Mark Kaplan, Gabriella Kaplan, Captain John McNab, Professor Richard Rottenburg, Isabell Schneider, Stephen Symons, Elsa van Schalkwyk, Professor Kees van der Waal, Handri Walters and, finally, my fellow students in the Creative Writing MA programme of 2012. Relatives who have assisted me throughout the research and the writing process include Harold Levy, Collette Thorne (nee Robinski), Jos Thorne, Jeffrey Racki, Michael Robins, Deborah Robins, David Robins, Kathy Robins and Cecilia Robins. I am most indebted to my life partner and comrade-in-arms Lauren Muller. Lauren and my two sons, Joshua and Daniel, had to patiently, and sometimes not so patiently, wait for my attention as I pounded away on my keyboard. Finally, I owe much gratitude to my father and his brother Artur who, despite all they went through, were real menschen with big hearts and wonderful wit and charm. 5 ONE Edith’s Eyes During my childhood and youth in Port Elizabeth in the 1960s and 1970s, I was aware of the black and white postcard-size photographic portrait of three women on the wooden table in our dining room. Until I was well into adulthood I had no idea of the names of the three women. All I knew was that they were my father’s family and they lived and died in Germany during the war. I must have known that they perished during the war but this knowledge was vague. Their lives, dreams, desires, fears and fates were entirely opaque to me. Yet, this portrait was to follow me around for many years. The sad expressions of the three women seem to have always been there, hovering in the shadows, waiting for me to notice them, and respond. The eyes and the facial expression of the woman on the left, who I now know is my father’s younger sister Edith, have a particularly haunting hold over me. All three women in the photograph appear sombre and despairing. They wear dated styles of dress and their shirts have translucent white lace collars. The two younger women have collars that are in the shape of bows. In the centre of the photograph the older woman wears what looks like a white lace ruff consisting of a frill of several folds of linen, muslin, silk or cotton around her neck and chest. I notice that the eyes of the younger woman on the right are squint. The older woman stares straight ahead. She seems tired and forlorn. The younger woman on the left looks equally sad, defeated and abandoned. When I was well into adulthood, I discovered that the photograph was taken in Berlin on 20 December 1937. My father’s mother probably sent it to him after he arrived in Cape Town in 1936, or perhaps his brother Artur1 brought it when he came to South Africa 1 As a child, I referred to my uncle as Arthur, his family in Berlin called him Artur, his Ladino-speaking Sephardic wife from Alexandria, Egypt, called him Arturo and in this manuscript I have decided to opt for Artur. 6 in 1938. It was as if the photograph was meant to have been hidden from view but someone had mistakenly left it on the black wooden table in our dining room. My older brother Michael cannot even remember ever having seen it as a child. But I noticed it. I never really understood what these three women were doing in our dining room, or why they looked so sad and despairing. I must have known that they perished in the Holocaust but nobody spoke a word about them, and neither did my brother and I ask about their lives and deaths. Either we were not interested, or perhaps we realised that their past was meant to be kept shrouded in secrecy. Yet, every day the three women would stare at us as we sat down to eat at the dinner table. I grew up with this silence in my father’s house. I learnt who these women were in 1989, when I interviewed my father on tape about his life. My father’s family had lived in Poland until the end of the First World War, when my grandfather, David Robinski, decided to move to Berlin. My father’s two brothers, Siegfried and Artur, had been born in a small town in Poland in 1905 and 1909, and his sisters Edith and Hildegard were born there during the war years. The last born, Erika, had died in her infancy because of starvation during the war. Although both his parents, and all his siblings except for Artur, had perished during the Holocaust, he did not mention a single word about their fate in our one-and-a-half-hour interview. I find it difficult to look at the photograph these days without projecting onto it what I now know about what happened to my paternal grandmother Cecilie, and her two daughters, Edith and Hildegard. Whenever I look into Edith’s sad eyes I detect a profound sense of foreshadowing.

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