Extracts from Yearbook from Oranje Orphanage in Capetown
ALL ACTIVITIES of the Cape Jewish Orphanage since its foundation were to be overshadowed by a great enterprise commenced towards the end of 1920, that caught the imagination of South African Jewry as nothing else has done. This was the episode usually referred to as the "Immigration of the Ukraine Orphans." To understand its origin, there is a need to recall the circumstances existing in the former Russian empire after the crash of the old Czarist regime in 1917. Rival armies were fighting for control-the Reds on one side against the Whites, who hoped for the restoration of the Emperor, while in the middle were Allied contingents as well as unorganised guerrilla bands. With law and order rapidly melting away, transportation came to an end. Hundreds of thousands of demobilised soldiers roamed about, among equally vast armies of German ex-P.O.W.'s, trying to make their way home after the Soviets made peace with the Kaiser at Brest-Litovsk. Poor at the best of times, owing to the oppression to which they had been exposed for generations, the condition of the Jews in what had been Russia became even worse. Famine over vast areas was followed by epidemics of typhoid and other diseases. In this misery ancient antagonisms came to the surface. |
Isaac Ochberg |