Scarred generation – the price paid by activists’ children

“For many years, I couldn’t understand why a struggle 6 000 miles (9 656km) away was far more important to my father than I seemed to be”, said Nicholas (“Nic”) Wolpe. He’s the son of anti-apartheid stalwart Harold Wolpe, who daringly escaped from the government’s clutches and went into exile in the United Kingdom (UK) in the 1960s.

At the same time, in the American South, Adolph Ira (known as “AI”) Botnick was fighting against the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) in the Civil Rights Movement, but kept most of his activities from his son, Michael.

These children were both forged and scarred by the legacies of their fathers. Nic Wolpe and Michael Botnick were in conversation in a webinar on 9 July convened by the South African Jewish Museum in Cape Town and the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience in New Orleans, Louisiana, in the United States (US).

Nic revealed that Harold discovered communism in his teens, and remained a lifelong devotee. His anti-apartheid activism was shaped by leading the student representative council at the University of the Witwatersrand and his legal studies. Harold was the head of military intelligence at the clandestine headquarters of the banned African National Congress (ANC) at Liliesleaf Farm in Rivonia in northern Johannesburg. He was arrested in 1963, but escaped from custody in Marshall Square with three others, including Arthur Goldreich. He became a leading intellectual in the ANC in the UK where his family joined him. He returned to South Africa in 1991 and died in 1996.

Michael Botnick’s father was the son of Ukrainian immigrants seeking a better life in the US. Having witnessed the horrors of the Holocaust, AI got involved in the Civil Rights Movement in the late 1950s. “He had heart, guts, he was brave. And he wanted to see things change,” Michael said. Strongly influenced by his socially conscious rabbi, AI joined the Anti-Defamation League and became its director in the South. He had to face down the intimidating, secretive KKK, which was vigorously resisting racial integration. The climate was violent. Three Jewish activists were killed, civil rights leader Medgar Evers was assassinated, and the shul and rabbi’s house in Jackson, Mississippi, were bombed. AI made bringing the perpetrators to justice his life’s work. He died aged 72 in 1995. “He saw many changes for the better, and left his footprints in the sand,” Michael said.

Nic said that in South Africa, “The stories of my generation are marginalised. It’s hard to articulate the suffering we experienced as children of political activists. Those who stayed in South Africa faced very harsh restrictions compared to the life in exile of me and my two sisters. These experiences shaped and defined us. We grew up recognising the importance of the struggle to our parents. It was only much later in life that I came to understand it. I recognised apartheid as abhorrent, evil, and inhumane. But my childhood was traumatic and hard.”

He had nightmares about being kidnapped and buried alive. His father remained a wanted man. In the 1980s, their house was bugged and British police told Harold he was on an assassin’s hit list. “The sense of fear and anxiety was perpetuated due to the high-profile nature of my parents’ work,” Nic said.” It was emotional, traumatic, and left its scars.”

In contrast, AI Botnick’s work was behind the scenes, and he shielded his family as much as possible. But he was also targeted by the KKK for elimination. His would-be killer, Byron De La Beckwith, who also murdered Medgar Evans, was eventually jailed, where he died in 2001. “We want to carry on our father’s legacy. Hate is not going to disappear – it’s a full-time job fighting bigotry.” Michael was inspired to become a lawyer and continue to fight for human rights causes.

Noting how “struggle Jews” were isolated and disowned by the mainstream Jewish community in South Africa, Nic recalled how his mother, AnnMarie, felt completely shunned and abandoned when Harold was arrested. Being an avowed communist and atheist, Harold passed down nothing of his Jewish identity, culture, and history to his family. Nic felt this “void existed in our household”.

He also remarked how women in many respects suffered more than their husbands, and were often separated from their children, but their roles are largely forgotten.

Wolpe is disappointed that there isn’t fuller acknowledgement of how leftist Jewish activists were disowned by a fearful Jewish community after the National Party’s (NP’s) electoral victory in 1948 that ushered in apartheid. “I can see why,” he said, “the NP were Nazi sympathisers, and the community felt scared and vulnerable that the same fate of Nazi Germany would play out in South Africa. Today, we need a re-evaluation of the roles of the community in the period 1948 to 1990.”

For Michael, his upbringing was very Jewish, with his parents teaching Jewish Sunday School and all the festivals celebrated, “but it was more cultural than religious. Jews in the South sought assimilation and acceptance.” The Civil Rights Movement began to rock the boat, which upset the Southern Jews, and the Botnicks were ostracised.

Nic was asked what his father would say about South Africa today. “He would say it has failed to live up its aspirations and ideals for a free and just South Africa. He would be devastated by the drift from noble principles to the corruption, theft, and greed that define our country today. We’re still divided by poverty and inequality, and we have seen the resurrection of racism.”

Michael said the rise of antisemitism in some parts of the African American community was “disconcerting”, but we shouldn’t generalise. Many black communities give great credit to the Jews involved in the Civil Rights Movement. “It’s the Louis Farrakhans that give them a bad name, and through social media they get more attention,” he said.

Nic was the driving force in making Liliesleaf into a world-class heritage site, but says it was more to preserve this period of history rather than anything his father had done. “It wasn’t a personal crusade,” he said. He lamented the lack of government support for vital heritage sites like Liliesleaf “which is today a shadow of what it was before the COVID-19 pandemic. The site has disintegrated. It’s symptomatic of how government has treated historical sites across the board. No due respect is given to preserve them and ensure that history isn’t forgotten.”