With Granoth’s death another Jewish era passes

SUZANNE BELLING

PHOTOGRAPH SUPPLIED

 Pictured: The late Issie Granoth.

While the fishing trawler was docked in Haifa, the Exodus, a ship filled with 5 000 illegal Jewish refugees from war-ravaged Europe, was towed in by British vessels. Everyone aboard was sent back to Europe, although most of them came to Israel again after independence.

Born in 1924 in Bernowitz, a city that was at different times governed by Russia and Poland, at the age of seven, Granoth moved with his family to Cape Town. At the age of 17, he falsified his age to fight with the South African army in Italy during the Second World War.

After the war he returned to South Africa, but not before he visited Palestine. In South Africa he was at a hachshara (training farm) and in the South African Communist Movement. He later sailed to Israel on the Drom Afrika.

In Israel he joined the Air Force and travelled to Czechoslovakia to smuggle the first planes in the Air Force to Israel.

After a while he returned to South Africa to study architecture and attain his matric, returning to work in Israel. He planned buildings in Israel such as the Sheraton Hotel and a restoration of the synagogue museum in Ramat Aviv.

Granoth met and married his first wife, Lydia. They lived in Tel Aviv, where their son Agnon was born. Lydia was one of the Tehran children, a group of Polish-Jewish children, mainly orphans, who escaped the Nazi German occupation of Poland. They found temporary refuge in orphanages and shelters in the Soviet Union and were later evacuated with several hundred adults to Tehran, Iran, before finally reaching Palestine in 1943.

After the birth of their daughter Daphna, the family moved to Tanzania for two years. They returned to Israel for a few months and went to Kenya for a further two years, where Granoth built sailing boats “with his own hands”.

The family returned to Israel and then to South Africa.

Working in South Africa, after his divorce from Lydia, He met his second wife, Pamela, a well-known chef, who now runs the tea room at Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens.

Back in Israel again, they set up a catering company but came back to Cape Town three years later.

Granoth survived complicated heart surgery, but eventually succumbed to cancer. Even towards the end, he carried on going up the mountain at Kirstenbosch.

In a hesped, Agnon said: “My father lived life fully examined, and strived for perfection in everything he touched. He was a respected architect, a painter, a talented sculptor, a builder, carpenter, amazing husband and father, which he passed on to me and his grandchildren…”

He is survived by his wife, Pamela, of Cape Town, children Agnon and Daphna and eight grandchildren, who live in Israel, and his sister Miki Tobias, who lives in Johannesburg. He is buried in Pinelands Jewish Cemetery.