Number 40: Covid-19 has being compared to the  Great  ‘Flu Epidemic of 1918 during which,  I always knew, Uncle Hymie’s Dad Abraham died. So I reached out to Avrim (Uncle Hymie’s eldest son)  and Beryl who have a font of family information.  Avrim told this story:

Abraham Paradisgarten was born 10 November 1881 in the shtetl Tukums, Latvia. As he could speak German, Abraham decided to seek his fortune in German South West Africa (SWA) in 1906. He landed in Lüderitz Bay, crossed the Namib Desert and settled in Keetmanshoop, the first town in the interior with a small Jewish population.

Abraham established a successful General Dealer store on the northeast corner of Mittel Street and 6th Avenue. His house and enclosed yard was at the back of the shop.

Ida Chana Schneider, born 10 December 1899, was a 7-year-old girl in Tukums when Abraham, 25, set out for SWA, not knowing that 11 years later he would marry Ida in Keetmanshoop.

In 1917, Abraham wrote to his Oudtshoorn family to request a young woman to be his bride. The Schneider family of Oudtshoorn knew Abraham’s family from Tukums. Ida travelled by train from Oudtshoorn to Keetmanshoop and married Abraham on 8 March 1917. He was 36, she was 18. Hymie was born on 25 December 1917.

The 1918 Spanish flu killed 75 million people worldwide. The pandemic spread from Cape Town, through Namaqualand reaching Springbok by September, thence northward to Keetmanshoop in October 2018. Unlike Covid-19, the Spanish flu disproportionately killed young healthy people 18-40 years old by causing an over-reaction (“cytokine storm”) of their immune system.

Abraham Paradisgarten died in October 1918 and is buried in the Keetmanshoop Jewish Cemetery.

Ida, left a widow at 19, a single parent, continued to manage the General Dealership for the next five years, one of the largest shops in Keetmanshoop. It was a difficult time being a young woman without male protection especially while she was under the legal majority of 21, unable to sign contracts initially as a minor and also as a woman, until she married Selig Sirkin on 9 April 1922.

Introduced by Sheryl; Told by Avrim