Number 17: Family life is central to the Jewish people. Tragic therefore the early 20^th Century tearing apart of Lithuanian and Latvian Jewish families. 

Sheryl and my families that lived in “Der Heim”, split in three directions, sometimes four, driven out by the forces of Pogroms and Poverty. None stayed together!  In each family some left for South Africa, some the USA, a few for Palestine, now Israel. Many, tragically, continued living there and perished in the Holocaust – save a very few who escaped to Russia. Heartbreakingly not a single descendent we know of still lives there today!

And so it was with the family of Esiah Locketz (Lockac’as in Yiddish) and Bessie  (Pesa) Shagal, married probably in the 1860s, grandparents of my father’s mother Golda Katzef z”l. They lived in the Shtetl “Kupishik” (“Kupiskas”; “Koepeshak”), and had 14 children. Three came to South Africa, also the son of one daughter; Three or four  to the USA. Some sadly died young. The others remained in Lithuania and, as far as is known, all perished in the Shoah.

Miriam Renan, Michael Renan’s mother, relayed to me in 1982 that she saw her grandfather Esiah Locketz, a Chasid, only once: Just before leaving Lithuania for South Africa in 1924. Living far away, she went in a sleigh wagon across the snow to see him, remembering him as a kind man, quite short with a white beard.

Rachel one of Esiah and Bessie’s eldest children, married Michiel ben Yigeal in Kupiskas and bore their four children there: Rebecca, Hannah, and twins on 2/09/1900: Golda and Izak.

In our families, as was the norm, one member left for the new Country, then brought out other family members, typically never returning to again experience Erev Shabbat or Chaggim with their parents and siblings.

And so it was that Michiel Katzef came to South Africa in 1903, in 1906 bringing out Rachel, the first Locketz sibling to South Africa, and his children. Rachel later brought out her brother Avraham Yizchak and years later their youngest sibling: Reverend Lionel (Leibas; Rev Yehuda Leib)  Locketz, grandfather of Michael Renan. 

Attached are photographs of:

1. Rachel Locketz and her brother Avraham Yitchak
2. Photograph taken in approximately 1982 of  Pauline Schkolne; Michael Renan; Miriam Renan and Raymond Schkolne, where Miriam, Michael’s mother relayed the story of our common forebears: Esiah Locketz and Bessie (“Pesa”) Shagal. Pauline, a Great Aunt of Yair and Maya, was named after her Great Grandmother Pesa Locketz ‘nee Shagal.