In the 1960s, "you had to wait a long
time to get a job to get in, and you
couldn't get a visa without a job," Mrs.
Maisels says.
Apartheid, the institutional separa-
tion of black and white, was formally
introduced by the Nationalist Party gov-
ernment in 1948. Before that, there was
a sort of gentleman's agreement in fa-
vor of black-white separation.
During the apartheid era, a majori-
ty of South African Jews lived in Jo-
hannesburg and a smaller amount in
Cape Town. Most Jews between the
ages of 22 and 50 emigrated, leaving
about 100,000 Jews in all of South
Africa.
Whites were privileged due to skin
color, but they were prohibited from
speaking out against the racist system.
Born in Cape Town and a Detroiter
since 1983, Terry Kalley recalls a speech
criticizing apartheid he made in 11th
grade.
"The headmaster called me into his
office and said, 'You cannot make
speeches like this; you must apologize.'
I said no. He apologized on my behalf."
"I used to think, what if we substi-
tuted the word 'Jew' for 'black' in South
Africa, how would I feel?" Jews have a
theme of freedom running through his-
tory, Mr. Kalley says. "No people is
more discriminated against."
"If one were a thinking person living
in South Africa and were to incorporate
the issues of our history, you couldn't
help but be repulsed by the [apartheid]
system," he says.
Waves of emigration mirrored times
of strife. The 1976 Soweto riots served
as a warning to some, while Dorothy
and Morris Medalie left in 1959, after
Sharpeville.
The incident known as Sharpeville,
named after a black town 40 miles out-
side Johannesburg, was the first small
uprising of South African blacks. The
protestors marched toward the
Sharpeville police station, and the po-
lice panicked. They shot and killed
about 67 blacks, wounding scores more.
It was, former residents say, one of the
events that changed the situation in
South Africa.
(Sharpeville followed another inci-
dent, one week before, in which 10
white policemen had gone to break up
an illegal liquor still. The crowd of
blacks "had torn the men apart," Mrs.
Medalie recalls. Within that context,
she says, Sharpville was "understand-
able.")
Mrs. Medalie's brother-in-law, a coun-
try doctor, was outside Sharpeville
when the uprising began. He was one

Carol And
Jeffrey Maisels

W

Beverly Katz: Missing family.

cause they disagreed publicly with the
of the first to attend to the wounded.
"Nothing like this had happened be- apartheid regime. The country had a
"huge secret police," which was "ruth-
fore in South Africa," she says.
Rosalyn Slater, who emigrated in less and brutal."
"I was disgusted and ashamed of
1979, was a college student at the Uni-
versity of Cape Town when the what they were doing, but felt impotent
Sharpville protest occurred.
in being able to do anything," says Dr.
"I was driving with
friends, at lunch time, and
the car was totally en-
veloped by thousands and
thousands of [black] men
marching. It didn't occur to
me that it was anything
threatening," she says. Af-
ter that, restrictions and
fear tactics increased, Ms.
Slater says.
"People leave for different
reasons," says Harry
Maisel, who with his wife
Ray came to the States
in 1959. He has worked
at Wayne State University
since 1961, serving as chair-
man of the medical school's
anatomy department from
1975 to 1995. "Good friends
of ours stayed, fought, went
to jail."
When he visited South
Africa in the 1960s, Dr.
Maisel found some books he
had left behind, including
the writings of Karl Marx
and Josef Stalin.
"I went to the back yard Lance and Melissa Vainik: Even to kids, South Africa felt dangerous.
and burned them. If the po-
lice had gone into the house, my moth- Sapeika, who left on Jan. 1, 1977, eight
er would have gone to jail. People fight days before the cut-off for emigre doc-
in different ways."
tors. He has lived in Detroit since 1979.
A native of Cape Town, Raphael
He describes his life in South Africa
Sapeika had friends who were jailed be- as being in the "First World" with ter-

hen Dr. Jeffrey Maisels' father,
Israel Aaron Maisels, died in
1994, Nelson Mandela called
him "one of the most outstanding
lawyers South Africa ever produced."
The fast black South African president,
whom Mr. Maisels successfully defend-
ed in his treason trial, also made a shi-
va call to the Maisels' Johannesbu
rg
home.
If not for his father's connections, Dr.
Maisels and his wife, Carol, may not
have made it out of South Africa in
1966.
They grew up in Johannesburg and
attended the same Orthodox synagogue.
Married in 1961, the Maisels tried for
years to obtain visas to emigrate to the
United States. Finally, they were grant-
ed entry in January 1966 and went to
Salem, Mass., where Dr. Maisels
worked at Harvard Medical School's
Children's Hospital.
like their parents, the Maisels "were
very concerned" about the apartheid
regime. They were perhaps inspired by
Helen Suzman, the lone Jewish voice in
Parliament who "represented the dis-
trict we grew up in. She was fearless
about standing up in Parliament," Mrs.
Maisels says.
Dr. Maisels' father headed the
South African Zionist Federation,
the Board of Jewish Deputies, the
Israel United Appeal and the Unit-
ed Hebrew Congregation. He also
was a trustee of Israel's Weizmann
Institute.
In the 1960s and '70s, after re-
turning from Rhodesia where he
served on the Supreme Court, Mr.
Maisels had one of the largest le-
gal practices in South Africa. He
also served as judge president of
the appeals court of Lesotho,
Botswana and Swaziland.
"One of the top lawyers in South
Africa, he never became a judge
because of his political views" op-
posing apartheid, Mrs. Maisels
says.
"I miss the country, the people,"
Mrs. Maisels says. "I miss family."
The Maisels spent two decades
in the United States before corn-
ing to Detroit in 1986. They lived
in Salem one year, and in Brook-
line, Mass., for two years before Dr.
Maisels was drafted into the Amy
for Vietnam. They spent three
years in Washington, D.C., where
Dr. Maisels did army research at
the National Institutes of Health
in Bethesda, Md.
"To get a green card/immigra-
tion visa you had to be willing to
be drafted if the Army needs you,"
Mrs. Maisels explains.
The next 15 years they spent in Her-
shey, Pa., before coming to Detroit's
Beaumont Hospital, where Dr. Maisels
chairs the pediatrics department.