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.