rible "Third-World" conditions miles
away. A medical resident at the time of
the Soweto riots, Dr. Sapeika was called
in on an emergency basis. "I came home
and said, That's it. It's a bloodbath out
there right under our noses.' "
"The most incredible thing about the
black people there is it took them so long
to erupt," Mrs. Maisels says.
Today, Jews comprise 0.3 percent of
South Africa's population. In 1960, they
made up 3.62 percent of whites, or 0.71
percent of the total population.
Under apartheid, South African Jews
experienced little anti-Semitism, large-
ly because that government was "al-
ways very eager to have the support
of Jews," Mrs. Maisels says.
Dr. Schwartz says Jews were privi-
leged simply because they were white.
Dorothy Medalie, the Boston-born
wife of a South African Jew, Dr. Morris
Medalie, says she experienced less anti-

Semitism during the 12 years they
lived in South Africa than she has
in the United States.
Judaism in South Africa is dif-
ferent than in the States. For one,
synagogues are either Reform or
Orthodox — but both resemble
Conservative Judaism more than
their American counterparts. South
African Jews are more observant
than their American peers, say
Lance and Melissa Vainik, sibling's
who came here from Cape Town at
age 13 and 10, respectively.
"We celebrate a lot of the holi-
days. SimchatTorah is huge," Mr.
Vainik says. On Sukkot, the rab-
bi in their Cape Town synagogue
had a huge party at his house, Ms.
Vainik says.
The Vainiks came to the Unit-
ed States soon after the infamous
Soweto riots of August 1976.

Dr. David And Elda Schwartz

W

72

hen Dr. David Schwartz went
to medical school at Witwater-
srand, nearly 50 percent of his
class was Jewish. In high school, almost
30 percent of the students were Jews.
In Heidelberg, the little village outside
Johannesburg where Dr. David Schwartz
was born, there were six Jewish families
— the baker, the butcher, two pharma-
cists, his father and a miller. Together,
they bought a shul.
While the Jews of Johannesburg, Cape
Town and Durban say they experienced
little, if any, anti-Semitism in South
Africa, Dr. Schwartz has another story.
Heidelberg was the stronghold of Dr. Ver-
woerd, leader of the Nationalist Party
that instituted apartheid after World
War II.
Dr. Schwartz's father, a family prac-
titioner, took the family to England for
a few years to specialize in internal med-
icine. Upon returning to South Africa,
the family moved to Johannesburg where
the senior Dr. Schwartz taught at Barag-
wanath Hospital in Soweto, a major care
facility for blacks.
Elda Schwartz grew up in Johannes-
burg, where she lived next door to David's
aunt and uncle. Mrs. Schwartz's mater-
nal grandmother was one of the first
women in South Africa to attend a uni-
versity.
In her teens, Mrs. Schwartz spent a
year in Switzerland, which gave her a
taste of European life and later pulled
her back for college in England at the
University of Reading. She worked for a
few years in England as a city planner.
While vacationing in South Africa, she
and David met on an "unofficial shid-
duch." It turns out their grandparents
came from the same Lithuanian village
of Riga.

Within a year, they were married
— November 1977 — not long be-
fore they immigrated to the United
States.
The Schwartzes came to the Unit-
ed States in 1977, first to the Uni-
versity of Wisconsin, then Detroit.
They now live in West Bloomfield.
While in Wisconsin, Mrs. Schwartz
earned a master's degree in _coun-
seling. Today, she works at Oakland
Community College as an adjunct
counselor.
In Detroit, Dr. Schwartz built
from scratch a maternal/fetal divi-
sion at Sinai Hospital and has been
chairman of that department since
1986.
While it hasn't been an easy path,
the Schwartzes chose to live in an
area of few South Africans because
they "wanted to go to a community
where we would have tointegrate.
We did not want to move to this country
and live in South Africa," Dr. Schwartz
says.
Initially, they missed their homeland.
"Then, not so much," Dr. Schwartz says.
They have "family dotted all over Amer-
ica," and Passover seders include friends,
sometimes as many as 50 people. "Now
our family [consists of] local friends," Mrs.
Schwartz says.
Mrs. Schwartz says she misses "a more
heterogeneous population." Unlike the
more segregated Detroit, South Africa is
a mixture of races, she says.
"South Africa's changed and many of
the family have left," Dr. Schwartz says.
"In Detroit, families tend to stick to-
gether, generations. It reminds us of how
it used to be in South Africa."
They have two children — Martine,
16, and Gabrielle, 4. ❑

Jack and Audrey Sobel, (seated) David and Elda Schwartz, Selwyn and Hilary Isakow: Johannesburg ties
that bind.

Rosalyn Slater, mother of Lance and
Melissa, was shopping with her 6-year-
old daughter when "down the road
[came] thousands of singing black men,
each carrying a broken bottle in each
hand."
'That whole year there had been un-
rest," she says. "That night, we made
the decision to emigrate. We weren't
coming for job opportunities; we were
coming for principle. It's very hard to
come for principle."
They left just days after Lance's bar
mitzvah.
As children in South Africa, Melis-
sa and Lance Vainik were "very happy

but there was an underpinning of anx-
iety," recalls Mr. Vainik, now 30. "We
didn't think the future held that much
possibility."
"Even though South Africa was a
great place to live, it was still kind of
dangerous," says Ms. Vainik, 28. Hous-
es had "burglar bars on the windows no
matter how affluent the neighborhood."
For the children, "it was traumatic"
starting a new school system, although
Mr. Vainik says American schools are
"easier" than in South Africa. Going to \-\
synagogue every week at Adat Shalom
helped them make the transition.
The Jewish communities of South