ja chank 2008 - South African Jewish Board of Deputies

associated with darkness and dampness is peculiarly favourable to the growth of the
microbe… Old dilapidated, dark, insanitary, and overcrowded houses… infected by rats
are particularly dangerous. Rats and house vermin often carry the infection from dirty
into clean houses.” 73
The incidence of the plague was small at first, but the numbers of people affected
gradually increased as did the virulence. In February 1901, Cape Town was declared an
infected port, and the British Army stopped landing troops there. The deaths peaked in
March, with 81 people hospitalised. By May there were about 33 deaths a week. The last
plague victim was discharged from hospital on 27 November. According to the Medical
Officer of Health, 204 whites were infected with the plague, with 69 deaths, 431
Coloureds (244 deaths) and 172 Africans (76 deaths). 74
The Cape Town Hebrew Congregation’s 7 th Avenue Cemetery in Maitland contains
graves of Jews who died of the plague. All of them died at the Uitvlugt Plague Camp and
all had “Bubonic Plague” listed as the cause of death. The 16-year old Barnett Berman
died on 6 March 1901 followed two days later by 50-year old dairy man Samuel
Kamenetz. They were joined in April by Judel Aberman (45), Sunder Freedman (24),
Andrew Osoler (23) and Jacob Kaplan (60) and in May by a male pauper called Baker or
Becker. 75
The highest mortality was amongst the Coloureds, but it was the Africans who suffered
the most, being blamed for its spread because of the association with lack of hygiene and
because the first plague casualty was an African. Although there were 50% more cases of
plague among the soldiers than there were amongst the civilian population, public
criticism, blame and fear was not directed against the army, but against outsiders - the
‘other’. This was unjustified because the plague was introduced into the Cape by the
military and the military was to blame for its spread through its negligence in failing to
report the dead rats in the South Arm. It was also the military that was responsible for the
disease spreading from the docks to the city through its camp in Green Point. 76
But blame – and bigotry – is not always rational. Whenever plague struck, fear for one’s
own life outweighed any concern one might have felt for the life of another and
unfocused prejudice was directed at all strangers, including Africans, Asiatics and East
European Jews.
Before the days of microscopes, the causes of disease were not understood and plague
was thought to be a pestis manufacta - a disease spread by human malice. When the
Black Death struck in 1347-1350, wiping out between a quarter and a half of Europe’s
population, the Jews were held responsible. The story spread that a Toledo-Jew, Jacob á
Pascate, assisted by a Rabbi Peyret in Savoy, had dispatched to all countries and cities a
host of Jewish poisoners with toxin made from the flesh of basilisks, spiders, frogs and
lizards (alternately from Christian hearts or the dough of the host). To a frightened
populace, schooled in clerical antisemitism and eager to seek a scapegoat, the Jew made a
73 Van Heyningen, 79
74 van Heyningen, 77
75 For this information I am indebted to Paul Cheifitz, who surveyed and recorded the burials in the cemetery.
76 Van Heyningen, 85