Voetsek: A Journey from South Africa to Texas

By Joe L. Rod M.D.

‘Voetsek’ is the life story of Dr. Joe Rod. He takes readers through his experience navigating the hardships of growing up Jewish in Apartheid South Africa to a family of Holocaust victims and survivors. Intergenerational trauma and untreated mental illness in the context of a fascist, racist, and anti-semetic state laid the groundwork for a lifetime of depression, but not all was lost. ‘Voetsek’ is a personal and historical journey of a man in the pursuit of happiness. Through the power of love, perseverance, and the magic of the 1970s, Dr. Rod was able to confront and overcome much of his sorrow. His story serves as an inspiration for people in the throes of hardships both outside and within their control.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664193031

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Copyright © 2021 by Joe L. Rod, M.D.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 09/07/2021

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CONTENTS

Foreword

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Epilogue

Gallery

FOREWORD

I moved to Texas from California in July 2019. I spent the remainder of that year nesting in my newly built home. I had sufficiently furnished and styled my home to my liking around the beginning of 2020, and was ready to explore my new environment. My plan was to be active and social. I was looking forward to the golden years of retirement. However, the world had different plans.

When the COVID-19 pandemic started, my life, like the lives of so many others, came to a screeching halt. Although my third-born daughter, Emily, lives in Austin, she was unable to spend as much time with me as we had planned because of my vulnerable status as a senior citizen. I understood she was trying to protect me from the virus. So I was left to my own devices in a new environment, in a new home, alone for about 9 months.

My whole life, I’ve been busy. Some might say too busy. Being so sedentary is a relatively new development for me. Eventually, I had consumed everything Netflix had to offer, and ran out of ways to occupy my mind. That’s when the memories came flooding in.

It was impossible to ignore the replay of scenes from my life and to ignore the corresponding visceral feelings. I tried to swat them away but to no avail. There was only one way to combat the replay of my life, and that was to sit down and write. I wrote 10 hours a day, 7 days a week. I was compelled to do so, much like Madame Winchester was compelled to quiet the ghosts that haunted her in her San Jose mansion by continuously building rooms and stairwells for them.

Lucky for me, my ghosts needed pages, not rooms. Eventually, the involuntary replay of scenes from my life became less and less invasive. The book was complete. I reread it, hired an editor, and reread it again. After much review, it felt fair to warn friends and family that it was rather depressing. Although many facets of my life were enriching and worth remembering, I had to present the regular periods of darkness in order for the good parts to be put in perspective. Some of these are interactions and secrets that I kept for 70 years. The title of my life’s story needed to relay a lifetime of adventure and regularly being told to fuck off.

Once I received my second Moderna vaccination in March 2021, my daughter, Emily, was able to visit more regularly. During the lockdown, our visits were brief and far apart. As of recently, she got a job as a copywriter for a pharmaceutical company. She works from my home one day a week to spend more time together. I figured she might have an idea for a title.

She suggested Voetsek. I laughed. As a South African, it would have never occurred to me to use such a bold and controversial word. Surely, no book published in Afrikaans would dare use that as a title for anything...especially from my generation. Her suggestion, although humorous, made sense. Emily explained that the word, voetsek, was one of the most regular words in my vocabulary during her childhood. Usually reserved for when our family maltisese, Maddi (affectionately known as Mad Dog Maddi), would bark at me after returning home from a long, arduous shift at the hospital.

Then I realized, this cursed word has followed me my whole life. Voetsek (pronounced: fʊtsak) is a word in Afrikaans that is reserved for shortly dismissing dogs who you can’t be bothered uttering another word to. It’s the shorthand product of the antiquated, original term, voort se ek, which means go on I said.

It’s a word that I have repurposed myself to be a bit funny, as it continues to lose its edge with every passing year I remain outside of South Africa. I mention it only once in the early chapters of my book. However, throughout my autobiography, I will recount regular instances of people telling me to "voetsek" in other terms.

Lately, I have not encountered instances of disrespect (not including the big, white trucks on I-35 in Texas). This might have something to do with the isolation during the pandemic, or maybe it’s the changing of tides. This autobiography allowed me to look back on my life and critically reflect on my decisions, for better or worse.

When faced with so much adversity, the good days can easily get overshadowed. Ultimately, the people who told me in so many words to voetsek would be seething with fury if they saw the great life I made for myself to this day. They thought they were telling me to fuck off, but instead my heart recieved it as its literal translation; go on I say. So, I went forward. The journey is far from over, and there’s plenty more good days to come. No one will ever tell me to voetsek again.

CHAPTER 1

I was born on July 17 th , 1947. Growing up in Boksburg, South Africa during the late 1940s and 1950s had its challenges, especially if you were Jewish. It was not long after the Holocaust; anti-Semitism was still rife, and both my parents had lost their entire families to the Holocaust.

My parents had immigrated to South Africa from Lithuania—my father, in 1926, and my mother in 1939, six months before the war. My mother, Esther Osher, came alone at the age of twenty-two, leaving behind her entire family. A Jewish girl on a German ship, and a three month journey across the equator.

Her parents, my grandparents, Rachel Krubelnik and Yosef Osser, perished in the Holocaust. Her brother, Meier, his wife, Rivka, and their two children perished in the Holocaust. Her sister, Chana, and brother, Hirsch, perished in the Holocaust. All the school friends she had left behind perished in the Holocaust. The only remaining members of her immediate family were her siblings, Sarah, David and Noah. Her brother, David, landed up in a concentration camp, and her brother, Noah, and his wife, Shaina, landed in Russia. Her sister, Sarah, had arrived in South Africa in 1935, four years before my mother.

*       *       *

My mother’s ship stopped in Germany, where she witnessed hoards of Nazis preparing for war everywhere she looked—a frightening sight. Having blond hair, she was fortunate enough to go unnoticed as a Jew. She disembarked in Cape Town and needed to continue on a two day journey by train to Johannesburg. In Cape Town, she was met by two Litvak (Lithuanian) gentlemen. It was a cat-and-mouse game on the ship with these two gentlemen pursuing her. She evaded them as she was unsure of whether or not they were the people who she was supposed to meet.

My mother had been sponsored by Sarah, but she was only given a temporary tourist visa, so Sarah introduced her to my father with the objective of marriage. In order to obtain a resident visa in South Africa, my mother was motivated to marry after a courtship no longer than a few months. Returning to Lithuania was not an option. My father’s name was Yona in Yiddish, and his English name was officially John Rod, but he went by Jack. He came from a small town in Lithuania, and arrived in South Africa with his brother, Sydney. He had lost all his family and friends in the Holocaust. Unfortunately, the union between my parents turned out to be less than fulfilling. There was a definite compatibility issue between them. My father was a relatively short man, but carried a lot of weight and was very powerful. This was offset by mother, who was very submissive. My father held unreasonable expectations of her, even expecting her to work in the shop the day after their wedding. My mother became tearful once when relating the incident of when she was passionately brushing up on her Hebrew. She had learned Hebrew in school in Lithuania, and she loved attending Hebrew lectures. She had asked my father to look after the children while she went to a lecture in Johannesburg. Although he agreed, once she left, he complained to the Rabbi that she had abandoned her children. These sort of events, fortunately not occurring often, highlighted their difficulties as a pair.

*       *       *

My parents settled in Boksburg, which was twenty-five miles east of Johannesburg. Our first house in Boksburg was a small house opposite a convent in a lower middle class area. The nuns from the convent ran a large girl’s school, and we used to hide and tease them when they passed our house on the way to church. Our second house, located in an upper middle class suburb, was large, beautifully furnished, and built by my father. Building was his passion and he pursued it often leaving my mother alone in the shop. He built a couple of houses in a neighbouring suburb, as well as building Rodfam Court, a small shopping center downtown on the main street with six small apartments on the second floor, and three small stores on the first floor. Boksburg was a small town, and the main street housed all the main stores.

Our house was brick with a short drive around in the front with two gates. There was a concrete driveway with a two car garage and a large front patio. From the cut glass front door, you accessed the entrance hall. To the left, a spacious living room spilled into a lavish dining room which led to an enormous kitchen. Behind the kitchen sat two small rooms, one with a coal stove and one with a built-in ironing table. From the kitchen, the hallway led to four bedrooms, one full and one half bathroom, and one grand study with its own entrance and patio. The yard homed the servants’ quarters—two sizable bedrooms, a full bathroom, and an extra toilet room. The yard was overflowing with a grape vine and numerous fruit trees, and additionally contained a concrete kennel for the dogs: two fox terriers, mother and son.

In Johannesburg and its surrounding towns, there was a large community of Lithuanian Jews. As a result of the Holocaust, tremendous fear and paranoia filled the community and was exhibited in their interactions with other people, in their business dealings, and in the synagogue. Whenever there was a knock on the front door, there was immediate, profound shock felt by my parents, which affected me and my siblings. Though my parents felt at home, they were persnickety within the community, harping on inconsequential matters ad nauseum and picking on each other over trivial issues.

The Jewish population in Boksburg numbered eighty families, yet surprisingly, there were two communities with two synagogues. One was in Boksburg Center and one in Boksburg North—two Rabbis total, one at each. Eventually, the Boksburg North community dissolved. Every Friday night, and every Saturday morning and afternoon, I used to frequent the Boksburg synagogue. I kept strictly kosher by choice and upheld all the laws of the Sabbath. The synagogue only attracted a small group of patrons on Shabbat and at services during the week, but come Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) and Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) the place was packed to capacity. All the ladies were dressed fashionably seated upstairs, separate from but in full view of the men. The Rabbi used this forum to give his scolding sermon, but it did not encourage attendance; the place emptied out after the high holy holidays. In general, the Jewish community of Boksburg simply did not wish to patronize the synagogue.

*       *       *

For years, my father and his brother, Sydney, who had accompanied him to South Africa, worked for Mrs. Friedman in a native eating house on a mine. The food was so bad that he often threw up at work. He got paid very little for that job, but regardless of what he earned, he would always send back a portion to his parents in Lithuania until they died. In 1938, near a gold mine in Boksburg, he eventually opened a very small shop, which later progressed to the small trade shop my parents ran for the next thirty years. The mine was relatively close to the store, I estimate a few hundred yards, with a very high structure that housed the deepest shaft in the world. The Witwatersrand Gold Reef was 35 miles wide, including towns on the east and west rand.

I recall experiencing multiple tremors a day as a result of the dynamite explosions.

*       *       *

South Africa is the southernmost country in Africa populated by fifty-nine-million people. It has three capital cities: executive Pretoria, judicial Bloemfontein and legislative Cape Town; however, the largest city is Johannesburg. Additionally, there are eleven official languages. Eighty percent of South Africans are of Black African ancestry, divided among a variety of ethnic groups speaking different African languages. The remaining population consists of those of European, Asian, and multiracial ancestry. In 1948, the Nationalist Party imposed apartheid, systemically segregating the white and non-white inhabitants of South Africa and oppressing non-white South Africans through laws, policies and institutions. Apartheid was dissolved fifty-four years later on April 27th, 1994; however, crime, poverty and inequality remain widespread with about a quarter of the population unemployed to this very day.

*       *       *

My parents’ shop catered to African miners who migrated from rural South Africa and other surrounding countries in Southern Africa. They came from Zululand (KwaZulu Natal), Lesotho, Northern Rhodesia (Zambia), Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), Botswana, Nyasaland (Malawi) and others, each with their traditional garb, language and culture. Interestingly, my parents were fluent in six African dialects and could converse with the customers in their own tongues. My brother, Barney, and I would also help at the shop. Customers from Nyasaland were the most difficult to deal with. They were obstreperous and quietly defiant, infuriating my parents. Poor Barney had difficulty containing his anger and frustration over their behavior and would constantly be found arguing with them. The Sothos and the Zulus, however, were a pleasure to deal with as they were generally very reasonable, which was consistent with their culture.

The tiny shop stood on a corner just down the road from the mine shaft on one of the main streets running through Boksburg and was just one street down from the major street. From the front of the store, my parents could observe approaching potential customers and identify their ethnic backgrounds from a distance as they approached the shop. I say potential because they had competition. Mr. Shapiro owned the store right next door. When he opened his store, I thought my parents were going to have a nervous breakdown. A child at the time, I had never heard so many insults directed at another person. The tension eventually settled and there appeared to be enough business for both shops, but the profit margins were low as they ceaselessly competed with each other by lowering their prices. Often, they used their cars to pick up customers as they headed toward the shops, but sometimes, the customers would get out of our car and walk directly into Shapiro’s shop.

The merchandise of both shops consisted of an array of goods directed at the African clientele. There were stacks of merchandise on the floor and items hanging from the walls and the ceiling. Not a single space in the shop was without goods. We carried suitcases—large colorful crates with latches—used by the patrons to pack up their belongings when they returned to their homelands. Our blankets were especially popular amongst the Sothos, who wrapped themselves in colorful fabrics as part of their traditional dress. There were cigarettes, soaps, a refrigerator full of sodas, bread, etc. There was an array of clothing, especially a large stock of shoes. We also carried many types of canvas material, and slabs of leather for resoling shoes. Incidentally, when my shoes wore out, they were resoled using those same leather slabs. The result was a solid new shoe, the only problem being that the new shoe was a half a size smaller than the original. That was no concern of my father’s though—that was my shoe.

Once, my father mistakenly left the shop keys on the counter and locked the door with the keys inside. Instead of paying for a locksmith, he decided to fish the keys up from the counter through a hole in the roof, so that night we set out to the shop and ascended onto the roof. I must have been ten years old. He unhooked a section of corrugated metal plate from the roof and, low and behold, with a flashlight we could spot the keys far below. Realizing that he needed more tools, my father left me on the roof and took off in his 1949 Chevrolet. The next minute, there were sirens from two police cars as they pulled up to the shop and surrounded the place. They yelled for me to put my hands above my head. Then, they shouted further orders about not moving, and other commands typical of an apprehension. The officers came up to the roof, and upon spotting the hole, they demanded to know about my accomplices. I explained that my father was on his way, so we waited while all the neighbors, mainly poor white mine workers, gathered round the store until my father finally arrived. As the police exchanged harsh words with him, I vigorously shook in my boots. Then, my father—completely unbothered by my fearful experience—miraculously fished the keys up, replaced the metal panel on the roof, and drove us both home. The main objective had been accomplished: retrieving the keys without paying for a locksmith. The Africans