ROBYN SASSEN
Pictured: Sylvia and Solly Jossel.
PHOTOGRAPH BY ROBYN SASSEN
Rabbi Avraham Hyam Lapin married them on August 13, 1944 at Yeoville Shul. Solly went to Johannesburg’s only yeshiva – opposite Wolmarans Street Shul – alongside the men who were to become Johannesburg’s leading rabbis.
“I was the outsider. I studied Tanach, Gemorrah… And then I became a despatch clerk in Johannesburg. I was promoted to a job in Springs and then to a wholesale business which became Cash and Carry. Insurance and finance were my bag.”
Solly, born Shleyme Neustyn is one of the two remaining Ochberg orphans. He remembers as a five-year-old, waving goodbye to his mother at the station in Poland. Cossacks killed his father before he was born. Having earned her keep by baking bread, and burdened with three other children, his mother could not afford to keep Solly and placed him in an orphanage, as a two-year-old.
“Ochberg was allowed to take 200 children, with the permission of Field Marshall (Jannie) Smuts. I left Poland in shorts and a shirt.” They travelled six weeks through Europe. When they arrived in South Africa, 100 were sent to Johannesburg and 100 to Cape Town.
“I chose Johannesburg. The older children said you’re mad, there are lions in the street, they will eat you up. But I couldn’t change my mind. When we arrived, they put us up on the floor of an old aged home in Doornfontein. Mr and Mrs Josselowitz, Lithuanian grocers” – he indicates a photograph – “came to visit. And I grabbed Mrs Josselowitz and wouldn’t let her go, not even to eat my supper.
“They took me home. When I was 15, they said they couldn’t afford to keep me any longer; I had to find a job, which I did. I studied at night.” Solly cut his surname to Jossel when he was 21, “for business reasons”.
After Sylvia’s mother was widowed, Sylvia became a driver in the army. “One day, I was standing on the corner waiting for a troop carrier to take me to the depot,” she said. “Solly walked past.” Calling it “love at first sight”, she describes the romance that led to 70 years of marriage. They have three children, 14 grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren.
The Jossels lived in Bulawayo and Israel before settling in Johannesburg some 30 years ago.
Without batting an eyelid, Solly recites a poem spoofed on Dr Seuss’ The Cat in the Hat: “I cannot see//I cannot pee//I cannot chew//I cannot screw//Oh, my G-d, what can I do?//
My memory shrinks//My hearing stinks// The Golden Years have come at last//The Golden Years can kiss my ass.”
With the better eyesight, Sylvia’s mastered the household’s cell phone and computer.
“If you’ve got the years, you live,” grins Solly, citing a Yiddish idiom.
