redduke

My grandfather was Norman. He was a Lithuanian Jew who fled his homeland in the 1930's as he felt he was being persecuted for being Jewish. He fled with his wife to Dublin, Ireland. He was a very secretive man. Nobody knew much about him. Not even his wife, let alone his two children. He would go out every day to 'work', but nobody knew what he did. He had an incredible knack for enraging people, even complete strangers. He once made a completely affable Irish butcher so angry that he chased him out of the butchery with a meat cleaver. Him and his wife had two children. A son (my father) and a daughter. Norman & his family emigrated from Ireland to Johannesburg, South Africa in the late 1940's/early 1950's to start a new life there. Still, nobody really knew what he did. He apparently went out some days and traded gold & jewellery. But who knows where he got it from. He also apparently sold insurance at one time. He was a strange man. He would hang on to strange things, such as the one leg of a pair of scissors. He would smoke half a cigarette and nip it off and save the other half for later. He would storm out of the room during family/friends gatherings and lock himself in his bedroom, or just turn his back on a conversation if he felt he didn't like it anymore. I don't know a whole lot more about Norman, but I am slowly finding things out.

I find my family history fascinating. Although I know so little about it.