IT has taken 42 years since Zambia closed its doors to Israel, when a number of African countries decided to sever diplomatic ties with the Jewish State. However, this is now water under the bridge as Foreign Affairs Minister Harry Kalaba performed the task of bringing the two countries together recently. NDUBI MVULA reports on how the tourism sector in Livingstone views the developments.

A Livingstone based tour operator and proprietor of River Club, Peter Jones has said Zambia’s move to open an embassy in Israel is the best thing to have happened to the tourism sector.
Mr Jones said the Jewish people have had a very troubled past and Zambia was the only country in the world to offer sanctuary to them despite not having quarters when the rest of the world closed their doors.
“That was a wonderful and fantastic thing to do. Actually they don’t call it Jewish history but instead they call it Jewish geography because they have travelled all over the world,” he said.
Mr Jones feels the move is a wonderful development especially for Livingstone City whose first mayor, Jock Millar was a Jew.
A Zambian by birth from Ndola, Mr Jones said Zambia had a reputation of being the most peaceful country in the world and views the restored diplomatic ties with Israel as a big plus.
Mr Jones whose resort recently hosted Jewish journalists and travel agents, said the opening of the embassy had huge benefits for the sector and the country as a whole because it portrays Zambia as a country with open arms as well as friendly.
He strongly believes that the move will increase the inflow of the Jewish tourists into Livingstone due to its rich history of being the entry point for the first Jewish settlers who built the synagogue which is now occupied by Church of Christ and also has the newly opened Jewish Museum.
Zambia Tourism Board director of marketing Mwabashike Nkulukusa said the board was proud that Government had re established ties with Israel which had many tourism sites just like Zambia.
He says tourism today ranks as the top most job creator and the opening of the embassy adds more employment opportunities for Zambians as the country will be expecting an inflow of Jewish tourists.
Mr Nkulukusa says the ZTB will soon be embarking on a marketing trip to Israel to enhance their presence.
Foreign Affairs Minister Harry Kalaba re-opened the country’s embassy in Israel early this month making Zambia the third African country to open an embassy in that country after South Sudan and Rwanda.
Mr Kalaba said Zambia expects “cooperation and the strengthening of ties” over a wide range of fields, including economic, security, agriculture, and tourism.
“We view Israel as a true friend in the Middle East and we have a great deal of knowledge to share on a wide range of issues,” he said.
Tourism, being one of the areas of cooperation, the City of Livingstone, especially having been declared Zambia’s Tourism Capital by late President Michael Sata, fits in the equation well enough.
From The River Club’s guest information book made available by Mr Jones, comes out one of the richest historical account of the Jews and their contribution to what the town of Livingstone is today.
The River Club is situated on the Zambian side of the Zambezi River, 18 Kilometres from the Victoria Falls.
As a guest at this resort, you will enjoy the distinct Edwardian flavour, the sights and sounds of Victoria Falls and the Zambezi River in a peaceful and tranquil setting away from the crowds.
With its ten luxury, thatched chalets overlooking the Zambezi River, have en-suite facilities including a bath, shower, toilet and basin and all the rooms have fans. The rooms are all completely open in the front giving guests the best possible views of the Zambezi River while the main building boasts of a well stocked and interesting library from which various reading materials can be.
It is from this same rich niche of relaxation that the well-kept data on the activities of the Jewish community stem from as Mr Jones takes us on tour.
Among the earliest white settlers north of the Zambezi were many Jews from the Baltic states of the Russian Empire, now Lithuania and Latvia. They came in large numbers as economic migrants, and refugees fleeing religious and political persecution, to the goldfields of South Africa from the 1880s onwards.
Some more adventurous souls, including Elie and Harry Susman, moved on north to Bulawayo and then, attracted by the cattle stocks of Barotseland, crossed the Zambezi shortly before the ‘Cape to Cairo’ railway reached the Victoria Falls in 1904.
Jewish traders played an important role at the Old Drift on the Zambezi riverbank and then in the new town of Livingstone, which was laid out in 1905.
A Hebrew congregation was established in 1910 and the foundation stone of the synagogue, now the Church of Christ, was laid in 1928. Livingstone’s Jewish population was reinforced in the late 1930s by a new influx of German Jewish refugees from Nazism and there was an even larger influx of Polish, and mainly Christian, refugees during the Second World War.
A Miss Brezinski was Mr Jones’ first primary school teacher back in 1965!! After the Second World War Indian traders began to replace Jewish traders in retail trade, but Jewish businesses branched out into the development of secondary industry. The Susman Brothers & Wulfsohn group either took over or established Zambezi Saw Mills, with its famous railway, and Zambia Textiles, while the Tow Brothers established an iron foundry.
The most prominent Jewish families in the town were the related Susmans and Grills, and the Kopelowitzes.
There is no longer a Jewish presence in the town, but their influence is clearly in evidence through their lasting contribution to the colonial architecture of the town.
It was, for example, the Grill family who built the remarkable Capitol Cinema in the early 1930s. Other than the above here are a few places of interest that you may wish to visit in town: The Synagogue still stands on Likute Way although it is now the Church of Christ on Likute Way formerly Highway and the foundation stone was laid by Eli Susman in 1928 and it was the first Synagogue in Northern Rhodesia.
“The Elders of the Church are very happy to open up the doors to allow you to look around inside. The “Sefer Torah” was removed to Lusaka when the one of the last Jewish families, the Iljons, left the area in 1972.
Nickie Iljon’s name still adorns the building that housed his shop on Mutelo Road formerly Codrington Street”, said Peter.
Many people that have been to Livingstone might wonder but the truth is that the Susman brothers donated the clock at the Livingstone Museum in 1951 to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of their arrival north of the Zambezi and also the Zambezi Saw Mills office in the industrial area is now the Railway Museum.
In the cabinet it is still possible to read the guards’ reports which show that bales of clothes belonging to the Susman Brothers & Wulfsohn, and destined for their Western and North-Western Province stores, were pilfered at various intervals! Susman Drive was named after Eli Susman and all the good work that he did for the community and has now been renamed Kapufi Avenue.
As if the list was not the only last, Maurice Rabb, Len Pinshow, Hanan Elkaim were some of the Jewish immigrants whose enterprise and initiative laid the foundation of the modern-day Zambian economy. Mr Jones narrates that the locals once knew the central crossroads in the town as “Ficks, Flax and Aufochs” corner after the three shops at the intersection.
Sam Fix was a tailor, Flax ran a haberdashery and the Aufochs family had a trading store on the opposite corner. He says after independence Mainway and Sackville Street became Mosi-oa-Tunya Road and Akapelwa Street. Stanley House, which once housed the Ministry of Tourism, Environment and Natural Resources on Mosi-oa-Tunya Road, housed the elegant stores of Harry Sossen, one of the wealthy men in the town.
Mr Sossen’s wife was Bella Grill.
Solly Grill and his sister Gertie Merber erected the Capitol Cinema next door to Stanely House in 1931. Mr Jones says the old cemetery situated on the Nakatindi road on the outskirts of town has a small walled off section within it for the Jewish community and the names include: Diamond Danzig, Ficks Finkelstein, Freid Gelman, Goldberg Iljon, Jacoby Naperstock, Kopelowitz Levinson, Mannsbach Marcus, Scher Schenker, Schlesinger (nee Guettler) Schmyat, Shapiro Simon (nee Nathan), Slutzkin Snapper, Stammreich Strauss and Sommer Taube Wolff.
On September 23, 2003, nearly 200 people, crowded into the Lusaka synagogue to pay tribute to the late Abe Galaun.
He notes that most of those who attended the memorial service, which was conducted by Rabbi Silberhaft, were non-Jewish, including many local dignitaries.
One of Zambia’s most distinguished citizens and doyen of the Zambian Jewish community, Galaun passed away in Lusaka on 19 August.
He was buried in London, where most of his family now live, but because of the important role he played in the Zambian society over many years, a memorial service was arranged for him in his home country as well.
The Zambian Jewish community, at its height, numbered about 1,200 in an overall white population of some 80,000 and it is not unusual, and in fact is the norm, for Jews to make contributions to the societies of which they are a part that are well out of proportion to their numbers, but even taking this into account the Zambian Jewish success rate would seem to have been extraordinarily high.
Born in Vornia, Lithuania, in 1914, Abe Galaun arrived in Zambia just before World War II.
Mr Jones explains that Galaun’s subsequent success in the meat and dairy business (most of the country’s milk was produced and distributed under his auspices) was such that Zambian president Kenneth Kaunda dubbed him “the man who feeds the nation”. Throughout his life, he was involved in a wide range of charitable enterprises while his extensive contribution to the Jewish communal life included the founding of the Council for Zambia Jewry and serving for twenty years as chairman of the Lusaka Hebrew Congregation.
As a gesture to his origins, his company calendars always started in October, to coincide with Rosh Hashanah.
Mr Galaun was a comparative latecomer compared with Elie and Harry Susman, who were in Zambia from the very beginnings of white settlement. Zambian Jews did not only make their mark in the economic field.
Among the distinguished guests and one of the speakers at the Galaun memorial service was Simon Zukas, who played an important role in Zambia’s independence struggle in the post-war era and in 1952 was in fact exiled by the colonial government for being a “danger to peace and good order”.
Mr Zukas, who still lives in Lusaka, has his counterparts in the many left-leaning South African Jews who were prominently involved in the struggle against apartheid. Many of the latter, including Joe Slovo, Ronnie Kasrils and Ray Alexander, were in fact based in Lusaka for the greater part of their years in exile.
Whatever the achievements of the past, the only tangible remnants of the once active Zambian Jewish community today are cemeteries (eight of them, still maintained by the community, in consultation with the AJC), the shul in Lusaka and a few dozen individuals, also mainly living in the Zambian capital.
Zambian Jewry today comprises a small core of long-term ‘settlers’ and more transient residents engaged in trade, commerce, agriculture and the professions. The small community comes together for religious services on the High Holidays and Pesach, as well as for Yom Haatzmaut and other Israel-related events.
Interestingly, a small number of Jews have of late made their way to Livingstone once more, following the establishment of Sun International there.
It is obviously too early to speak of any kind of revival, but given the right conditions, the possibility of a viable Jewish community once more taking root in a town whose population at one time was 15 per cent Jewish certainly cannot be ruled out.
However, prior to Zambia’s independence in 1964, Jews were active in local government and some served as mayors in Livingstone, Broken Hill, Kitwe, and Luanshya. In the 1930s, Sir Roy Welensky was the leading political figure in Northern Rhodesian. From 1959 to 1962, M. G. Rabb was elected to the national legislative assembly and from 1962 to 1968, S. W. Magnus was a prominent member of the Zambian parliament.
After 1968, Magnus was appointed as high court judge. In 1978, the Council for Zambia Jewry was founded in Lusaka to oversee Jewish communal activities. The council provides assistance to political refugees and the poverty-stricken with medical and financial aid.
The two synagogues located in Lusaka and Ndola (it has recently been closed due to a lack of congregants), but no rabbis are resident. Today, approximately 35 Jews remain in Zambia; nearly all live in Lusaka. There has been no rabbi directing the community for several years. Israel and Zambia maintain full diplomatic relations. The Israeli ambassador in Harare, represents  his country in Zambia.
It is expected that with this snippet of information on the Jewish community in Zambia and Livingstone in particular, many a visitor to this tourist capital will take time to visit some exciting and memorable sites as associated with the rich Jewish history in the country.