Australia needs to find its Sammy Cohen |
The government school in Johannesburg where I was growing up had an almost 90% Jewish student body, with many Jewish staff members as well. The predominance was so marked that the school was closed for most of the regular Jewish holidays.
In the mid-1950s, there was an influx of Lebanese Christian “refugees” into South Africa. The new students that were settled in school’s catchment area were all held back for a year, so they were bigger, older, stronger and more aggressive than their schoolmates, and had brought with them the same prejudices that they learned in their ruptured country. Quickly, there was a surge of bullying, intimidation of younger kids, and domination of the playground, both by the bigger boys and their older brothers. Complaints to the teachers helped nothing, because they were as afraid of the new families as we were, and the “nice” behavior that was requested was a totally foreign concept to the students as well as to their families.
Sammy Cohen was the “stage name” of a young Jewish professional wrestler, who made it a mark of his public performances to proudly strut in the ring wearing a magen david, and to jump out of the ring to “hunt” the audience members who shouted out........