Now why would Bram Fischer be of any interest to me? You might well arsk. It all comes back to one Tottie Krige (whose real name seems to have slipped my mind). Tottie is somewhat famous because he was wounded at the Battle of Spioenkop and then mentioned by name in Deneys Reitz's Commando. Tottie was also Jan Smuts' personal assistant during the Boer War, Smuts ended up marrying Tottie's sister, who became affectionately known as Ouma Smuts. Tottie had a few children one of which was Molly who married Bram Fischer. Tottie was my great-grandfather and Molly was my grandmother Pauline's sister. In fact I believe that I was named after Bram's son Paul who died a year before I was born.
This weekend my uncle Bernard arrived with a number of letters that belonged to Pauline. My father, Bernard and myself were looking through these letters and found two letters sent by Bram to Pauline just after he'd been arrested and before he was sentenced. Both are written in Afrikaans and are somewhat chatty, I doubt whether the prison censors would have allowed much else to be discussed. Here they both are, if someone is willing to transcribe them it would be appreciated - I'll post the transcriptions up here and credit the person too.
Comments