VHS old boy was killed in North African conflict zone
Nevil Irwin Lazarus was born into a Jewish family on August 25, 1920 at Hattingspruit near Dundee, where his father owned a general dealer store at the time. His birth was a cause for a big double celebration, as that same moment also saw the birth of his twin sister, Lesley Dorette.
Researched and submitted by André van Ellinckhuyzen
In his twilight years, Charles ‘Charlie’ Lazarus wrote a 20-page memoire of his life.
In it, he wrote about how as a very young boy, he and his family left England aboard the SS Hawarden Castle in 1883 and arrived in Cape Town, and later in Durban aboard the Dunkeld.
He wrote about the good life in Pietermaritzburg where his father was a ‘smous’ and horse seller, and about his family’s long and difficult trek in a hired stage coach to ‘El Dorado’ (Barberton), where bars full of drunk men and brothels with ‘ladies of easy virtue’ were plentiful, and about infamous ‘Cockney Liz’.
Charlie wrote about how in 1899, at the beginning of the Second Boer War, he was commandeered and joined up with the Ermelo Boer Commando under Generaal Tobias Smuts.
He wrote about his participation in the battles at Dundee, Colenso and Ladysmith under the Commander of the Boer Forces, Generaal Piet Joubert, and how after the battle of Talana near Dundee, he was used as an interpreter when captured British troops were transported to Pretoria.
Charlie wrote about how near the end of the war he surrendered to the British, and how after the war had ended, he travelled back to Ermelo ‘to dig up a few hundred sovereigns’ which had been buried by his brother before he too surrendered to the British.
Nevil’s father, Charlie was also a farmer and was born in England in about 1878, and came out to South Africa as a child.
Nevil’s mother was a beautiful Dutch girl named Rhoda Dorothy Hartogs, who was born in Middelharnis in Holland in about 1893.
Charlie and Rhoda were married in Pretoria on August 12, 1915.
He later became the owner of the Farm Tovernaarsrust, as well as the Esihlengeni Store, both near Ngome, and died in 1947 at Esihlengeni.
Rhoda died much later in 1982 in Johannesburg. Nevil and his elder brother, Basil Samuel Lazarus also saw the first light at Hattingspruit on May 29, 1917. Basil was a lieutenant in the South African Air Force and served as a reconnaissance pilot in North Africa during WWII.
He was married to Jeanette ‘Gigs’ Sonnenberg in 1942, and died in July 1996 in Sydney, Australia.
Lesley was briefly married to Lieutenant Kenneth Isaac Jacobs of 66 Air School, who died in an aircraft accident in March 1942, and thereafter she had married Manfred Hermer.
Manfred was born in Volksrust in 1915, studied Architecture at Wits, served in the Union Defence Force during WWII in East Africa and the Middle East, and later became a highly respected architect in South Africa whose work included the Johannesburg Civic Theatre, the Ponte City Apartments and a hospital in Ashkelon in Israel.
Lesley and Manfred later emigrated to Canada, where she passed away on August 19, 2003 in Victoria, British Columbia.
Before joining up for the war, Nevil lived in Brakpan where he was employed by the Sallies gold mine.
As a bombardier, he was killed in action on June 14, 1942, during the North African campaign.
The one version of his death is that the aeroplane in which he was a gunner was shot down, and the other is that he was an anti-aircraft gunner, who was killed when a plane that had been shot down crashed right into his gun turret bunker.
Nevil’s family was simply told he had been killed, and there were no remains and no burial site.
Basil Lazarus’ son, also named Nevil, lives in Sydney and he wrote that he remembered a story being told of a meeting between the Queen of England and Nevil’s mother, Rhoda, where the Queen remarked that Rhoda must have been very proud to have given a son to King and Country.
Furious and disgusted, Rhoda broke down and stormed out of the room.
Documents drawn up by the Lazarus family after the death of Nevil were witnessed by a Lance Sergeant H. Steyn, of the police station at Ncome.
The Vryheid Gazette, July 3, 1942 reads: “Roll of Honour. We regret to announce the death of Bombardier Neville I. Lazarus, S.A. Artillery, younger son of Mr. and Mrs. C. Lazarus of Esihlengeni. He was 21 years of age, had matriculated at the Vryheid High School, and was killed in action in Libya on June 14th 1942.”
Nevil’s grave is located at the Knightsbridge War Cemetery in Acroma, Libya, and his name is inscribed on the War Memorial in Vryheid.
Lest we forget.
Also read: The tragic story of a family driven apart by conflict
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