Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts with the label Gerry Loughran's piece on mom

Gerry Loughran's piece on mom

I did not notice myself but a friend knowing of my Kenya connections directed me to the obituary in the Guardian newspaper for Eve Hall, dead at 70. Eve was once women's editor of the Nation. I do not know how many Kenyans would remember her, but they should, for she was one of a number of the newspaper's staffers who suffered in the cause of freedom. The child of a Jewish father and a German mother, Eve was raised in Nazi-occupied France during the Second World War. Her father happened to be visiting South Africa when the war broke out and his wife and their half-Jewish child were left in Europe to cope as best they could. Eve's mother refused to pin the yellow star of David on her daughter's clothing - a highly provocative gesture -- but the pair somehow survived the Nazis and left for South Africa when the war ended. Eve enrolled in Witwatersrand University, where she met her future husband, Tony Hall. The day after the Sharpeville massacre in 1960, Eve joined Mandel