264879 Zalman Rabinovitz British Army 365th Mechanical Transport Coy. Army Service Corps from:Johannesburg My mother recounts that Zolly, Zalman Rabinovitz, was born in Kovna in 1894 to an orthodox Jewish family. He had two sisters.
His mother died in 1903 and his father remarried to a woman with five children, and my grandfather was sent to South Africa around 1903/4 to work for relatives in a bakery in Johannesburg.
He delivered bread from a push cart and slept under the counter of the shop.
He joined up in 1914 when war broke out and became a motorbike dispatch delivery driver.
He was wounded in the leg (date unknown) and sent to Eastbourne to convalesce.
Whilst there he met my grandmother, Deborah, who was on holiday from London at the time, at a dance in the Saffron Rooms.
Zolly spoke very little English, but they conversed in Yiddish.
They eventually married in 1920 and had two daughters.
My mother, Marcia born in 1926 and her sister born five years earlier who died at the age of 28.
Zolly died in 1956 and Deborah died in 1991 aged 96.
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