February 5: An Anti-Apartheid Hero

Harry Schwarz, an attorney who was an implacable foe of South African apartheid for decades, died at 85 on this date in 2010. The son of an anti-Nazi family that fled Germany on the night of Hitler’s election, Schwarz was a defense attorney in the 1964 Rivonia trial (which resulted in the imprisonment of Nelson Mandela, among others — see Jewdayo for July 12, 2010). He was a committed opponent of the apartheid government for more than 40 years and refused numerous government appointments — while never losing an election. Schwarz founded the Democratic Party, strongly endorsed a non-violent transition to a democratic South Africa, served for decades on the South African Jewish Board of Deputies, and was the country’s ambassador to the U.S. during and after the transitional years that brought an end to apartheid.

“Freedom is incomplete if it is exercised in poverty.” —Harry Schwarz