Solly Sachs

Albert Louis Sachs was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. His father, Emil Solomon Sachs, and his mother, Ray Ginsberg, had both immigrated as children from Lithuania when it was still part of the Russian Empire. Under the Tsar's rule, Jews throughout the empire were subjected to constant discrimination and frequent outbursts of mob violence, with the open encouragement of the state. Memory of this oppression informed the Sachs family's view of their new country, where native Africans were denied many of the rights freely granted to European immigrants.

Albie Sachs Biography Photo Both Emil Sachs and Ray Ginsberg joined South Africa's communist youth movement in the 1920s. At the time, the Communist Party was one of the few political organizations in South Africa open to members of all races, and the only major multiracial party to advocate racial equality. Emil Sachs, known as Solly, became the leader of South Africa's Garment Workers Union, and made it a vehicle for promoting the rights of all workers, including black Africans and women, who were shunned by other labor organizations. In 1931, Solly Sachs was expelled from the Communist Party for his independent views, but he remained a highly visible labor leader and was a frequent target of government investigation. Albert Louis, known from childhood as Albie, was only four years old when World War II began in Europe. South Africa, as part of the British Empire, went to war against Nazi Germany, but the young Albie was aware that many of his white neighbors were sympathetic to the Nazis and their racist ideology. Solly and Ray separated when Albie was small, but Solly's example of political activism remained a powerful influence on young Albie. On his sixth birthday, with the war raging in Europe and North Africa, he received a card from his father, saying he hoped Albie would grow up to be a soldier in the fight for liberation. While Solly Sachs made his home in Johannesburg, Albie and his mother lived in Cape Town, where his mother was secretary to Moses Kotane, a leader of both the Communist Party and the African National Congress (ANC). Unlike many white South Africans of his generation, Albie Sachs grew up seeing black and white adults interact as equals, and he learned to judge all men and women as individuals. His family's radical politics, abstention from traditional religion, and close association with black Africans marked Albie as different from his schoolmates. His social isolation reinforced the habit of independent thinking that has characterized his entire life. http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/sac0bio-1