South Africa: Darker Shade of Pale – Why I Wrote a Book About My Grandfather and How It Changed My View of Him

14th November 2025
[The Conversation Africa] Deborah Posel, the founding director of the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research, an interdisciplinary research institute in the humanities and social sciences in South Africa, has published a new book, Darker Shade of Pale: Shtetl to Colony. Using a combination of personal memoir and historical inquiry, it retraces the early 20th century migration of Jewish people from the Russian Empire to colonial South Africa through one man's life.

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