Lazar Sidelsky
South African lawyer
Lazar Sidelsky (7 October 1911 – 17 May 2002) was a South African lawyer. His firm, Witkin, Sidelsky and Eidelman, pioneered the advancement of black South Africans in the legal profession during the apartheid era. Sidelsky is known for having employed and mentored a young Nelson Mandela, a law clerk in his firm.
Early life
Sidelsky was born in Johannesburg in 1911 to Lithuanian Jewish parents that had fled pogroms in their home country. His parents, Isaac Sidelsky and Rachel Sidelsky (née Rafel), purchased a farm in the eastern Transvaal highveld (now known as Mpumalanga). He attended high school in Ermelo, before studying law at the University of the Witwatersrand. Shortly before he began his university studies, his father died.
In order to fund his education, Sidelsky played the violin and performed with his jazz band, Connecticut Yankees. After daytime lectures were over, Sidelsky walked 10 miles to where his band performed nightly.
Career and Mandela
By the 1940s, Sidelsky was a partner in one of Johannesburg's largest and most successful legal firms, Witkin, Sidelsky and Eidelman.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lazar Sidelsky” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.