Abram Fischer Research Paper

Abram Fischer (Bram) was born on the 23 April 1908 in the Orange Free State.
He was born into an influential Afrikaner family.

His grandfather had been the first (and only) prime minister of the Orange River Colony, and his father Percy Ultrich Fischer married his mother Ella Fichardt who came from a cosmopolitan family and was completely English speaking.
Thus Bram was brought up in an Afrikaans and English speaking home.
He regarded himself as a proud Afrikaner.

Bram’s schooling was at Grey College in Bloemfontein and from there he went to Grey University College in his hometown.
Bram was excellent in tennis and excelled in rugby. In 1928 he represented the Free State as scrum half in rugby. He played against the All Blacks.

Bram went on to study law (BA LLB degree) at Grey University which

This experience left was the beginning of his communist attachment.

Fischer had a long courtship with Molly, which lasted through his years as a Rhodes Scholar at New College, Oxford, they married in 1937. Three children were born from the marriage.

They shared a commitment to racial equality in South Africa. Like many political families, they were surrounded by secrecies, disappearances, bannings, police raids, and personal tragedy.

Fischer's mentor, Leo Marquard, who taught him and then brought him into the Joint Council and the Institute of Race Relations, these were Bram’s defining experiences.

In the 1940s he served on both the Johannesburg district committee and the central committee of the CPSA and was charged with incitement in connection with the 1946 African mineworkers' strike.
In 1943 he aided A.B. Xuma in revising the constitution of the African National Congress.

A member of the Congress of Democrats himself, he worked with the legal team defending leaders of the Congress movement charged in the epic Treason Trial of