CZ/id/720)Z eaCliffaC Of ..C2t,'ZiniI29fiC2P2
1350 N. Woodward, Just South of Big Beaver (16 Mile)
"Haven't you always wanted a friend in the car business?"
SINGLE
Please Call DAVID BIBER 644-1930
1987 ELDORADO BIARRITZ
ALLANTE
ALL THE BEST OPTIONS
In Stock
Ready to Own
STICKER $29,033
NOW $23,995
A DISCOUNT OF $5,038
Mon. and Thurs. 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Tues., Wed., Fri. 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
THE MICHIGAN COUNCIL OF THE ARTS
and the
JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER OF METROPOLITAN DETROIT
6600 WEST MAPLE ROAD
WEST BLOOMFIELD, MICHIGAN
SUNDAY, MARCH 15, 1987
1:30 PM Corinne Stavish performing Jewish
Folktaies with audience participation.
3:00 PM Beth Dzodin & Celia Dzodin performing a
Purim Play: The Happening in Shushan
ADMISSION FREE
Temple Beth El is:
A learning
experience.
Learning takes many forms at
Temple Beth El.
It might be single parents
finding out what it takes to
succeed without a spouse.
Or Religious Education for kids
with disabilities.
It's learning programs for Senior
citizens, support programs for
the bereaved, self-help groups for
inter-married couples and
religious training from pre-school
through High School.
Temple Beth El is more than a
building and Sabbath services.
We're a good place to learn and
to grow
We're a good place to belong to.
Temple Beth El
We want to belong to your family.
Telegraph & 14 Mile • Birmingham
For inf6rmation, including how affordable
membership can be, call Herb Maistelman 851-1100
86
Friday, March 13, 1987
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
11NNV
%MN\
Testimonies Of Child
Survivors Compiled
New York (JTA) — In
studies done till now on the
Holocaust and its victims,
one group has been neglected.
They are the survivors who
were children at the time. It
is only within the last six
years that a cumulative study
has developed to deal with
the traumatization of those
who were no older than 13
when World War II began.
In Sands Point, Long
Island, a quiet suburb of New
York City, a privately-funded
study began in 1981 compil-
ing testimonies of the chil-
dren who came through the
Holocaust, reaching out to
archives and private in-
dividuals in Europe, Israel
and throughout the United
States and Canada in search
of written accounts of
memories.
The Jerome Riker Interna-
tional Study of Organized
Persecution of Children has to
date collected 500 interviews
with child survivors.
Volunteer interviewers con-
tinue to ferret out these peo-
ple and record their personal
experiences before, during
and after the Holocaust.
Specific interest in child
survivors arose from the work
of a husband-and-wife team
directing the Riker Study,
Milton and Dr. Judith Kes-
tenberg. Milton Kestenberg is
a New York attorney whose
work in challenging refused
West German reparations
claims by Holocaust sur-
vivors who claimed psycho-
logical impairment led him to
question the reasons for the
refusals.
In working on these claims,
he found they had been re-
fused because German-au-
thorized psychiatrists
contended they could not
validate that the stated
psychological problems were
actually induced by the
Holocaust. As Kestenberg
questioned survivors about
their experiences in order to
refile their claims with the
German government, the in-
formation he gathered made
him increasingly aware of the
psychological makeup of
child survivors and the emo-
tional legacy passed on to
their own children.
Dr. Judith Kestenberg, the
Riker Study project director,
is a psychoanalyst specializ-
ing in child development. In
1972, she founded Child
Development Research
(CDR), a non-profit organiza-
tion, whose purpose is the
prevention of emotional
disorders in children. CDR
runs a center for parents and
children, babies, pregnant
women, mothers with babies
and/or toddlers up to age four.
"Through these years,"she
said, "we have learned to
communicate with these
babies and have taught
parents to communicate with
them. We invented methods
of communicating with chil-
dren non-verbally before they
could speak fluently." CDR
therapists work with move-
ment, art and music thera-
pists in order to study non-
verbal communication with
children.
"It is this experience that
gave us a new understanding
of how babies think. These
observations enabled us to
begin to study on a new key
how children felt when they
were traumatized by the
Holocaust," Dr. Kestenberg
explained.
Dr. Kestenberg repeatedly
noticed that in therapy, the
Holocaust experience was not
factored into the behavior of
survivors and their children
as a contributing element.
Moreover, psychotherapists
conceded that they them-
selves were guilty of minimiz-
ing or ignoring altogether the
Holocaust as a major con-
tributing factor to mental
illness, witnessed by the fact
that therapists found it dif-
ficult to identify with the im-
pact the Holocaust had on
their clients. The result was
that the therapist became
what one called "a partner to
the denial of the impact."
Psychotherapists in Amer-
ica, said Milton Kestenberg,
shared the resistance to the
Holocaust and its experience
with the rest of America.
"This was taboo," he said,
CALENDAR
B'NAI B'RITH MICHIGAN
SINGLES: Knob-in-the-
Woods club house, 20800
Knob Woods Dr., South-
field, brunch, speaker,
12:30 p.m. Sunday, ad-
mission, 541-7289 or
968-8445.
JEWISH COMMUNITY
CENTER: 6600 W. Maple,
West Bloomfield, Purim
Las Vegas Night and
Dance, 8 p.m. Saturday,
admission, 661-1000.
JEWISH COMMUNITY
CENTER: 6600 W. Maple,
West Bloomfield, runners
symposium, 2 p.m. Sun-
day, 661-1000, ext. 234.