WHEN RECESSION HITS HOME

1929 Reflections

Detroiters remember life and death during
the Depression.

Staff Writer

S

aul and Josephine
Rubin didn't always
have enough food on
their table during the Great
Depression. At one point,
they nearly lost their home.
"There was no work and I
mean none," recalls Ruth
Burdick, 74, daughter of the
Rubins. "My dad said he
used to count bricks —
anything to get some work."
Saul Rubin was a tool and
die maker, sometimes work-
ing one day a week, some-
times no days at all. The fami-
ly scrimped and saved and
canned food for the winter.

"Somehow we survived
just like everyone else," says
Mrs. Burdick, a resident of
Borman Hall Jewish Home
for Aged in Detroit.
Like many others, the
Rubin family survived with
some help from the organiz-
ed Jewish community, which
provided food and grants to
those in need. Saul Rubin
got a grant to help pay for
his home near Clay and
Russell in Detroit.
"During Pesach in the
Depression, they used to
give matzah to Jewish
families," Mrs. Burdick
says. "My dad delivered food
baskets so Jews would have
something to eat for Pesach.
We got one, too."
During the Depression, the
Jewish community created
an emergency relief fund,
which eventually was ab-
sorbed by Jewish Family
Service.
"Emergency relief had
been an unknown in
Detroit," says George Stutz
of Huntington Woods, at the
time a young prosecuting at-
torney for Wayne County
and one of the founders of
the Detroit Emergency
Relief Fund.
Mr. Stutz remembers the
immediate response of the
Jewish community, which
he says was not prepared for
the crisis that followed 30
years of immigration.

The community solicited
money to rent a group of
stores on 12th Street as a
collection depot for food and
clothing.
"I remember the old
Shaarey Zedek on Brush
Street, which made its
basement available with
cots for homeless men," Mr.
Stutz says, adding the
shelter accommodated near-
ly 100 men a night for the
years that followed the
height of the Depression. A
soup kitchen also was open-
ed at the Jewish House of
Shelter to feed the needy of
the 12th Street area.
Eleanor Dorfman of West
Bloomfield was a young girl
when the Depression hit.

Leonard Simons,
retired advertising executive

El
"Men sold apples on
the streets for a
nickel because they
couldn't get jobs."

"My father, a fruit ped-
dler, didn't lose everything
in the Depression because
we had no stocks," Mrs. Dorf-
man recalls. "But we were not
able to make our mortgage
payments on our house and
the bank foreclosed on it."
Her father owned a house
in another area of Detroit
which he rented out, and her
family moved into it. Mrs.
Dorfman remembers not be-
ing happy about having to
change schools.
A scrap yard was on an ad-
joining lot and Mrs. Dorf-
man's father bought a scale so
he could weigh scrap. Her
father became a junk dealer.
. "That's how we survived
the Depression," she says.

"My father had people bring
him scrap and he would sell
it.
"I remember eating a lot of
starchy foods, especially
potatoes, but we always had
a chicken on the Sabbath,"
Mrs. Dorfman says.
With the Depression came
many suicides, massive
unemployment, an influx of
homeless families.
"People committed suicide
because they couldn't sup-
port their families," says
retired advertising exec-
utive Leonard Simons of
Southfield. "Men sold apples
on the streets for a nickel
apiece because they couldn't
get jobs."
Mr. Simons didn't go
broke. Nor did Max
Rosenfeld, a window washer
who became a builder. Both
were savers.
"I always made a living,"
says Mr. Rosenfeld of West
Bloomfield. "But I knew one
fellow who jumped off a
ladder."
It was also a time of
closeness.
"We didn't have much, but
life was wonderful," says
Bessie Chase of Oak Park,
who was a teen living with
her parents in Detroit when
the Depression hit. "Every-
body helped each other out."
Adds Sam Cann, who lives
at Borman Hall, "Most Jew-
ish families managed to sur-
vive where they never miss-
ed a meal," Mr. Cann says.
"It was a shameful thing for
a Jewish family to become
members of the welfare.
Jews lived through Depres-
sion days because of our
families and our society." ❑

Photo: The Bettm an Archive

KIMBERLY LIFTON