A L on g Way
Fifty years later;
loneliness and pain
cont- I . n ue to scar the
memories of people who
once lived in the
Jewish Children's Home.
JILL DAVIDSON SKLAR STAFF WRITER
L
on the Jewish youngsters who were cared for by
a staff that provided dietary nutrients, but no food
for the soul.
That proof is locked away in the memories of
those once assigned to the home.
"I do not want to go back to it in my mind. I don't
want to relive it," said Sarah, a West Bloomfield
woman who refused to be identified, the scourge
of the orphan label still fresh 50 years later.
"I have told my husband a little about it, but
not my children," she said. "I have tried to block
it from my memory."
She is not alone in her feelings.
In its 25 years of existence, the Jewish Chil-
dren's Home or its predecessors, the Detroit He-
brew Orphan Home and the Detroit Hebrew
Infant Orphan Home, served hundreds of Jewish
children.
To be in one of the homes, most children had to
come from painful circumstances. An intake pol-
icy form in the Burton Collection lists the reasons
for admission under the heading, "Causes of de-
pendency or neglect":
"Destitution of parents or parent; employment
of mother; death of father or mother; de-
sertion of father or mother; illness of moth-
er; illegitimacy; incompetence of parents;
religious conflicts in case of intermarriage;
other conditions threatening the whole-
some development of child."
An orphan, in other words, was not al-
ways a true orphan, a child who had lost
both parents. In fact, many children to-
day could be considered candidates for ad-
mission.
Once brought to the home, the children
spent their days in the large brick
structure that was divided into liv-
ing quarters and bedrooms. The
boys and girls were separated by
The Jewish
age and sex for sleeping arrange-
Children's Home ments; siblings often were placed
in different rooms, compounding
was deeded to
their loneliness.
The living area consisted of a
the Jewish
large dining room for the children
Home for the
and a smaller one for the staff
Aged in 1945.
members; the living room was long
and filled with overstuffed furni-
The structure to
ture and a Zenith radio.
the left was
A cramped room off to the side
of the living room served as a vis-
added to the
itors' area for children and their
original
parents.
"I remember walking by that
building.
room one day and seeing a father
and a mother," said Peter, a 68-
year-old Southfield man who asked that
his real name not be used. "The man
looked tired. He had on a rumpled suit
and she was wearing a dress that went
almost to the floor. They looked so sad."
The child of a single, working mother,
ong stalks of weathered grass poke
through a blanket of ice and snow on
the field where the Jewish Children's
Home used to be.
In the front of the lot at Bur-
lingame and Petoskey is a large,
gnarled, leafless tree, the base of
which is a resting place for chunks of concrete and
twisted steel supporting rods — proof that the or-
phanage existed.
The remainder of the physical evidence lies in
a lonely file in the basement of the Detroit Public
Library. A part of the Jewish Welfare Federation
archives in the Burton Historical Collection, the
manila folder contains thin onion-skin paper copies
of correspondence about the building or the chil-
dren: a report on an epidemic of chickenpox that
swept through the home, a 1938 census of the in-
habitants, a slim report on the home's demise.
But nowhere in the file or in the field is there
anything that details the pain and loneliness felt
by the children who once lived within its now de-
molished walls. Not one single copy bears testi-
mony to the emotional scars the experience left