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HOME page 37
his sister when she lived in
the home, recalls his sibling
going to a Purim carnival
sponsored by the home's Tires and •
ladies auxiliary. "It looked
trash occupy
like fun," he said.
Robert Marwil remem- the site
bers the first orphan home
where the
in the Hastings Street
neighborhood as a large, home once
red-brick home with a wrap- stood.
around porch where he
spent many of his weekend
summer days.
"My father was the pres-
ident of the orphan's home,"
he recalled. `Td go over there
"They slept two or three to a
on Shabbos and sometimes on room and they were well-fed,
Sunday with my father. I would nicely fed," he said. "You would
play with the boys all afternoon." not hear stories of any mistreat-
While the living quarters were ment in the Jewish orphan's
sparsely furnished and "not very home. At least, I never heard any
homey," he remembers that the complaining."
boys were well cared for.
Still, something was missing.
'The food was good, the sheets
were clean and we were given
good-fitting clothes," Peter said.
"No one beat us. There was no
corporal punishment."
"But it was duty without love,"
he said. "We got care but we
didn't get love."
History Recalls 25 Years Of Service To Jewish Children
F
ram a disagreement about boarding Jew-
ish children in Christian homes to an aban-
doned field in a deteriorating
neighborhood; the Jewish orphanages of
Detroit took a long time to become operational
and a short time to dismantle.
It all started in turn-of-the-century Detroit,
when there was no facility in the area to care for
Jewish children. Jewish orphans, children with-
out either parent alive, were sent by United Jew-
ish Charities (WC) to a regional orphanage in
Cleveland. The children were then adopted by
Jewish families or raised by caretakers.
Detroit's UJC also acted as a social placement
agency for children who had only one parent to
care for them because of divorce, death or illness.
To make it easier to reunite the families when the
situations improved, those children were placed
in boarding homes or foster care until the fami
ly could find better accommodations.
But boarding homes would not take in a child
under the age of 5, who required special care. Jew-
ish adoptive and foster homes were few.
Because no formal Jewish child-care facility
■ Aras located in Detroit until 1918, UJC placed the
children in any available home, Jewish or gen-
tile. This angered community members who felt
the children should be in a Jewish environment.
"The late Fred Butzel told the author that pri-
or to the formation of the Infants' Home, Jewish
infants were boarded out to non-Jewish families,
where boys were not circumcised according to the
halachic.ally prescribed time," wrote Allen Warsen
Ma 1985 publication of the Jewish Historical So-
ciety of Michigan.
The alarm prompted action. A group of Jewish
citizens formed the Detroit Hebrew Orphan Home
in 1918. A fund-raising plan was formulated and
bylaws passed.
The group decided that the purpose of the home
was "to bring up and educate orphans of Jewish
parentage who have remained alone, friendless
and helpless. All children shall be trained and ed-
ucated in the Orthodox belief and faith and ac-
cording to Jewish National traditions; Jewish,
Hebrew and English languages shall be taught."
Members of the founding group recruited
friends and family to join the roster of support-
ers. Eight hundred people contributed $3 each
and many more attended social functions that
served as fund-raisers.
In 1920, the group secured the first home,
located near the corner of Rowena and Woodward.
It was an area once lined with grand homes built
at the turn of the century that has since become
a run-down stretch of Mack Avenue.
The group also organized the Detroit Hebrew
Infants' Orphan Home for children under age 5.
The home was first located at Canfield and Wood-
ward, but later moved to 262 Rowena, two blocks
from the home for the older children.
Detroit's Jewish Children's Home was born
when the two local homes were combined in 1930
at the recommendation of the Jewish Child Care
Council, a Jewish Welfare Federation committee
comprising members of the boards of both homes.
Under the council's direction, a new facility was
built at Petoskey and Burlingame and the two
other buildings IN ere vacated.
In 1931, a year after the home opened, the Jew-
ish Welfare Federation commissioned a study of
child-care practices in similar Jewish child-care
institutions. Jacob Kepecs, an expert in such mat-
ters, informed the Federation that placing infants
and young children in the home was "contrary to
the best thought and practice in the field."
Mr. Kepecs said that young children and in
fants should be placed in private foster homes in-
stead of institutional settings.
The advice Was ignored.
The population of the home steadily climbed
through the 1930s until it peaked in 1937 at 57
children. Then it fell to 24 in 1940.
The reason for the decline, wrote the late Jew-
ish community historian Anne Chapin in her com-
prehensive Histoiy of ewish Welfare Federation
of Detroit 1926 - 1949, was the improved ability to
keep families together through the Jewish Social
Services Bureau, and the greater availability of
public assistance.
A survey conducted in mid-1940 at the request
of home president Herman Cohen recommended
that no more children be placed in institutional
care. By late 1940, the rest of tlie children were
reunited with their parents and the smaller chil
dren were placed in foster care.
During World War II, the home was convert-
ed to a day-care center for children of parents in-
volved in the war effort.
When the war ended in 1945, the board of the
Jewish Children's Bureau voted to deed the prop-
erty to the adjacent Jewish Home for the Aged.
The building was demolished by the city in
1987.