Dorothy And Morris Medalie
hen Dorothy Medalie met the
man who would become her hus-
band, she had no idea how her
life would change.
Dr. Morris Medalie, now a retired pe-
diatrician, came to the United States from
South Africa during World War II, bring-
ing his brother for medical treatment.
(Wounded in the army, his brother is now
a paraplegic.)
After the Medalies married in 1947,
they moved to South Africa, where they
lived for 12 years.
"Life was good for whites in South
Africa," Mrs. Medalie says — and for
Jews. During those years, three of Jo-
hannesburg's six mayors were Jewish.
"At that time, there was very little
crime," she says. Only "petty crime be-
cause the bulk of [black] Africans had no
way of making [a wage]. Bank robberies
were unheard of"
Dr. Medalie grew up on a farm about
100 miles from JohanneSburg, in a town
called Trichard. At age 10, he went to a
boarding school in `Jo'Burg! "My father
was very influential," he recalls. "My
brother and I were the first Jewish board-
ers to go to school there."
"Once we had children, we moved to
a house," Mrs. Medalie says. Their one-
acre property had 51 fruit trees, and four
servants lived in a cottage on the
grounds.
The Medalies, who reside in West
Bloomfield, have three children, James,
Russell and Sally Shapiro, and two grand-
children, Brent and Allison.
When they left South Africa in 1959,
the Medalies first went to Boston, then
to Detroit, where Dr. Medalie worked for
one of the first HMOs, Community Health
Association.
In 1962 Dr. Medalie became chief of pe-
diatrics at Springfield Hospital in west-
ern Massachusetts. After about a decade,
he and his family returned to Detroit,
where Dr. Medalie became chief of pedi-
Africa differed based on climate and
population. Johannesburg has been
likened to New York in scale of its Jew-
ish community, and Cape Town com-
pared to San Diego. On the southeast
coast, Durban, South Africa's third-
largest Jewish community, was small-
er but supported both an Orthodox and
a Reform congregation, Audrey Sobel
says.
Durban is on the east coast in the Na-
tal Province and has between 4,000 and
5,000 Jews today, 10,000 when Mrs. So-
bel was growing up there. Mrs. Sobel
came to Detroit in 1985 with her hus-
band Jack, chief of infectious diseases
at Wayne State University. They im-
migrated to the States in 1981.
In comparison to other cities, Detroit
does not have a large community of
South African Jews. There are perhaps
20 families, and they come from all over
South Africa. The largest North Amer-
ican population centers of South
African Jews are Toronto and San
Diego.
Dr. Medalie was the first of Detroit's
South African Jews to come to the
States. He met his wife, Dorothy, in
Boston in 1945, and the pair returned
to South Africa after they married in
1947. They stayed for 12 years.
But ultimately, they decided to leave.
'e didn't want to raise our children
in a racist atmosphere," Mrs. Medalie
says. "And here we are — in Detroit."
Like most other Jews, the Medalies
had hired help in South Africa; often,
the help lived on their properties.
"I formed a very close relationship
[with the workers], especially with my
cook-general housekeeper," Mrs.
Medalie says. "She was like a mother
to me."
Even after they left South Africa, the
Medalies retained contact with the
woman until her death a few years ago.
What, and who, they left behind con-
tinues to haunt many of the former
South Africans.
"It's more in the soul, I think" that
you miss South Africa, Alan Goodman
says. "There's a certain smell in Africa
when you get off the plane. Some peo-
ple say it's the ozone. It goes right
through to my soul."
Nor was the transition to the United
States easy, despite the lack of obvious
barriers, such as language.
Leaving a large, close-knit family for
a new country was difficult, Ms. Slater
says. "Here, I didn't know anyone. I
didn't come as a refugee. I spoke Eng-
lish, so everyone assumed there
wouldn't be any cultural difference."
While the Jews of South Africa came
to the United States as educated Eng-
lish-speakers, "no one in Detroit was
waiting for us," Ms. Slater says. Many
say the Detroit Jewish community did
not open its arms to South African Jew-
ish expatriates.
"Russian Jews who came here clear-
ly had refugee status," Dr. Sapeika says.
'We came speaking the language, very
Anglicized, some with money...so we
were not awarded any of the collective
Jewish community efforts to facilitate
integration into the community."
"The only organized movement of
W
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attics at Henry Ford Hospital's Fairlane
satellite.
"There is not really a sense of commu-
nity here" among Detroit's South African
Jews, Mrs. Medalie says. "Most South
African families are much younger than
we are. Another reason might be that I'm
an American, don't have a common bond
of growing up with them."
The Medalies visit South Africa year-
ly and say the country has changed dras-
tically since they lived there.
"When we were there the first time, it
was a white South Africa, as far as we
were concerned," Dr. Medalie says. "Now
it's a black South Africa."
On a recent trip, they gleaned that
blacks "are upset because they haven't
gotten Mandela's promises fast enough,"
Mrs. Medalie says. She believes that
"whites are being oppressed." Under af-
firmative action, "whites can't get a job.
There is a shortage of doctors because
many emigrated, and even though there
are not enough black doctors, they won't
give white doctors jobs. They just offered
white teachers an early retirement bonus,
but there aren't enough trained [black
teachers] to replace them."
In South African medical schools to-
day, many of which have lost accredita-
tion, 85-90 percent of the students are
black, she says.
South Africa has invited Cuban doc-
tors and teachers — "who don't know any
of the 11 languages" — to fill those posi-
tions, she says.
"It's a very difficult thing to bring a
mostly tribal people into the 20th centu-
ry, now almost the 21st century. It takes
two to three generations," Mrs. Medalie
says.
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Harry and Ray Maisel: "Good friends of ours stayed, fought, went to jail."
73