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in
the

in
the

Eye On

S queeze
queezed Out
d

Rising rents and
gentrification are the dark
side of Detroit’s resurgence.

STACY GITTLEMAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER
PHOTOS BY JERRY ZOLYNSKY

TOVAKDESIGNS.com

TOP: Paul Wasserman in
front of his hat display.
RIGHT: Wasserman in front
of his store.

10

August 17 • 2017

I

t is the dark side of urban
revitalization.
A rundown part of town
gets a facelift.
Old buildings with good
bones are gutted and restored
while others come down to
make way for shining new
structures. Trendy shops and
restaurants open and a once
undesirable area is suddenly on
the rise.
Unfortunately, so are the
rents.
It is happening in cities from
Seattle to Chicago. The silver
lining of urban gentrification
comes at a heavy price. Long-
time residential and commer-
cial renters feel the pinch and
are often financially squeezed
out at the expense of an area
becoming trendy and hip.
The most prominent and
longtime retailer to fall victim
is Henry the Hatter at 1307
Broadway in Detroit. According
to owner Paul Wasserman,
who took over the 124-year-
old business from his father 25
years ago after working by his
side since the 1970s, the store,
which custom fits hats for
musicians, celebrities and U.S.

Poland

BARBARA LEWIS CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Survivor’s
father comes
alive through
book of
his pre-war
photographs.

TOP: Ruth Webber and her
daughters Susan, Shelly and
Elaine in front of a photo of
Ruth’s father, Szmuel Muszkies,
at the launch party in Poland
for a book of his photos.

INSET: The Muszkies family in
the late 1930s: Malka, Helen,
Ruth and Szmul.

R

uth Webber found her father again
in October, more than 70 years after
she lost him in the Holocaust.
Szmul Muszkies was a professional pho-
tographer in the Polish town of Ostrowiec,
a city of about 80,000 residents, including
about 8,000 Jews.
He photographed portraits and pictures
of important life events for the Jewish and
gentile communities, including weddings,
baptisms, first communions and undoubt-
edly bar mitzvahs, though no such photos
have been found.
He also took pictures of school, social and
trade groups and of the town’s businesses
and industry, including its important steel-
works. His studio was regarded as the best of
the town’s several photographers’ shops.
Webber, 81, of West Bloomfield was
the younger of the two daughters born to
Muszkies and his wife, Malka.
Muszkies’ connections with influential
non-Jews helped save his family, though
he died in Gusen, a sub-camp of the
Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria,
just a few days before it was liberated.
Several months ago, a resident of
Ostrowiec published a book of Muszkies’
photographs, an event marked by a cer-
emony that Webber, her three daughters and
other family members attended. She was able

to learn more about the father she barely
remembered.
“My memories of him are mostly about the
hugs I received when he came home from
work, his genuine concern about my well-
being and the joy I experienced when I was
allowed to play in his studio,” Webber said.

THE WAR YEARS
After the Nazis invaded Poland, the
Ostrowiec Jews were sent to a ghetto. When
their ghetto was going to be liquidated in
1942, Muszkies arranged for his older daugh-
ter, Helen, to live with a gentile family. She
spent the rest of the war passing as Catholic.
He, his wife and their younger daughter
went to a nearby work camp, where condi-
tions were less harsh than in the concentra-

tion camps. The family moved together to
several labor camps, but eventually Muszkies
was taken away separately.
Webber and her mother ended up in
Auschwitz. The infamous Dr. Josef Mengele,
who would determine with the flick of his
thumb which arriving prisoners would be
immediately gassed, didn’t show up to meet
their train, so they were sent to barracks.
Webber was able to stay with her mother
for a few months; but then she was sent to
a barrack for children, many of whom were
designated to be subjects for Mengele’s per-
verted medical experiments.
Her father was also at Auschwitz, and he
sent her a message to meet him. “My father
looked like an old man, although he was only
45 years old, hardly the father I remembered,”
she said. It was the last time she saw him.
She was liberated Jan. 27, 1945, and taken
to a Krakow orphanage where her mother
found her. She was not yet 10 years old.
After a short time in a transition camp
in Germany, and then a period in Munich,
Malka Muszkies and her two daughters
moved to Toronto, where they had fam-
ily. Webber met her husband, the late
Mark Webber, at a survivors’ gathering in
Toronto and moved to his home in Detroit.
Together they raised three daughters, Susan
of Washington, D.C., Elaine of Huntington

continued on page 12

12

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January 12 • 2017

jews d

in
the

in
the

back to school

Jewish Detroiters

On The

Move

Out-migration to
suburbs started
in the 1950s, but
now some are
returning to the
urban core.

BY SHARI S. COHEN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

THE
INTERSECTION
PROJECT

HAVE AN OCCASION
TO CELEBRATE?

NEED SOME DESSERTS
FOR A PARTY?

JUST WANT TO
SEND A GIFT?

Nearly 50 years after a police
raid at 12th and Clairmount
streets ignited violence and
carnage, the Detroit Journalism
Cooperative, which includes the
Detroit Jewish News, is exploring
whether conditions that
produced the civil unrest have
improved for Detroit residents
in a series of stories called The
Intersection. This is the last in
the series. To see all the stories
done by our partner media
agencies, go to
www.detroitjournalism.org.

Lexi Smith at the Taj Mahal

D

etroit has had Jewish residents since 1762. The
and four-family duplexes and apartment buildings. They
first Jewish neighborhood, Hastings Street, devel-
were not fleeing; they were improving their housing stock.”
oped near downtown Detroit in the 1880s. By 1910,
After World War II, returning veterans sought to start
Jews began moving to newer neighborhoods to the north
families, and real estate developers created suburban-like
and later northwest, as African Americans moved into
developments in Northwest Detroit — mostly brick, two-
predominantly Jewish neighborhoods — a pattern that
story, single-family homes with small front and backyards,
continued into the 1970s. In recent years, there has been a
and detached garages. Many young Jewish families bought
modest reversal of that trend with some new Jewish resi-
houses in northwest Detroit around Bagley, Hampton
Judge Avern Cohn and Vernor elementary schools. Synagogues, temples and
dents inspired by Detroit’s revitalization.
According to historian Sydney Bolkosky’s book,
stores followed them.
Harmony & Dissonance: Voices in Jewish Identity in Detroit 1914-
But, by 1958, Jews were on the move again — this time initially
1967, some Jews left Hastings Street for better business opportuni- to Oak Park, Huntington Woods and Southfield, often moving to
ties, but others “wanted to escape escalating crime — which fre-
subdivisions developed by Jewish builders. By 1958, according to a
quently served as a euphemism for their flight from the mounting
study by Albert Mayer for the Jewish Welfare Federation, cited in
black population.”
Lila Corwin Berman’s Metropolitan Jews: Politics, Race and Religion
Black Detroiters were crowded into a small section of the city
in Postwar Detroit, 20 percent of Detroit’s Jewish population lived
and, with continued migration from the South, they faced a criti-
in Oak Park and Huntington Woods. The Oak Park branch of the
cal need for more housing. However, racial prejudice and discrimi- Jewish Community Center opened in 1959.
natory legal restrictions hampered their ability to rent and buy
homes outside their existing neighborhoods.
REASONS FOR LEAVING
Some powerful all-white, non-Jewish neighborhood organiza-
Why did Jewish Detroiters leave the city? There were multiple rea-
tions posted threatening signs, vandalized African-Americans’
sons — racial, economic, religious and sociological and, of course,
homes and threatened violence when blacks attempted to rent or
many white residents who were not Jewish also moved to the
buy homes in white neighborhoods. Black Detroiters faced less
suburbs. (Years later, many African Americans left Detroit for Oak
resistance when moving to Jewish neighborhoods.
Park and Southfield, too.)
“Jews didn’t demonstrate or burn crosses; they simply moved
According to Judge Cohn, as soon as a neighborhood became 30
out,” recalls U.S. District Court Judge Avern Cohn, then a lawyer
percent black, whites started to leave. “Jews are white people, and
active with the Jewish Community Council, precursor of the Jewish they weren’t used to integration,” he says.
Community Relations Council.
A key incentive for many families was the desire for newer,
Cohn views the initial outward migration as mostly driven by
better housing that was readily available in the suburbs by the
upward mobility. “The initial movement from the Twelfth Street
late 1950s. Government mortgage programs eased the financing
area was not racial,” he says. “Families were living in two-family
for new homes that offered more space and privacy than some

SUZANNE CHESSLER CONTRIBUTING WRITER

The

Great

Gap

More and more, Metro Detroit
high-school grads are opting to take a
gap year before starting college.

W

hile a student at North
Farmington High
School, Blair Bean
joined a conversation started by
family friends discussing high-
school graduates taking gap years
before entering college.
Bean soon began mulling over
the idea of allotting time to pursue
interests beyond career academ-
ics. Not only did she relate to the
idea, she also decided to spend a
gap year in Israel.
That destination has been cho-
sen by a number of local gap stu-
dents, from Orthodox to Reform,
and for different reasons.
“I wanted to try new things,”
says Bean, a member of Temple
Shir Shalom in West Bloomfield. “I
wanted to be part of an accepting
community. I wanted to be able
to make mistakes and get some
experience in learning how to be
successful. I wanted to make new
friends and take the idea of being
independent to a whole new level.
I wanted to give of myself and
strengthen my connection to our
Jewish homeland.”

Bean, recently returned and
about to enter Michigan State
University as an English major,
found all that she wanted by com-
pleting a program with Young
Judaea. She also received college
credits through American Jewish
University for studies that were
part of the program.
“I took campus classes in
Jerusalem that covered Hebrew,
Jewish law and Middle Eastern
conflict,” she says of the academic
segment of her experiences. “We
also had classes where the coun-
try of Israel was our classroom,
and we learned about religions of
Israel and the history of Zionism
through art.
“I volunteered in a youth village
and met kids from many coun-
tries. There also was time for spe-
cial interests, and I spent one week
each in viewing art in Jerusalem,
going through desert survival
techniques and sea hiking.”
As she gets ready to go to col-
lege, Bean feels very glad she had
the gap after high school.
“The year opened my eyes to so

continued on page 30

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30

May 10 • 2018

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January 26 • 2017

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story “Squeezed Out” about Paul
Wasserman, aka Henry the Hatter,
being forced out of his longtime
home on Broadway in Detroit.
“Very nice work here. It explains the
human stories behind gentrification
and redevelopment. The reality of
what happens to people is very vivid,
and the reporter lets the sources tell
their own stories,” the judges said.
Also in the Feature Story category,
JN Contributing Writer Barbara
Lewis won second place for her
story “Eye on Poland,” about how
a book of pre-war photographs
helped Ruth Webber find her father
again 70 years after she lost him in
the Holocaust. Contributing Editor
Robert Sklar took fourth place for
his story “Max-imum Effect,” a retro-
spective on Max Fisher for the JN’s
75th anniversary issue.
Contributing Writer Suzanne
Chessler won third place in the
Localization of a National Story cat-
egory for her story “The Great Gap”
about how an increasing number
of Metro Detroit high school grads
are opting to take a gap year before
starting college.
Contributing Writer Shari S.
Cohen won fourth place in the
Explanatory Story category for
“Jewish Detroiters on the Move,” a
story about the role Jews played in

28

August 24 • 2017

jn

jews d

in
the

75th Anniversary/essay

Robert Sklar

Contributing Editor

Max-imum
H
Effect

e would become a confidant of
U.S. presidents and Israeli prime
ministers from his big-picture
perch as dean of American Jewry and
as a late-blooming Zionist who came to
grasp Israel’s intrinsic role in building
Jewish unity.
But Detroiter Max Fisher — ardent
Zionist, business titan, mega-philanthro-
pist, communal leader and political force
— didn’t bond with Israel or Zionism
and, in turn, Jewish causes until visit-
ing the Jewish state on a United Jewish
Appeal (UJA) study mission in October
1954 at age 46.
Israeli statehood in 1948 and Keystone
Oil Refining Co. business partner Leon
Kay, a Holocaust survivor who became
an avid Zionist, brought Fisher, until
now “unaffiliated and relatively unin-
formed,” into the dynamic world of
Jewish affairs and philanthropy, accord-
ing to Sidney Bolkosky’s 1991 book
Harmony & Dissonance, Voices of Jewish
Identity in Detroit, 1914-1967. Keystone
Oil had been a sponsor of Jewish
Detroit’s Israeli Independence Day rally

Max Fisher: Champion of building
a strong Israel as the pathway
to a strong Jewish world.

on May 16, 1948, at the Central High
School athletic field in celebration of the
new State of Israel.
But it wasn’t until that first UJA mis-
sion, what Harmony & Dissonance called
“an unabashed attempt to enlist the
support of wealthy and influential Jews,”
that Fisher, who grew up in Salem, Ohio,
a small town with few Jews, discovered
his Zionist calling. That calling, with
encouragement from his wife, Marjorie,
eventually would command much of the

continued on page 54

FROM LEFT: Israeli
Prime Minister Golda
Meir with Max Fisher.
Israeli Prime Minister
Menachem Begin
with Max Fisher by a
Chagall wall tapestry
at the Knesset in
Jerusalem. Max
Fisher and Dwight
Eisenhower at the
former president’s
farm in 1965.

COURTESY LEONARD N. SIMONS JEWISH COMMUNITY ARCHIVE

52

July 18 • 2017

COURTESY MAX M. & MARJORIE S. FISHER FOUNDATION

jn

housing issues around the time
of the Detroit civil disturbance in
1967. The story was part of the
Intersection Project, a program of
the Detroit Journalism Cooperative,
in which the JN participated.
In the Spot or Breaking News
category, Stacy Gittleman won third
place for “Offering Support,” a story
about how the Jewish community
stood together with Chaldeans over
the deportation issue.
“I’m so proud of the journalism
the JN staff and contributing writers
produce week after week,” said JN
Managing Editor Jackie Headapohl.
“These wins prove what I’ve always
known — the Jewish News has some
of the best journalists in the busi-
ness.” •