Abraham Jaffe

this note added by Norman Jaffe: Abe Jaffe and Pauline Matoren met in Detroit and were married in 1917. The January 1920 Census lists Rose as being 16 months old. What an pleasant emotional charge I felt when Charlene showed me a copy of the form; I visualized Rose on my Mother's lap while the Enumerator was recording their answers.

Orphaned by The Holdup

On the evening of December 21, 1928, a policeman and a policewoman came to our apartment door. Their news was that Abraham, my father had been shot. One came to take Mom to the hospital and the policewoman stayed with Rose, Muriel and me.

We were told that two black men had come into Dad's auto parts store on River Avenue, asking for tires. My father led them upstairs where they shot him and robbed the store. He died in the hospital the next day from loss of blood. A blood bank might have saved my father. Oh, how many times I have ached that there were blood banks then.

    Relatives gathered in an aunt's house to sit shiva over his body. I remember that everyone was crying but I did not. I went into the next room by myself and crawled around the floor. I did not seem to understand what I had lost, forever.

A few days later, some sympathetic person gave me 50 cents. I spent it all on a toy pistol. When my mother saw it, she cried for a long time. Some one accused me of being thoughtless and tossed the toy away. Did I not feel the loss of him yet? Was I searching for a power in that gun that might have saved my father or my mother?