Sid Shroyer, a longtime member of our South Bend Jewish community, will read from his recently published memoir When Once Destroyed, with copies available for purchase at the Jewish Federation.

What begins as a letter to his grandson about his father becomes investigative research and reporting that reveals the hidden story behind the destruction of his father’s boyhood home and the destruction of Somerset, Indiana.

“Everybody looked out for everybody else. You didn’t worry about locking doors. It was just one big family. We would go out and play up and down the street and
then everybody go home at night. Between the two churches in town and the school, life just circled around church and school and family and kids” -Janet
(Shroyer) Schenkel

Along with documented journalism, Shroyer’s story is a deeply personal account about the end of a way of life, that provides an opportunity for the reader to observe how the powerful run roughshod over the powerless.