Our History
THE TEHERAN CHILDREN
The Jerusalem Hills Therapeutic Centers began its story in 1943 with 800 boys and girls from Tehran who escaped Nazi-occupied Europe.
The Teheran Children were the first large group of Holocaust survivors to reach Palestine. Their journey began in 1939 when their families fled from Poland to Russia. In 1942, disguised as non-Jewish Polish refugees, Jewish children placed in Christian orphanages in Poland succeeded in following General Anders’s Polish army-in-exile as it made its way to the British-mandated Middle East to fight alongside the Allies.
Once in Teheran, the children were rescued by Jewish Agency workers and sent by ship, train, and on foot to the land of Israel, where local activists found homes for them in kibbutzim, boarding schools, and Henrietta Szold youth villages.
THE FIRST CHILDREN’S HOME
Their four-year journey to Israel was complex and filled with hunger, cold, and diseases. Sadly, 25 Teheran children, whose life experiences at such a young age left more severe scars on their souls, could not be integrated into regular institutions. In an attempt to respond to their special needs, Henrietta Szold approached the Bnei Brit office in Jerusalem, requesting their support.
The Bnei Brit Jerusalem Lodge generously agreed to house them on the second floor of the Beit Hannah Hostel, located on Ethiopia Street in the center of Jerusalem, in the care of experienced childcare professionals led by Yehuda Dux.
Thus, in 1943, the Children’s Home was established, and from here it embarked on its mission to rehabilitate and mainstream traumatized immigrant and Israeli children and youth.
FIRST CHILDREN’S HOME CAMPUS
In 1950, Bnei Brit Women of America (later to become Jewish Women International) took upon themselves the funding and operation of the facility. The organization purchased a 20-dunam tract of land in the tranquil Bayit Vagan neighborhood of Jerusalem and constructed a new Children’s Home campus that opened there in 1956.
For over fifty years, the Children’s Home continued to develop and expand its internationally acclaimed unique treatment program. The “Beit Hannah” (later renamed “Beit Kemper”) Group Home for teenagers opened on Ethiopia Street in 1985, on the historical site of the Home’s beginnings. And, in 1999, the Goldie Kassell Treatment and Training Center was established as an outpatient clinic and professional training center to help address the needs of the wider Jerusalem population.
NEW CAMPUS, NEW NAME
In 2008, the Group Home relocated to a villa in the quiet residential neighborhood of Gilo, and in 2014, was renamed Beit Kemper and moved to even larger accommodations in Kiryat Yovel and doubled the number of teen boys in its care.
That same year, the Goldie Kassell Treatment and Training Center set up expanded operations in the more easily accessible Malkha neighborhood of central Jerusalem.
Unfortunately, as a result of the Coronavirus and subsequent financial complications, Beit Kemper was sadly closed in 2020.
In March 2009, the Children’s Home moved to its beautiful new campus in the picturesque Judean Hills just west of Jerusalem. The move to a new campus brought with it a change of name as well, thus beginning a new era and the coinage of the “Jerusalem Hills Therapeutic Centers”.
