Home visit with elderly client in Moscow

Frida was born 89 years ago in Moscow. Her father was an economist and her mother was the daughter of a cantor.

She graduated from Moscow University of Printing Arts. During the war she was evacuated to Kazakhstan, where she spent 2 years. She met her future husband, a journalist, on May 9, 1945, Victory Day.

Frida faced rejection when applying for jobs at newspaper companies, because she's Jewish. She finally found work at a magazine company, Young Bolshevik, for a year before being fired. She then worked for a medical magazine and went on to edit medical books.

Her husband died in 1978. they had no children. Frida retired in 1996 and has two nieces who help take care of her. Since 2000 she's been helped by JDC's Hesed program.

Frida suffers from asthma. She also has problems with her hips and must use a cane when moving about. She tries to leave the house when weather permits.

Frida lives in a clean, compact two-room apartment.

Her monthly income is $455

Hesed services provided:

Homecare: 27 hours per month

Food cards

She can't cook and clean for herself anymore. 

It’s a nice clean apartment. Dark. Lots of books on the walls.

She lives on the 8^th floor but there’s an elevator. She walks slowly with her cane. She has a lovely smile, she had her hair done because she heard a group was coming to visit.

"Hesed helps me so much. I’m 89 years old and it’s difficult living here on my own. My case worker is so helpful, that’s so important. She's so nice. Her name is Valyntina, she cleans the house, and cooks. She's been with me for 7 years, she knows the house. I am so grateful for that."

"My father comes from a traditional family in Belarus, grandpa was Orthodox, a yeshiva student, his wife worked in a bakery. Two of his brothers were killed in the war." One of her brothers, his wife and their two children were killed in the Minsk Ghetto. She cries a little when she tells us this story about the war. For her the Germans are “Nazis”.

"My mother was born in Central Asia. My father was a 'Cantanist' (drafted into the army for 30 years as a small boy), his wife went with him from Poland and her mother was born there in Kakanda, with a small Jewish population. They divorced and she worked in a bakery making cakes. She met my grandfather – he was 20 years older than her, they had 6 kids (Frida’s mom is the youngest), with a 20-year gap between them."

Many cantanists converted to Christianity, but hers didn't - the family kept Jewish traditions and rituals. In mother’s family they spoke Russian, in father’s they spoke Yiddish.

Her mother’s older brother was a successful trader, and was graded (there were three grades of traders) as successful so he was allowed to move to Moscow. Her mother came with him.

Her father studied in Belarus then moved to St. Petersburg then to Moscow.

They were married in 1919 by the Chief Rabbi of Moscow in the Choral Synagogue. There was a big celebration. They had 3 children, they lived together 50 years, then mother lived on for another 20 years after his death.

Her eldest brother is 92 next month, he was a biologist, was Director of a Zoology Museum, expert on horses, still writes academic papers, lives in Moscow. In the war he served in the Army, knows German.

"I worked in printing houses, mostly on scientific papers, I worked hard. I have an 80-year old younger sister, she lives in Warsaw, she married a Pole in 1956, every summer she comes to visit. Well, she's young, she can still travel.

My mother lived to age 94, she was ill for an hour and a half, we all came into her apartment, she said, I’m 94 and I’m going. We live long lives in our family.

I met my husband on Victory Day in May 1945, he was a radio journalist. He died aged 61. We lived in this apartment – the building was built for journalists so we were moved to here.

It was difficult to be a Jew in our professions. As a student I wanted to be a journalist. In university they sent me to an internship to write about literature, but in the newspaper they said that they wouldn’t hire me afterwards because I’m a Jew. I lost my job under Stalin, because they got rid of all the Jews. I had some experience in medical literature, so I became an editor in two periodicals – not part of the team, but on a contract, I wasn’t registered as a permanent employee (because she is Jewish).

In the radio it was even worse but my husband was promoted because – they told him – they needed a “decoration” to show that they're not firing all the Jews.

After a few years I got a permanent job in printing and editing."

"In this time the Jewish intelligentsia thrived. We would go to the theater, we went to concerts and listened to music, to lectures about literature. It wasn’t easy, and there was harassment  but that’s the way we lived. I was fired twice, but each time they gave me a warm recommendation – they didn’t want to fire me, but they had to (because she was Jewish)."

"I was evacuated to Kazakhstan for a year with my university. Then they moved us back. In 1943 all the girls from the university were sent to the forests to cut down trees. We were gentle and light, we were starving. They gave us very little food and lots of cigarettes."

"I'm old," she says. I’ve met old 60-year olds. She’s strong and attractive. What’s her secret? "Thanks for the compliment," she says, "you’re a liar. This actually isn’t a good time for me, the weather affects my asthma. But, ok, my brother the biologist says that I’m the proof of the importance of good genes. And I have a lust for life. My brother has a great-grandson, 3.5 months old, already trying to sit up, which is normally something you do at 6 months, we’re very proud." (Her eyes light up when she talks about him). "His name is Gregory, I’m his “aunt”, that’s what they call me, rather than Great-Great-Aunt. He lives here in Central Moscow. I’m meeting him for the first time in two days. I’m so excited. I have some contact with the family. It’s a shame I was born so many years ago and I couldn’t have the opportunities that you have now. But I have great memories.

My life story is the story of the Jews of Moscow and Russia in the last century. We received education and culture, we were evacuated and dispersed."

That's what her story is ... it's the story of the Jews of Moscow and Russia in the last century.

In Ukraine, new funds for survivors brings high—some say unrealistic—expectations

JTA

By Cnaan Liphshiz · September 27, 2012

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Holocaust survivor Larisa Rakovskaya in her Odessa apartment, Sept. 14, 2012. (Cnaan Liphshiz)

ODESSA, Ukraine (JTA) -- In her dilapidated apartment, Larisa Rakovskaya examines a stack of unpaid heating bills. Sick and alone, the 86-year-old Holocaust survivor and widow is preparing for another encounter with the cold, her “worst and only fear.”

Rakovskaya says her hope of staying warm this winter lies with a one-time payment of approximately $3,200 that she may receive from Germany via the Claims Conference following Berlin’s recent decision to include victims of Nazi persecution in the former Soviet Union as beneficiaries of the so-called Hardship Fund. Some 80,000 survivors across the former Soviet Union are expected to qualify for the payouts, half of them in Ukraine, where a crumbling welfare system often leaves the old and disabled to live and die in penury.

Rakovskaya says that once she uses the Hardship Fund payment to pay off the few hundred dollars of debt she owes utilities, she wants to visit Israel for the first time.

“I don’t want to renovate, and I don’t need a boiler. My last wish is to see Jerusalem,” she tells JTA.

Marina, her social worker from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, asks Rakovskaya to “be realistic” and use the money for day-to-day living.

The Claims Conference, which negotiated the expansion of the Hardship Fund with Germany, says the money will have “an enormous impact.” The application process starts in November, and eligible claimants are expected to be approved as quickly as eight weeks afterward, according to Claims Conference spokeswoman Hillary Kessler-Godin. Applications will be processed throughout most of 2013.

JDC, which funds Jewish welfare operations in the former Soviet Union known as Heseds, called the new money a “welcome addition” but cautioned that survivors, as well as other Jews in the region, still need ongoing assistance. 

Rakovskaya lives on a $111 monthly government pension in a one-bedroom apartment with her small dog, Chunya. Old newspapers absorb humidity from the broken floor; the brown walls are crumbling. With no hot water, she heats water over an electric stove and then washes over a rusty sink. She has managed to get food and medicine and keep her home heated thanks to support from her local Hesed.

Established in the 1990s, Hesed provides relief, medical services and food to approximately 170,000 Jews in former Soviet countries. JDC’s 2012 budget for welfare and social services in the former Soviet Union comes to $113.5 million. Some of the money comes from the Claims Conference, which funds Hesed programs directed at Holocaust survivors. In 2011, those funds reached approximately $75 million. 

Approximately 7,000 Hesed clients live in Odessa, a city with a Jewish population estimated at 40,000. Ukraine has some 360,000 to 400,000 Jews, according to the European Jewish Congress.

Rakovskaya has experienced far worse living conditions. As a girl she had to live with her mother in the catacombs that run under Odessa’s streets. They went underground after Romanian soldiers occupied the city in 1941 as allies of Nazi Germany. Once home to 200,000 Jews, only about 90,000 remained when the Romanians arrived. Most of them were murdered. 

Thanks to her father’s non-Jewish last name, Rakovskaya and her Jewish mother were able to slip through the roundups.

Greg Schneider, the executive vice president of the Claims Conference, told JTA that the new Hardship Fund payment is the fruit of 20 years of labor.

During the Cold War, Germany “understandably” resisted compensating victims living behind the Iron Curtain for fear that Soviet regimes would confiscate the money, Schneider said. Since communism collapsed, the Claims Conference has “asked, pushed, pressed, urged and cajoled” Germany to compensate victims living in Eastern Europe just like victims living in the West. 

“I think it’s too late, but we’re happy this is finally happening,” he said. “For a Western,” he said, the $3,200 is “the equivalent of receiving a year’s worth of pension.”

Asher Ostrin, the JDC’s director of activities in the FSU, calls the fund “a welcome addition,” but also says "It will not elevate anyone from extreme poverty to middle-class comfort.”

Many of the Holocaust survivors who will receive the one-time payment from Germany will continue to be aided by Hesed, which has many other clients who are not Holocaust survivors. 

One of the recipients is Svetlana Mursalova, 56. Once a social worker for Hesed, she suffered a crippling hip fracture that rendered her bedridden and unable to work. She says her two children have no interest in her, leaving her to survive on a monthly disability pension of $109.

“Without the help from Hesed, I would need to choose between food and medicines. I would have died,” she told JTA. “My situation is very painful because I always used to look after myself and others. But you have to stay optimistic.”

On her wall is a portrait of her Siamese cat, Marquis, which she describes as her best friend. Mursalova thought about leaving for Israel, she says, but now that she is unable to walk properly, “leaving is even more difficult than staying.”

Ostrin says many poor Jews resist immigrating to Israel for fear of the unfamiliar and a deep attachment to their apartments -- often the only property they managed to keep during and after communism.

Although tens of thousands of Ukrainian Jews require JDC charity to get by, a small number of Jews have become wealthy since the collapse of communism. In recent years they have been involved increasingly in charity and in projects that promote a self-sustainable Jewish life here, according to Eduard Dolinsky, director of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee.

One example is a Jewish kindergarten with 40 pupils and a long waiting list of parents willing to pay the $500 monthly fee -- approximately double the national average salary. The money keeps the school running, but also helps fund community services and activities ranging from pottery and aerobics lessons for the elderly to basketball tournaments for teenagers.   

Those parents, however, represent “a very thin layer of rich Jews who are unable to tend to the serious needs of the elderly and poor,” Dolinsky says. “Without the generous support of American Jewry, we would face a humanitarian disaster.”

Dolinsky says the new funds secured by the Claims Conference “will not change anything on the fundamental level, but they are important for the recipients and as a form of belated justice.”

Shining a light in Odessa

Shining a light in Odessa

By Susan K. Stern

Washington Post, 9/17/12

As a child, one of my favorite pleasures each week was going to synagogue with my parents. At the end of each service, the rabbi would raise his arms aloft and recite the Birkat Kohanim -- the priestly blessing:

May God bless you and keep you.
May the light of God’s face shine upon you and bring you grace.
May God’s face shine upon you and grant you peace.

No matter what had happened that week in school, with friends or at home, that prayer always made me feel warm and protected.

I thought about that prayer again recently in Odessa, during a mission organized by the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA). We had just met Ada, 58, and bedridden for five years. Her eyesight is gone, and her body devastated by multiple sclerosis. She has not been outside in over a year. Ada told us she desperately missed the warm rays of sunshine that glow just beyond her front door, and dreams of a refrigerator to keep her medicines from spoiling.

With no children or spouse, Hesed volunteers for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), supported by Jewish Federations, have become Ada’s only contact outside the one-room world of her apartment. They deliver food packages, medicine and care literally hesed (compassion) each time they walk through her door. As the blessing says, we shine a light on Ada and keep her warm and protected.

As the national campaign chair at JFNA, I have been on many Jewish Federation missions, and each one reveals a new sense of inspiration. I pack my suitcase with the expectation that I cannot possibly learn anything new, and each time, my life is forever changed.

This mission was no different. Once a vibrant Jewish community, filled with incredible thinkers, poets and Zionist pioneers, Odessa was all but wiped clean of its Jewish identity under the Soviet regime. The Holocaust brought unimaginable death and destruction to a city of 180,000 Jews; by the time Odessa was liberated from the Nazis in 1944, only 600 remained.

Since then, the city has slowly been rediscovering its Jewish roots. About 35,000 Jews now call Odessa home, and a small, dedicated group has established a sense of Jewish culture and religious life.

We visited JDC’s Beit Grand, a bustling community center where a group of beautiful Jewish children staged an entire musical for us. We spent an afternoon at the Jewish Agency for Israel’s summer camp, where hundreds of teens danced to Israeli songs. In the very place where so many have tried to destroy Jewish life, there is a vibrant new generation of Jews, on the path to a flourishing future in Odessa.

As is tradition for most Jewish Federation missions, we spent the second half of our journey in Israel. The many highlights included candid discussions with President Shimon Peres and Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren, but the most striking experiences brought us from the past destruction of Odessa to the shining light of Israel.

We were privileged to travel with the incomparable Rabbi Michael Paley, the scholar-in-residence at the Jewish Resource Center of UJA-Federation of New York, who helped put the transition in context:

In Odessa we witnessed the last ingathering of exiled Jews, where Zionists fought for the creation of a Jewish state. When we arrived in Israel, we went straight to Haifa to the naval base, and later to the Kirya Israeli Defense Forces headquarters, where we learned about Israel’s Iron Dome.

From imagination and words to action and power in such a radically short amount of time. It hits you, when you step off the plane in Israel, that we did it. We didnt do it fast enough, and we left too many people in the ground, but we went from a dream to the state of Israel.

Before leaving Israel, we visited the Jewish Agency’s Mevasseret Zion Absorption Center, which was filled with adorable Ethiopian children. They were playing, singing and making crafts, ice cream smeared all over their smiling faces. I thought about Operation Solomon, which, with the support of Jewish Federations, brought more than 14,000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel. I thought about what kind of life these kids would have if theyd stayed in Ethiopia. We rescued their parents from the brink of civil war. We shined a light on them, and still today, keep them warm and protected.

We use the word mission to describe what we do, because a mission is so much more than a visit or a trip. Tourists can’t go behind the walls. They can’t see deeper, said the rabbi. On missions, we go as witnesses, which is much harder. We travel with a group that shares our ideals. And I believe we go as pilgrims, re-enacting the Jewish journey.

Susan K. Stern is the national campaign chair for the Jewish Federations of North America and chair of the President Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

By Susan K. Stern  |  04:04 PM ET, 09/17/2012 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/guest-voices/post/shining-a-light-in-odessa/2012/09/17/e517bfec-00fe-11e2-b260-32f4a8db9b7e_blog.html

Home Visit to Hesed Client on the way to Zaparozhye

Luisa Nomirovskaya was born in 1937 to a Jewish family in Khabarovsk (Russia). She was a small child when in 1941, a few months before the war, Luisa’s mother Sarah and smaller brother died of typhoid fever while her father was serving in the Soviet army thousands of miles from home. Luisa remained totally alone until her aunt Hanna (Sarah’s sister) came for her and took her to Zaporozhye.

When a few months later the war broke out and the Nazis started to bomb Zaporozhye, Hanna and Luisa had to evacuate back to Khabarovsk where they stayed until 1945. Luisa’s father Alexander went to the frontline where he was killed in 1943. After the war Hanna adopted Luisa and they returned to Zaporozhye. 

In a few years Luisa finished school and then medical college.  She worked as the nurse at the hospital where she met her husband who was a doctor. In 1962 she gave birth to a son Vladimir.

Unfortunately after ten years of happy family life Luisa’s husband left the family. She did her best to bring up her son alone, striving to give him good education. Luisa and her son lived together until 2005 when he unexpectedly died of pneumonia leaving her desperate and totally alone. Luisa suffers from hypertension and vascular diseases. She is surviving today on modest monthly pension in a neglected hut without gas and running water, getting to the town very seldom – to visit her son’s grave.

Thanks to participation in House Repairs’ Project, Luisa received the opportunity to enjoy the comfort of improved living conditions. The temperature inside the house increased and the dampness became lower thanks to repaired and winterized roof. Besides, living conditions became more safe and secure. Now Luisa has the opportunity to use new built warm toilet instead of the old one, which was falling in pieces and had nothing but a hole in the ground.

Monthly income: 1050UAH = $129

Assistance received from Hesed Welfare Center:

• Homecare
• Refrigerator (Nazi Victims SOS program)
• Foods-to-home
• Medications
• Winter Relief
• House repairs

Her roof was repaired, we installed an outhouse toilet. She's growing cabbage, pepper, tomatoes. Not much, but it supplements. “I'm so happy. Oksana helps me cook, she does laundry, she helps me in the garden, we can chat together.” Oksana lives 15 minutes away, Luisa is her only client – there are no other clients in the area. It’s very isolated. She's been living here for 13 years. The floor is crumbling.

The son tried to cut business deals, took a loan, didn’t succeed – they took the apartment then he died.

I’m so grateful. The roof was leaking in the winter. Thank you so much. I can live here. The toilet is like a new home. She also has a new outdoor shower – the container heats up during the day, you stand underneath it.

Hesed brings food and drinking water (the municipal water isn’t for drinking) once a month. In winter or heavy rain the approach road isn’t driveable so the Hesed driver stops 3 miles away and loads up her supplies on his back or a cart and walks down the road with them. This isn’t a very populated area, there's one nice neighbor, no heating, no drinking water. If I didn’t have the Hesed and the community I wouldn’t live on this earth. Spasiba Bolshoya. When we left, she walked us to the minivan, smiling, waving. So happy to see us. Loves visitors.

It’s amazing what an improvement in hygiene can do. We brought some fruit and cookies. She has a hot plate and coal oven. It’s a neglected and abandoned industrial zone.

Dnepropetrovsk Supermarket Food Card Program

Dnepropetrovsk Hesed Menachem was the first Hesed in the former Soviet Union that launched the Food Card Program in 2006. The main goal of the Food Card Program is to offer the greatest degree of independence, choice and dignity to elderly Hesed welfare clients. Supermarket cards can be used by clients to purchase food at stores throughout the city where they live.

We go shopping with Leonid (shopping for Hasiya). He has 120 clients and supervises 25 case workers. He’s been working for Hesed for 15 years. Before that (like a lot of Hesed professionals) he was a physics engineer working in the local mining industries. He has a list of what she needs, and keeps the receipts together in a book (he has to, because she gives him her pin code for the card, and he needs to track everything according to Hesed rules).

Visit elderly Hesed Client – Hasya Gitman

Hasya Gitman was born in 1925 to a religious family in the Yiddish-speaking shtetl of Zvenigorodka in Ukraine. When she was six years old, famine broke out in the country – thousands of people were dying from hunger. Hasya’s family decided to move to the large city of Dnepropetrovsk, where they believed they had a chance of surviving.

Fearful that 6-year old Hasya might not endure the long travel and starvation, her parents decided to temporarily leave her at the state orphanage where at least some scanty meals were given to children every day. Some of Hasya’s most vivid memories to this day come from her time spent there.

When WW2 broke out, one of Hasya’s brothers, Grisha, went to fight on the front lines and never came back. The other brother, Abraham, fought and was badly wounded, dying soon afterwards. Hasya’s father managed to evacuate the family to Central Asia, but did not have time to evacuate himself. He was shot by the Nazis in front of the house where they lived. While living in Central Asia, Hasya worked day and night making ammunition for the war. 

Hasya and her mother came back to Dnepropetrovsk in 1944, immediately after its liberation from the Nazis. Having had no education, except for a few years of Jewish schooling, Hasya continued working in factories all her working days. She married a Jewish man who died a few years later of a serious illness and their son, born mentally retarded, tragically committed suicide at the age of 21.

“I have nothing good to remember,” Hasya – who lives alone in her tiny room, which she has not left for several years now – often says. Hesed welfare has stepped in to offer her the attention and support that she needs.

Medical problems: aside from being almost completely homebound, Hasya suffers from severe joint problems and incontinence.

Monthly pension: 910UAH = $112 state pension

Assistance received from Hesed Menachem Welfare Center:

• Food card supermarket program – home delivery
• Homecare
• Medicines and hygiene materials
• Medical rehabilitation equipment
• Winter relief
• SOS: heater, TV set, refrigerator

Leonid has know Hasya “for many years.” She says he is her lifeline. She's not his neediest client, he has harder cases. But she is definitely one of his loneliest and poorest. He sees her twice a month and speaks with her on the phone the other week. There's a homecare worker, Luda, who comes five days a week for five hours a day.

Hasya lives on the Left Bank of the Dnieper (less nice); it’s at least 45 minutes drive from Hesed. Leonid and the caseworker live near her.

I don’t receive visitors every day; I don’t feel so good. (In photo: Amy Mendel, came to see her, pretty, she says, I remember her – there were nice students from Boston who came to visit). In the photos: her son, her husband and her. She was 21. Yes, it’s difficult to believe but here I was. What makes me happy? When there are no problems and nothing disturbs me. It’s difficult for me to be healthy. Life is difficult. It’s hot here in the summer.

She's worried because we’re not sitting. Leonid is in the other room replacing a light bulb. New York? I don’t know where that is. Israel? Yes, I try to listen to the news about Israel on the television – I got the television from Hesed. Here is Ludichka (Luda) – case worker. She loves Luda. On Fridays Luda prepares everything for her for the weekend. I have one cousin left, 90 years old, in Germany. She calls once a year to check in and talk. She's in a nursing home. There's no other family.

The calendar on the wall is from 2001.

There is a state social worker who comes maybe once a month to see her – knocks on the door, says hello, and leaves. Better that she not come. They have to come.

I’ve survived through so much. My husband died, my son died. I've lived through so many difficult things. My second husband suffered from epileptic fits. I was unhappy in my life. That was what God decided would be my destiny. I’m 89 years old. How do I spend my day? It’s getting harder for me to walk around the apartment now. They brought me walking sticks – that’s very helpful. I used to read a lot, I loved reading. My husband couldn’t read, he was angry with me for reading all the time. Now I can't read anymore and that makes me sad. I love books. I get headaches.

This heat is like the summers of 1939 and 1940, I remember, before the war. The harvest was really bad and we received a low ration. I loved to read books about nature and animals. My apartment was filled with books. Now sometimes I watch television shows about animals and nature, and that makes me feel good. This morning there was a movie on television about a dog (Chekhov story) – I really enjoyed it.

She has a huge stack of medicines she needs to take every day. There’s a large stack of adult diapers under the table for nights and weekends.

We’re on the ground floor but she doesn’t usually open the window. One of the neighbors is an alcoholic and thief, she needs to keep things locked. There’s a bad smell from outside too. The window is cracked heavily.

She smiles, it’s nice that you came.