“I Truly Believe…” (Photo: Chamah) “I’m not sure exactly where I spent my childhood years,” says Klavdiya, an elderly Holocaust survivor in the former Soviet Union (FSU), “because life really moved me around. “Here is the story…” Klavdiya begins to tell her heart-breaking story, so similar to many we hear as we help elderly Jewish people in need across the FSU. “…I was born in 1945 in the Far East because my father went to the front. My mother was in the same military detachment as he was.” Klavdiya’s parents both survived WWII, as did their infant daughter. “Everything went all right,” she says, “or at least it seemed so.” Then she tells us how the Soviets began a campaign against Jews, forcing her father to resign from the military and the family to flee further east, before sending Klavdiya and her disabled sister to live with their grandmother. Any anti-Semitism she faced as a girl, Klavdiya brushes off: “Some kids would tease us, but we were quite able to stand up for ourselves…” This tough attitude has served her well, allowing her to survive not just a lifetime of anti-Semitism, but one of poverty. And Fellowship friends around the world have also helped Klavdiya survive. “I move about on crutches,” she says. “I’ve had surgeries on both legs, and I have a pacemaker installed.” But still this sweet elderly woman insists, “I truly believe I’m very lucky.” Can you imagine that? Someone who has had as hard a life as Klavdiya believing that she is lucky? But this grateful woman feels this way because of the help she receives from IFCJ Canada. A volunteer visits to check up on her, helping her with the things she can no longer do on her own—washing, dressing, cooking, and even taking a stroll. And IFCJ Canada also provides her with the basic emergency supplies she would otherwise go without—things like groceries and medications. “I don’t have my own kids,” Klavdiya says as her Fellowship volunteer arrives bearing essentials and love from Christian friends around the world, “so she is like a daughter to me.”
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