By God’s Grace
(Photo: Mihail Calarasan) “I was born in 1931 in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine. I was the only child,” says 92-year-old Yuliana, recalling happier days. “My parents had a special touching and trusting relationship.” But that life of love and family ended abruptly. “When World War II started, my father was sent to the front, and returned only five years later,” Yuliana remembers. “My mother and I evacuated to Tajikistan. That’s how our exhausting evacuation, which was full of troubles, began.” The precious Holocaust survivor goes on to tell visiting Fellowship volunteers just how she survived those troubled times. “We were loaded into freight cars, and we fled—on the road for two long months. Our train was bombed several times. We were afraid to look up because planes were flying over our heads and shooting at us with machine guns. I don’t even know how I stayed alive.” But stay alive, Yuliana did. So did her mother, and her father somehow survived five long years fighting the Nazis, as well. And that’s why it’s heartbreaking that this elderly Jewish woman—who has survived much through nine decades—is facing war once again. “I survived the first war as a child,” she says, “and now I’m an old woman and feel helpless again.” Yes, even under the stress and fear of war, Yuliana has not lost her faith. And, yes, God is working to save Yuliana—and so many others in war-torn Ukraine—through IFCJ Canada, and through the lifesaving emergency support made possible through our faithful supporters. But Yuliana doesn’t just worry for herself. “I know that there are children hiding somewhere in shelters now and they are scared. I’m scared, too. But in the most terrible moments, my faith in God saves me.” Yuliana agrees. “I believe that God saved me in the first war, and he will not leave me now. I feel the love of lots of people by whose grace I live now.”
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