An Impoverished Elderly Woman Prays for Relief
“Our dreams and hopes were realized as we stepped foot off the plane in Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport…”
Myla was born in Ukraine in 1935, as conflict spread across Europe and the Soviet Union. As they braced for war, Myla’s mother was expecting a new baby.
People began starving. They would come to the streets looking for any scraps of food they could find, says Sonya. Some children were sent to a small town nearby because many hoped their lives would be spared. Sonya’s older sister went into the army and dug trenches to protect the city.
“People began to evacuate the city, especially the Jews,” Myla says. “My mother was in the hospital, and so I waited with my grandparents until she returned with my baby brother before we made our escape.”
When Myla’s mother returned home with her baby wrapped in a blanket, they found a railway station with trains heading to Stalingrad, Russia.
In Stalingrad, the extremely cold temperatures were joined by devastating hunger, and Myla recalls screaming and begging for a slice of bread in the night. “My mother would squeeze me tight and whisper in my ear, ‘my sweetest girl, I have nothing to give you. We have no food,’ as we both cried our way back to sleep.”
Eventually, the war ended. “I went to school and earned a degree in literature,” Myla says. She married a Jewish engineer, and the two settled in Georgia.
Then, in the early 1990s, Myla and her husband made their journey to Israel. “Our dreams and hopes were realized as we stepped foot off the plane in Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport,” Myla cheerfully remembers. Leaving behind a lifetime of vicious anti-Semitism to join her people in their homeland was an answer to their prayers.
Today, Myla receives a small government pension, which covers her rent and utilities, but is not enough for her to buy food. Thankfully, she receives a monthly food card from our Guardian of Israel partners like you, which she uses to buy food and household goods.
Myla is extremely grateful for the help she receives from The Fellowship. It makes her feel “like a person who is cared about.” She wants to thank “the incredible people who support The Fellowship, whose help enables me to buy the food I need in order to survive.”
Please help more impoverished elderly like Myla receive food cards so they don’t go hungry.
Be a Guardian of Israel today and show those suffering from poverty that they are not alone.
