“I Thank God for The Fellowship”
“Shock, hunger, and fear don’t come close to articulating how broken I felt.”
Teresa was a young Jewish child in Poland when WWII broke out. She was her parents’ first-born, and her mother was pregnant with her second child when the Nazis began rounding up Jews.
“My father was a fighter who believed that through resistance we would defeat the Nazis,” Teresa recalls, “and so he joined the Partisans [resistance fighters who hid in the forests and operated guerrilla warfare against the Nazis], while my mother and I were forced into the Warsaw Ghetto.”
The Warsaw Ghetto was rife with disease and hunger. Teresa’s mother contracted typhus and died after a few weeks. Teresa, only six, was now all alone.
“Shock, hunger, and fear don’t come close to articulating how broken I felt,” Teresa says. “I walked around the ghetto like a chicken, looking to pluck any crumb of food off the streets.”
But Teresa’s father was alive, and he eventually learned of his wife’s death and daughter’s desperate conditions.
For the next three years, Teresa’s father survived long enough to see his daughter when the war ended. “After seeing me alive he was able to die with some peace,” Teresa reflected.
Like many other survivors who were left with no family, Teresa met another young Holocaust survivor and the two were married. In 1957, Teresa, her husband, and their two kids, all made aliyah (immigrated to Israel).
Today, Teresa has been widowed for nineteen years. Unfortunately her husband left her no pension, and was sick for many years before he died and unable to work. Teresa, now 83, has no savings and lives off of a small monthly social security check.
For Teresa, every dollar helps. Thanks to our caring Guardians of Israel, The Fellowship provides her with a monthly coupon for the supermarket.
“I thank God for The Fellowship, which is helping me during these years of my life so I can get old with some respect, joy, and dignity. God bless you all and thank you!”
Please help impoverished elderly Holocaust survivors like Teresa live their final years with some joy.
The Fellowship has been blessed with a matching gift challenge! For this month only, any gift you give will be doubled. That means your donation of $25 becomes $50, $50 becomes $100, and $75 becomes $150. Send your gift today and double your impact for Israel’s people.
