Program Stories

Born to a Jewish family in Ukraine in 1936, Alla remembers happier times before the war. Before the

“Believe it or not, I am 100 years old,” says Sarah. When IFCJ Canada volunteers recently visit

When Fellowship volunteers recently found Zhana, an 82-year-old Holocaust survivor in the bombed-out Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv, it was very difficult to communicate with her. Zhana’s age and her many health problems have made communication difficult, as has the past year of trauma as she tries to survive in a warzone.

“Mykolaiv is my hometown,” says Tatiana, an elderly Jewish woman in southern Ukraine. “It 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.

On the exact day World War II ended is when Larisa was born. Her parents survived by evacuating to

Michail tells us what happened after the war began when he was a child—World War II—and how his mother and grandmother fled their home in eastern Ukraine and found relative safety during the Holocaust in far-flung Siberia. So many of his relatives, however, were murdered by the Nazis.

“My childhood ended in one day,” says Manya, a 92-year-old Jewish woman born in Kyiv. “I was nine years old. My father went to war. My mother stayed with me and my two-year-old brother. When the Nazis started bombing Kyiv, there was nowhere to hide.”

Born to a Jewish family in the Soviet Union, Elena has suffered from diabetes for most of her 63 years. The disease—which in her case is hereditary—has left this poor woman blind, nearly unable to walk, and suffering from failure of her kidneys, lungs, and heart.

When war erupted in Ukraine last year, Evgenia found herself in the middle of the violence. Living in Kharkiv, in eastern Ukraine with her mother, the two elderly Jewish women found themselves alone, right on the frontlines.

“I am going to tell you my story, and perhaps some parts of it sound like a complaint. However, I am not complaining.” This is what Avraham, an 89-year-old Holocaust survivor, recently told a Fellowship volunteer who visited him with food and winter items as the cold months set in.

Born in Ukraine as the winds of World War II began to tear across Europe, Rosalia’s earliest memories are of fear and hunger. The struggles she faced as a Jewish child, surviving the Holocaust with her family—somehow, someway, with God’s help—never eased, as she faced a life of poverty.