You Bring Her Warmth

IFCJ Canada  |  March 7, 2025

Galina is 96 years old. She is a Holocaust survivor. And she has spent her entire life in the same remote village where she was born.

As a child, she toiled on a collective farm in rural Ukraine, tending to beets—relying on the very food she grew to survive. Now, nearly a lifetime later, survival is still a daily struggle.

Her village is so isolated that she has no running water. She pumps it from a well. She has no indoor bathroom. In the dead of winter, she braves the bitter cold just to reach an outdoor hut.

Now that Galina is elderly, it’s difficult for her to grow her own food as she did when she was young. The food box and winter assistance she receives from IFCJ Canada are not just helpful—they are lifesaving.

When Fellowship volunteers entered her home for the first time, she greeted them without fear, remarking, “I’ve lived through war. Nothing’s going to frighten me.”

Her home is her sanctuary, but it is also a place of impossible choices. Every day, she must decide: food, medication, or heat. She suffers from high blood pressure, and as winter deepens, she struggles to afford the warmth she desperately needs.

Her life has been marked by hardship. She worked from childhood. She lost her father in World War II. And now, war has come again—this time, taking her grandson’s arm in battle. “Sometimes, I find it hard to make sense of everything,” she admits.

Yet, in the face of loss, there is one thing she holds onto: the kindness of those who remember her.

“Your visit has filled my heart with immense gratitude,” she says. “At my age, I often felt forgotten, as though the world had moved on without me. But seeing you here, traveling all the way from Israel and Canada, has brought warmth to my soul.”

Your gift today will help provide urgent, lifesaving help to vulnerable souls like Galina—across Ukraine, Israel, and around the world.