Faces of Iron: Tamara
Stand for Israel | October 4, 2024
Tamara was a small child when her Jewish family escaped Estonia as they Nazis invaded. Other than fleeting memories, she’s reminded of their journey by the journal her mother kept: “Everything that happened to our family, how we were forced to evacuate, the massive bombing of the German planes, how we barely survived far from home with only a little food.”
Those memories were only heightened by the October 7th attacks, when Hamas terrorists invaded southern Israel, including Tamara’s Holy Land hometown of Ashkelon.
“Our city was hit by the most missiles of all the cities in Israel,” Tamara says. “One of the rockets hit the building next door and parts of the rocket fell on our building. I was sitting in the protected room, and I felt my whole apartment shaking. I thought the building was going to collapse from the force of the explosion.”
Tamara survived that day, just as she survived the Holocaust, unlike 1,200 other Israelis. “I hear the news and I can’t stop crying,” she says. “I pray all day for the lives of the abductees and for the lives of our soldiers who guard us.
“That’s all I can do,” Tamara says, “pray and believe that it will be good.”
Tamara does find good when Fellowship volunteers visit with food and other necessities. Because of this food and this fellowship, she finds faith and strength. “Thanks to The Fellowship, I have food on the table. Even when it was impossible to go out, I continued to receive The Fellowship’s food boxes.” And Tamara—and so many others of Israel’s neediest and most vulnerable—will continue to receive much-needed support and strength from The Fellowship and our Christian friends around the world who love them.
Read more Faces of Iron stories and learn how The Fellowship is helping survivors of October 7.
