Grateful for Your Grace
The Fellowship | August 7, 2023
Zev remembers the Holocaust very well. In first grade when the Nazis invaded his hometown in Ukraine, he recalls his uncle staying behind, sure that the Germans would treat the Jews well…
Sadly, Zev’s uncle and much of his family were rounded up and shot. But little Zev, along with his parents and his five siblings, managed to escape on a train with another uncle and his grandmother. Near Kharkiv, the train was bombed by Nazi warplanes. Zev remembers that terrifying time like it was only yesterday:
“We ran to hide and I got lost. My grandmother couldn’t walk fast, so my father and uncle stayed to help her. I ran ahead. Then I looked around and there was no one; neither my father nor my mother. I started screaming, crying, and ran back to the cars. There was a terrible explosion. I began to shout, ‘Mom! Mom!’ Suddenly I saw my parents running to me. I was so happy! I cry when I remember it.”
Tears do run down the 91-year-old Jewish man’s cheeks as he speaks. And they continue as Zev tells about the starvation that he and his family faced during the rest of WWII, as well as the hard times after the war, living under communist rule.
Zev was able to send his children to live in Israel, escaping the Soviet regime. But he and his wife could not leave until the Iron Curtain fell—then they, too, made aliyah.
Now Zev at last lives in his biblical homeland, but still faces poverty, as he has no pension from his years of work in the former Soviet Union. So he now relies on The Fellowship for help, such as an emergency call button and regular food deliveries.
“I am sincerely grateful to the donors of The Fellowship through whose grace I receive monthly assistance with food. May you be inscribed in the Book of Life for a good year, and let this record be sealed.”