Every visit 87-year-old Emilia receives is a special occasion. When she heard Fellowship staff were coming to her home in Haifa with a special food box for Shavuot, she tidied her small apartment and put on her best shirt. As a Holocaust survivor from Russia who immigrated to Israel more than 30 years ago, Emilia’s life has been filled with challenges. For the past three years, however, The Fellowship has remained faithfully by her side.
Emilia was just three years old when war broke out in 1941. She, her mother, and her sister were evacuated from their remote village while her father stayed behind to fight near Moscow. Being so young, Emilia remembers few details about leaving home, but the feeling of having almost nothing has stayed with her throughout her life.
She said, “My sister later told me stories about how difficult it was. We had so little. My sister was the only literate person in that tiny village, so locals would come to her for advice and bring us whatever small amounts of food they could spare in return. Even with that, we barely had clothing or food. It was hard, very hard, and I remember the constant feeling of cold and hunger.”
Returning home after the war brought more hardship than relief. Along the journey back, the family was robbed numerous times, and when they finally arrived, they discovered their apartment had been occupied. Forced to start over, the family moved into a cramped 215-square-foot room in a communal apartment.
Tragedy struck again when Emilia was 11 years old and her mother became ill and passed away. Much like the confusion she experienced during the evacuation years earlier, Emilia struggled to fully understand what was happening. Because of her age, she was not allowed to attend the funeral.
Emilia recalls the anti-Semitism she faced growing up in the former Soviet Union, “Growing up as a Jew in the FSU meant facing constant, systemic anti-Semitism through the notorious ‘Fifth Column’ nationality entry on official documents. I deeply felt the weight of this discrimination when it came to my education. I wanted to attend a regular daytime university, but because I was Jewish, the doors were firmly shut. It was such a bad time. Because of this, I had to attend a night tech school after finishing the 10th grade and later studied at a correspondence engineering and construction institute while working full-time because I desperately needed the money.”
In 1994, Emilia made aliyah after her son immigrated to Israel a few years earlier. Although she has built a new life for herself in Israel, current events continue to bring anxiety and uncertainty. Emilia lives in an older building without a bomb shelter, so during the war she stayed with her son, whose home has a reinforced room. Yet even while living together, she rarely sees him because he works around the clock — even during missile sirens.
The aid The Fellowship provides allows Emilia to purchase the food she needs each month. She says the staples she depends on most are cottage cheese and milk but rising living costs have caused dairy prices to increase significantly. Celebrating Shavuot should never become a luxury.
“To The Fellowship’s donors in America who make this possible, I want to express my deepest gratitude. Well, what else can I pass on besides gratitude,” Emilia said.
