Meeting Nina’s Needs
The Fellowship | August 15, 2022
When Fellowship staff arrived at Nina’s house recently—a tiny rural shack outside of Kyiv, Ukraine—they were struck by how this elderly Holocaust survivor and her humble home seemed to have changed little from the WWII-era days she remembered.
“When World War II started, I was about 4 years old. I remember we would go to the river, trying to catch some fish. It was very hard to feed all the kids. These days I cannot even imagine how my mother managed.”
But manage, Nina’s mother did. “We were seven children. I well remember the constant feeling of hunger. We didn’t have much food. We ate a lot of beetroots and watermelons. These were plants that grew in the yard. I remember the lack of bread.”
Nina and her siblings survived, and Nina went on to teach the children of a collective farm. But now, in what were supposed to be her quiet golden years, Nina is once again facing war and uncertainty.
Having experienced World War II, Nina is sadly unsurprised that war has found her home country again. And while she prays that, as an elderly Jewish widow living all alone in a warzone, she will be able to meet her own needs, she knows that God has sent friends from The Fellowship to be His helping hand.
“They bring eggs, flour, rice, and even bananas,” Nina says during the recent visit. “They are such good people. This help really saves me here. They are like my good angels!”