The Holocaust survivors whom The Fellowship visits and supports often tell staff how they have managed to carry on despite so many physical and emotional scars. For 87-year-old Svetlana in the former Soviet Union, after nearly a lifetime of tragedy it is easier to talk about what doesn’t hurt than what does. She also says that if someone had told her younger self she would live as long as she has, she would not have believed them.
When World War II began, Svetlana and her family fled their remote village in Moldova. They couldn’t get on a passenger train, only a freight train with cars packed nearly to the top. Even then, they weren’t safe. German bombers attacked the train. Svetlana’s mother, holding her in her arms, jumped from the car. It was a long drop, but they both managed to survive.
It took them months to reach their destination in Ukraine, living off the help of strangers and scavenging food from abandoned gardens along the way. They would have joined Svetlana’s aunt and uncle, but the Nazis had conquered the city of Zaporizhzhia, forcing her relatives to evacuate.
Rather than continue running, Svetlana and her mother moved into her aunt and uncle’s apartment. Svetlana’s mother joined the local resistance movement, serving as a courier for anti-Nazi leaflets that were posted throughout the city. Sadly, they were betrayed by a neighbor, and a German soldier arrested both Svetlana and her mother. They were imprisoned in a ghetto and forced to work unloading grain at a train station. Anyone caught bringing food back was beaten, so they would carry grains in their mouths and spit them out before washing and eating them.
They remained in the ghetto until it was liberated in 1944. Svetlana was temporarily transferred to an orphanage, where she received some much-needed care. She remembers an elderly woman named Khova who served as her guardian. After Svetlana was reunited with her mother, it took them almost a year to reach safety. They hid in train cars while Romanian soldiers searched for Jews—anyone they found was shot.
Svetlana says on her experiences, “It simply wasn’t our fate. We stayed alive, thank God.”
Svetlana continued to face hardships throughout her life. She lost her daughter to a rare illness, after which she developed a strange condition that caused her to sleep for days and even weeks at a time. Doctors could never determine what was causing it. Svetlana recalls sleeping for as long as 20 days. Strangely, the condition stopped after her mother died in 1994.
Three years ago, Svetlana’s son passed away, and her legs stopped working. She says she hasn’t walked since.
Despite everything, Svetlana remains faithful. “I have many guardian angels. Everything good in me was probably given by God. I believe someone from above helps me. I truly feel that.”
The trek to Svetlana’s remote home in Moldova is worth every step for Fellowship staff. Thanks to this support, Svetlana receives food boxes and assistance from a homecare worker.
“I am so happy,” she says. “Every visit is not just happiness—it is a balm for my soul. You feel that you have not been forgotten, that someone you don’t even know cares about you. That means so much.”