Willing to Help
The Fellowship | June 5, 2023
Evgenia lives in one of the poorest neighborhoods in the town of Katzrin in the Golan Heights in northern Israel. The block of apartments is in poor condition, but Evgenia’s apartment is cozy, clean and neat—this elderly Holocaust survivor has kept it up as best she can, all by herself.
But Evgenia has always taken care of herself. That began when World War II started, and her father was sent from their home in Ukraine to a Nazi labor camp. Evgenia’s mother fled with the Jewish family’s eight children.
Evgenia’s sister, a year younger than herself, did not survive. “She stayed in her bed all the time, she was sick. I remember her sitting in the bed making drawings with a piece of coal,” Evgenia remembers. “And then she died.”
The threat of death was a constant for the family. “During the war everyone was starving but everyone was willing to help out,” Evgenia says. “That’s how we’ve survived.”
And today, that’s still how Evgenia survives—because of the help of Christian friends around the world. Now safely in her biblical homeland of Israel—as her country of birth, Ukraine, faces an ongoing war—Evgenia does her best to get by, even without a pension, as her lifetime of work in Ukraine left her with nothing. But this precious Holocaust survivor knows that she can depend on The Fellowship for food, medicines, and love.