refugees

JDC’s Ukraine efforts

Marina Sonkina shares her experiences as a volunteer with the JDC in Poland last year, helping Ukrainian refugees. (photo by Masumi Kikuchi)

This year’s annual Raoul Wallenberg Day in Vancouver honoured the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) for “its courageous support for Ukrainian refugees.”

“In addition to vast internal displacement, from a population of 41 million Ukrainians, eight million (mostly women and children, and some seniors) have fled to Europe and other parts of the world,” said Alan Le Fevre in his opening remarks.

Le Fevre is on the board of directors of the Wallenberg-Sugihara Civil Courage Society, which hosts the Wallenberg Day commemorations. This year, the event was presented in partnership with Congregation Beth Israel, and it took place at the synagogue on Jan. 22.

The JDC’s work helping Ukrainian refugees “continues its illustrious history,” said Le Fevre, noting that, “since its founding in 1914, the JDC has provided support for refugees whenever and wherever needed, propelled by Jewish values and a commitment to mutual responsibility.”

The City of Vancouver’s proclamation of this year’s Wallenberg Day was read by Deputy Mayor Sarah Kirby-Yung, attending on behalf of Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim. She was joined by Councilor Mike Klassen.

Kirby-Yung had helped celebrate the start of the Lunar New Year that morning, and still had on the red jacket she had worn for that event because the Asian community “has suffered much in the past few years, [with] anti-Asian hate and, sometimes, that plight has been very analogous to what our Jewish community has suffered” and one of the best things about the city, and what she sees in the work of the JDC, is “communities and cultures, and people of different faiths and backgrounds, who come together to stand against injustice and to support each other.”

photo - Vancouver Deputy Mayor Sarah Kirby-Yung reads the city’s proclamation of this year’s Wallenberg Day, the framed copy of which is being held by Councilor Mike Klassen — Vancouver Deputy Mayor Sarah Kirby-Yung reads the city’s proclamation of this year’s Wallenberg Day, the framed copy of which is being held by Councilor Mike Klassen. *(photo by Masumi Kikuchi)*

WSCCS board member George Bluman introduced the afternoon’s guest speaker, Dr. Marina Sonkina, a local educator and writer. “Soon after Russia attacked Ukraine, Marina applied to volunteer with the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, as someone who speaks Russian, Ukrainian and other languages and as someone who has been a refugee herself,” he said. “Almost immediately, she was accepted and flew to Poland at the end of March.

“After arriving in Warsaw, about five hours later, Marina was at the Polish-Ukrainian border, where she served in a camp as a frontline responder, offering fleeing refugees medical and psychological support.”

Sonkina, who has relatives in Russia and Ukraine, said most of her family is out of Russia at this point.

“If we are talking about why didn’t Russians resist,” she said, “I think those more than one million people who left Russia when the draft, conscription, was announced, that is the only accessible form of not revolt, but saying no to Putin. Otherwise, it is pretty much a fascist state.”

While Putin is the person who launched the war, she wondered about others’ culpability: all those who overlooked Putin’s actions over the 22 years of his being power, which has seen him poison his opponents and annex Crimea, among other things. What was the West’s role, she asked, as they worked with Putin as a business partner first, putting his authoritarianism second?

In Warsaw, Sonkina was one of the people who met Holocaust survivors being extracted from Ukraine, to be housed in Germany. The next day, she worked in a refugee camp, where there were already more than two million refugees. (For more on Sonkina’s experience in Poland, read her account at jewishindependent.ca/helping-ukrainian-refugees.)

JDC helped everybody, said Sonkina. A moral responsibility to repair the world, tikkun olam, is part of JDC’s mandate and she saw this responsibility in action. She remarked on the goodwill of people from around the world, of a range of ages, who were helping in different ways, including taking refugees into their homes. The strength and independence of the refugees also left an impression on Sonkina – they didn’t want to take handouts, she said, and they wanted to know whether they could get jobs in the country that harboured them.

“One of the things that I quickly realized – a part of persuading them to go to this country or that was just the human contact that was so important,” she said. The refugees she met had experienced such trauma, and her acknowledgement of what they had gone through allowed some of them to cry. “It was sometimes hard,” Sonkina admitted, visibly emotional. “But there were also funny stories,” she added, sharing a couple of those stories before WSCCS board member Gene Homel took the podium.

An historian teaching about Europe in the 20th century for many years, Homel had been in Ukraine eight or nine years ago, and he echoed what Sonkina had said about Ukrainians’ “intense loyalty” – “the attachment to the land, culture and language” – but, he said, “I want to make the point that, in Ukraine today, the focus of loyalty is a civic one, it’s on the national state rather than ethnicity, it’s a pluralistic and multiethnic society that’s being created, forged largely as a result of Russia’s criminal attack on Ukraine.”

Homel provided a brief overview of the JDC’s work from its founding in 1914 to its current work with Ukrainian Jews and non-Jews, and he introduced businessman and philanthropist Gary Segal, who became familiar with JDC’s work in 2007, on a Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver trip to Ethiopia, led by JDC professionals. He’s been a board member since 2012.

“I marvel at the compassion, intelligence, resourcefulness and resolve with which the dedicated staff and volunteers carry on their sacred work,” said Segal, noting that JDC helps communities of all backgrounds and faiths, and doesn’t just respond to acute situations, but also to endemic poverty, food insecurity and the plight of refugees, as well as antisemitism.

“Since 1914, we’ve rescued more than one million Jews in danger, from places like Ethiopia, Yemen, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Ukraine,” said Segal, who spoke about various JDC initiatives, including its medical programs in countries like Ethiopia.

photo - Gary Segal, a board member of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, speaks about JDC’s history and his involvement with the organization — Gary Segal, a board member of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, speaks about JDC’s history and his involvement with the organization. *(photo by Masumi Kikuchi)*

It was on that 2007 trip that Segal met Dr. Rick Hodes, JDC’s medical director in Ethiopia, whose care for kids with severe spinal deformities (with Ghanaian spine surgeon Dr. Oheneba Boachie-Adjei) inspired Segal to get involved, too. He brought a young Ethiopian to Vancouver for back surgery and established in Vancouver the organization Bring Back Hope, which has raised some $3 million to support spine surgeries, preventative screening, and more. (See jewishindependent.ca/oldsite/archives/jan11/archives11jan14-02.html and several articles on jewishindependent.ca.)

Returning to JDC’s work in Ukraine since the war began, Segal noted that, to date, the organization “has cared for 35,000 vulnerable and elderly poor; it evacuated 13,000 Jews from Ukraine; provided over 40,000 refugees with food, medicine, trauma support; received over 19,000 incoming calls at the emergency centre; and provided over 1.3 million pounds of humanitarian assistance.”

Segal then brought his talk around to Raoul Wallenberg, Sweden’s special envoy to Hungary in 1944, who saved tens of thousands of Jews from deportation and death. “The original fund of $100,000 that [Wallenberg] received from the War Refugee Board came from the American Joint Distribution Committee and, when that was finished, he received additional funds from the JDC,” said

Segal, who concluded, “I would say, so much of what JDC does is giving hope. Hope is a powerful word, an essential element in everyone’s life…. Hope can give us the strength and the will to continue in our darkest moments, to aspire and believe that things can and will be better.”

On behalf of the JDC, Segal accepted, with thanks, the Wallenberg-Sugihara Civil Courage Award from Le Fevre.

Other components of the afternoon included a few words from Beth Israel’s Rabbi Jonathan Infeld, a short documentary on Norwegian Fridtjof Nansen, who received the 1922 Nobel Peace Prize for his work on behalf of displaced persons after the First World War, and a compilation of JDC’s work in Ukraine since the Russian invasion.

WSCCS board member Judith Anderson introduced the videos, giving more of Nansen’s background and achievements, including “the repatriation of 450,000 prisoners of war, mostly held in Soviet Russia” and “[in] response to a severe famine in Soviet Russia, Nansen directed relief efforts that saved between seven million and 22 million people from starvation.”

Anderson said, “The Nansen story is directly relevant to Ukraine. The headquarters for Nansen’s mission to Russia was in Ukraine’s Kharkiv, and Nansen donated part of his Nobel Peace Prize money to establish a major agricultural project in Ukraine.”

She thanked the Norwegian Refugee Council and the Nobel Peace Centre for permission to show the videos about Nansen and JDC staff members and directors – Shaun Goldstone, Solly Kaplinski and Alex Weisler – for compiling the material for the Ukraine Crisis video.

The Wallenberg-Sugihara Civil Courage Society is named after Wallenberg for his actions during the Holocaust, and Chiune Sugihara, who, as vice-consul in Lithuania for Japan during the war, issued transit visas that allowed thousands of Jews from Poland and Lithuania to escape. For more information on the society and to see videos of the Jan. 22 event, visit wsccs.ca.

Revisiting oral histories

Manfred Gottfried and a group of men on the stairs to the Dr. Sun Yat-sen mausoleum. (photo from VHEC: RA001-5-o7-5-9-0339x)

A little over 20 years ago, the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre started the Shanghai Oral History Project. Led by Roberta Kremer and Daniel Fromowitz, the project recorded the oral histories of Vancouver’s small Shanghai Jewish survivor community. They interviewed 10 survivors and/or their descendants, learning about their rich and unique experiences of survival in Shanghai.

This project, along with loaned artifacts and memorabilia, became the basis for VHEC’s 1999 exhibition Shanghai: A Refuge During the Holocaust. It opened alongside another exhibition, Visas for Life: The Story of Feng Shan Ho. Both were well received, and included film screenings on the topic of Jewish refugees in Shanghai, and a demonstration of mahjong, a game which remains popular in the Jewish community in Vancouver. Once the exhibitions concluded, materials were returned to their lenders or safely placed under the VHEC’s care, and the interviews were catalogued and filed away.

In January 2022, I began my co-op position as digital projects coordinator with the VHEC. One of the first tasks assigned to me was to help improve accessibility to the Shanghai interviews and the audiotape transcriptions. In the 20 years since these oral history transcriptions were created, the VHEC has changed its digital file management and storage system. Some files were missing while others were mislabeled. Many files would no longer open within the current version of Microsoft Word. At the top of some transcriptions was a disclaimer: “The whole tape is not transcribed, only that which is related to Shanghai.” Throughout the transcriptions, comments like “(side discussions)” denote what the original transcriber believed to be unrelated to the subject matter.

image - In 1999, the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre held the exhibit Shanghai: A Refuge During the Holocaust — In 1999, the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre held the exhibit Shanghai: A Refuge During the Holocaust. (image from VHEC)

Rummaging through these transcriptions, it became apparent that I would not simply be “tidying up.” By revisiting the Shanghai Oral History Project, my goal was to do more than just emphasize the unique experiences of this small group of individuals. As I listened to their interviews and transcribed their words, I wanted to offer a glimpse into how Shanghai Jewish survivors expressed themselves and reflected on their time in Shanghai, while also highlighting things that weren’t considered when the exhibition first opened 20 years ago.

On the list of possible interviewees for the Shanghai Oral History Project, George Melcor’s was the only name with “very elderly” added beside it in parentheses. Listening to George’s interview, it became clear that this would be a challenging transcription. George sometimes mumbled, which made it difficult to comprehend his words, or he would mix up his stories. But, for 88-year-old George, Shanghai left an impression. When asked by interviewer Daniel Fromowitz what memories of Shanghai come to mind, George lit up with excitement. “Shanghai was alive all the time. Never closed, always open.… Clubs and gambling, everything was free. Shanghai was a very free city.” At this point, the slow progression of the interview sped up: the emotions in George’s voice suggest that he was reliving his 16-year-old self. For a moment, George was not elderly.

What is striking listening to the Shanghai audiotapes is the dialogue between the interviewer and interviewee. Lore Marie Wiener was interviewed about her experiences in Shanghai by both Roberta and Daniel. But rather than just giving answers, Lore proceeded to converse with both interviewers, asking about where they were born, their experiences growing up and whether they faced antisemitism. Lore was also very reflective. She questioned the nature of Jewishness and what it consists of; she questioned “… why did we not interfere in Rwanda, and we do interfere in Yugoslavia?” With the former, there was a back-and-forth between Roberta and Lore, but, with the latter, Daniel was not sure how much to engage. These side stories provide a picture of Lore that is more than just her experiences of escaping the threat of Nazi violence and survival in Shanghai; it is the continuation of her life after the Holocaust.

Lastly, how did the interviewees recall, if any, their connection to the local Chinese and Japanese communities? In general, although interviewees were in Shanghai, Chinese people featured only in the background. They were acquaintances, as was the case for Anne Chick and the two Chinese kids living in her neighbourhood. For most interviewees who did interact with Chinese people, it was through a working relationship with Chinese servants, workers or amahs.

For Lore, she employed several Chinese tailors in her shop, as well as a chauffeur and a cook called Dun-zen. Interracial relationships were also possible. Kurt Weiss noted that, after divorcing his first wife, he had a Chinese girlfriend until he left Shanghai. Gerda Gottfried Kraus mentioned in passing how, in postwar Shanghai, one of her acquaintances married a Chinese woman and wanted to bring her with him to the United States. Knowledge of some Chinese, particularly Shanghainese, was also a common theme found in these interviews, though many interviewees state that they’ve either forgotten it after not using it for so long, or knew only the absolute basics. Additionally, they never learned how to read Chinese characters.

photo - Gerda Gottfried Kraus, 1940s — Gerda Gottfried Kraus, 1940s. *(photo from VHEC: RA0001-05-00-02-0099)*

Knowledge of Japanese people was more limited. Kurt’s success as a suit salesman was due to his patron relationship with a Japanese engineer named Kato. Lore mentioned she was helped by a Japanese engineer when she and her mother were stranded in Harbin. But the one individual whom most interviewees referenced was Ghoya, the Japanese commandant of Hongkew ghetto. Ghoya developed a reputation as an unpredictable ruler: while Lore mentioned that her father and husband were treated well by Ghoya due to their academic connections, other interviewees mentioned episodes of violence committed by Ghoya and his guards against the Hongkew inhabitants. Their brutality is matched only by their treatment of the local Chinese. Most interviewees mentioned the mistreatment that local Chinese faced.

The experiences of Shanghai Jewish survivors are often overlooked when compared to those who survived in Europe. Lore was very concerned about this. At the end of her interview, she stated: “I’m not uncomfortable with anything. [But] … just try to be careful about the parts where I am too pleased with my life because there are so many people who suffered.” With the “global turn” in academic research into the Holocaust, the sub-category of “Shanghai survivor” has been gaining strength. It is a term that validates the experiences of refugee Jews and others who survived the Holocaust in Shanghai, while also acknowledging the unique circumstances and challenges they faced.

It is heartening to know that, in the 20-plus years since the VHEC’s Shanghai exhibition, research into this dimension of the Holocaust and the voices of these survivors have not been obscured, but, instead, have expanded into a vibrant subfield. By revisiting past projects and exhibitions, and making them more accessible, we can hopefully gean new information about the Holocaust and the multiplicity of survivors’ experiences.

Ryan Cheuk Him Sun is a PhD candidate in the University of British Columbia department of history. His research examines the entangled histories between Jewish refugees escaping Nazi oppression and the British colonies of Hong Kong and Singapore. He is also interested in the journeys that took Jewish refugees to East Asia, and their experiences in transit onboard ships and trains. He can be reached at [email protected]. This article was originally published in the VHEC’s Spring 2022 issue of Zachor.

New havens amid war

The Masorti synagogue in Chernivtsi Ukraine has become a refuge for Ukrainians fleeing the war. Its new aron kodesh, built by grateful refugees, has become a symbol of the partnership being forged between small, out-of-the-way communities and those fleeing for safety. (photo from Schechter Institutes Inc.)

As the war in Ukraine continues, educational and religious organizations that helped support the country’s fledgling Jewish communities are finding they have a new mandate these days: to help the millions of refugees that have been left homeless by the Russian invasion.

More than 12 million people have fled their homes in Ukraine, eight million of whom are internally displaced. According to a May 5 report by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, most of those affected are women and children. In many cases, the refugees have either lost family members in the bombings or have been separated from loved ones. A significant number are struggling to find shelter, food and resources.

Schechter Institutes Inc. president Rabbi David Golinkin told the Independent that synagogues and Jewish day schools have become refuges for Jews and non-Jews alike in recent months. The institute’s educational program, Midreshet Schechter Ukraine, which partners with Masorti Olami, provides funding and educational services for Conservative communities in Ukraine. Golinkin said three of the four Masorti (Conservative) synagogues are located in regions that have been hit by bombing, including in Kyiv, where Schechter had just opened a facility in January.

Golinkin said the two nonprofits had spent more than a year finalizing the purchase of a building that would be big enough to house a sanctuary, as well as a full array of youth programs and services. Two weeks after purchasing the property, however, Russia invaded Ukraine, forcing the community to suspend the opening. As Russian troops advanced toward Kyiv, community members were urged to leave the city. Some congregants sought refuge at the Masorti synagogue in Chernivtsi, near the Romanian border, while others headed out of the country to Poland, Moldova or Romania.

Three months into the war, the Chernivtsi synagogue, tucked away in southern Ukraine, has become known for its hospitality toward those fleeing the conflict. A steady flow of refugees fills the city every day, many turning up at the Masorti facility looking for a bed or a meal. Others head to the Chabad House located nearby. Golinkin said the two organizations have learned to work together, and will refer refugees to the other community when their own facility is full. No one is turned away, whether they are Jewish or not.

Schechter and Masorti Olami also work with partners across Western Europe, Israel and North America to help Ukrainians who are seeking refuge outside of the country. Rabbi Irina Gritsevskaya, who serves as the executive director for the educational programs of Midreshet Schechter and oversees programs in Ukraine, said hundreds of refugees have relocated to Israel, Berlin and other places with the help of Masorti congregations across Europe. She said the most moving example was the rescue of a teenage boy from eastern Ukraine whose parents had died. Volunteers made the 1,000-kilometre trip through war zones to bring him to Chernivtsi.

“[It] was a terrifying experience for him,” Gritsevskaya said, “since it took three days without basically sleeping or eating [to reach Chernivtsi]. Finally, with a lot of help from the Israeli government, we managed to bring him [to Israel].” She said he seems happy with his new home and his new school. “He always wanted to come to Israel,” she said.

Cities in eastern Ukraine are still hemorrhaging populations, driven by the escalating war in border cities and villages. Yuri Radchenko, who leads the Masorti synagogue in Kharkiv, is the director and co-founder of the Centre for Inter-Ethnic Relations in Eastern Europe, a think tank of researchers who specialize in Eastern European and Jewish history. He said most of the members of his small synagogue were able to flee the city. A few chose to remain behind.

“Some teachers [have] elderly parents who are … unable to move from the city,” said Radchenko. He estimates that 30-50% of Kharkiv’s two million residents escaped before the Russians captured parts of the city, which has been heavily damaged from Russian shelling. Many residents sought cover for months in Kharkiv’s fortified subway and other makeshift shelters. Recent estimates suggest at least a quarter of Kharkiv’s residential housing has been destroyed, along with crucial infrastructure.

Still, Radchenko said many who fled the country hope that they may one day be able to return home. “People understand that it is hard to make a change,” he said, noting that immigrating to another country often means starting at a lower employment level in an unfamiliar culture. He speculated that some residents will follow the example of other postwar populations and return to rebuild their city if Ukraine wins the war. And, indeed, many of the residents who sought shelter in Kharkiv’s underground shelters are gradually returning home to repair their apartments and clean up the rubble.

Radchenko said he can empathize with them. Much of his own work was put on hold when he was forced to flee. “I would come back to Kharkiv,” he said definitively. “[If] I could move back, I would not wait. I think I would visit to see how it looks like, but I would come back if my apartment and the district where it’s located were safe.”

For now, Schechter and Masorti are taking the long view of the war. Russia’s continuing attacks mean increased risk to civilian populations, more refugees on the run and more uncertainty. The conflict also means an even greater need to bolster resources at the Chernivtsi synagogue, so that Jews can continue to come and pray, learn and find a good kosher meal there, and refugees can find support. But Schechter and Masorti know that a significant number of Jewish communities in Ukraine will need to be rebuilt. And that will take both time and money.

photo - The Masorti synagogue in Chernivtsi Ukraine has become a refuge for Ukrainians fleeing the war. Its new aron kodesh, built by grateful refugees, has become a symbol of the partnership being forged between small, out-of-the-way communities and those fleeing for safety — The Masorti synagogue in Chernivtsi Ukraine has become a refuge for Ukrainians fleeing the war. Its new aron kodesh, built by grateful refugees, has become a symbol of the partnership being forged between small, out-of-the-way communities and those fleeing for safety. *(photo from Schechter Institutes Inc.)*

Schechter’s director of development Michal Makov-Peled said the Cantors Assembly will be hosting an hour-long telethon of music and stories on June 12 to raise money for Schechter and Masorti Olami’s emergency campaign. She said the funds will go toward assisting Jewish communities in Ukraine, as well as increasing support for refugees, which is expected to be an ongoing need, for now.

“We have 11 apartments that we are renting [to refugees in Chernivtsi],” Makov-Peled said, adding that they also distribute food to Jewish communities in Kyiv and Odessa, where residents are slowly returning, but which have been economically impacted by the conflict.

In Chernivtsi, communities are also finding rhythm and a new way of life. Some are exploring ways to expand the small synagogue’s services, others want to pay back the generosity they have been shown. Gritsevskaya said the synagogue now has a new aron kodesh (ark) to house its Torah, built by grateful visitors who saw a need. “Many aren’t members of the Chernivtsi community, but were just passing through,” said Gritsevskaya.

The June 12 Cantors Assembly performance, Mivtza Ukraine, will be aired around the world on YouTube and Facebook. To make a donation or for more information, log on to cantors.org/mivtzaukraine.

Jan Lee is an award-winning editorial writer whose articles and op-eds have been published in B’nai B’rith Magazine, Voices of Conservative and Masorti Judaism and Baltimore Jewish Times, as well as a number of business, environmental and travel publications. Her blog can be found at multiculturaljew.polestarpassages.com.

Helping Ukrainian refugees

On March 5, in western Ukraine, children and families make their way to the border to cross into Poland. (photo © UNICEF/Viktor Moskaliuk)

A friend described to me once what Warsaw looked like in the aftermath of the Second World War. A small boy then, he remembered vividly the ripped apartment buildings, whole sides of buildings missing. When you raised your head, he said, you could see a bed up there, one leg hanging over the precipice, the chimney, a chair stuck in half fall. The lives turned into ruins and exposed.

The “noble” war, as Russian President Vladimir Putin calls it, has killed thousands. Other thousands have been taken into filtration camps by Russians. The war has uprooted the lives of millions. It has separated wives from husbands, children from fathers. It has laid bare what is usually concealed from the eyes of a stranger: human attachments and loves, support for one another and acts of kindness. But also, the seismic faults running through so many families; their discontents, their arguments, and the way they cope with them in the time of crises.

Inadvertently, I became privy to the lives of many simply because I happened to be there at the time of their great vulnerability and need. Those I met (and, with rare exceptions, these were women with children) were going through the horrors and desolation of war. All, without exception, were traumatized. All needed practical help, advice, information and, above all, empathy.

But what they also needed, I discovered, was to talk about what they had gone through. That need was spontaneous and raw. They broke into stories easily and without invitation on my part. Each story was different, yet many followed the similar pattern: destruction and loss of property or homes; weeks in basements with scarce water, food supplies and electricity; the howl of air raid sirens; separation from loved ones and concern about their well-being; screams of traumatized children; and, then, finally evacuation, finally escape, over many days. Escape on foot, by trains, buses or sometimes cars, with detours necessitated by rockets and missiles; crossing rivers on boats where bridges were blown up.

I heard repeated gratitude to Ukrainian volunteers who facilitated the escapes, relaying families from one safe place to another; informing about the dangers on the way and how to bypass them. I heard stories of churches that sheltered families overnight; of people harbouring strangers in their homes; of volunteers who organized food that awaited fleeing families at different points of their long and hazardous journey to safety. I learned a new word – humanitarka, meaning clothing (and perhaps food) that poured into Ukraine from the West as humanitarian aid.

And I heard stories of the brutality of Russian soldiers towards civilians. I heard stories of looting, torture and rape. I heard stories of Russian soldiers leaving villages and shooting in their wake every cow, every chicken, so that the owners would be left with nothing; gratuitously smashing all the preservatives Ukrainians traditionally prepare for winter. I heard how Russian soldiers pretended they would allow villagers to run to safety, only to shoot them in their legs, and finish them off later like hunted animals. I heard stories of booby-trapped corpses, of Russians abandoning their dead.

In the two-and-a-half weeks I volunteered with the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) at a border crossing and in a refugee shelter several kilometres away from the Polish border with Ukraine, I met people of all walks of life – I met the Ukrainian Nation.

I met a grandmother who escaped missiles with her six grandchildren and made it to Poland while the parents of the children had perished.

I met a man, a welder, looking after his old and infirm mother. They couldn’t possibly live with any family, the man explained, because his mother became psychotic and incontinent, and he regularly had to clean up after her. The welder was now trying to bring to Poland his former wife with her new husband and their three children, one of whom was his.

I met 60 elderly Baptists from Zaporizhzhia who were on the way to Amsterdam, where a sister Baptist church was going to shelter them. Zaporizhshia is the site of the largest atomic plant in Europe and it had been overtaken by Russian soldiers. It’s the city where my relatives live. Talking to these refugees, I realized that my aunt had been concealing the truth from me all along: the rockets are falling 10 kilometres away from the city.

I discovered that the most painful subject and the last thing that came up in conversations was the fact that women had had to leave their loved ones behind. The worry for their soldier sons and husbands, their parents, grandparents and siblings, was a deeply hidden, yet constant, heartbreak. It was a breaking point for many. I will not forget those eyes, dozens and dozens of women’s eyes: blue, grey, greenish; eyes magnified by tears at the thought of the separation from loved ones. When a collective image of Ukraine comes to my mind, it’s women’s eyes. Embarrassed to cry in front of me, a stranger, they tried to look away. The older sister would often say to the younger, “Enough already, just stop it!” while breaking into tears herself.

Another move that caused tears was my offering of money to refugees, the generous donations that I had received while I was still in Vancouver. In Canada, I had packed lots of envelopes to put the money into, for a civilized handout. How naïve I was! In the chaos of a refugee centre, it was quickly handing over money from hands to hands. A scared look and the initial refusal to accept was universal. I had to come up with some strategy to overcome the mutual embarrassment. “This is not my money,” I would say. “This is from Canadian friends, people like you. Canadians care about you. They want to help you. But they can’t be here. They asked me to do it for them. Please take it.” A grateful look. Tears. A hug.

The refugee centre was a temporary shelter. Refugees could spend several nights there and then move on: to some city, some country.

The vast majority of the refugees I met were determined to return home once the war was over. But they had made it to Poland and many would have liked to stay there while the war was raging. Poland was familiar; it has cultural and historical ties with Ukraine, especially with the western part of Ukraine.

In the post-Soviet times, before this war, thousands of Ukrainians had gone to Poland for work: a member of the European Union, Polish standards of living and salaries were higher than Ukrainian. Besides, the Polish language was closer to Ukrainian than any others of the countries that came forward to help. It would be manageable somehow; it could be learned, if not by everybody, at least by the younger people. But Poland couldn’t take in any more refugees. Posters in the refugee centre read in Ukrainian: “We are happy to welcome you, but our cities are full. Our small rural communities are cozy and peaceful. Consider moving there.” But even small villages were full and couldn’t afford to welcome any more people.

The women who arrived at the refugee centre accepted with resignation the fact that they would have to be on the move again. The way they decided where to go next somewhat surprised me: it wasn’t on the basis of a better financial package or living conditions. Rather, the criteria was proximity to Ukraine. The first question that women asked me about various countries also seemed unusual: they wanted to know if they would be able to find work quickly. I would talk about the hardships they had just endured; the necessity to rest, to take a break, to look around first. But that didn’t register. They have worked all their lives, they said. They are used to work. Living for free at somebody’s expenses was a no-no.

Most of the Ukrainian women I met were mild-mannered and perhaps less assertive, less forceful, compared to North American ones. All were both surprised and grateful for the help and goodwill they’d seen from so many. They couldn’t praise enough what the Poles did for them. They were deeply touched by the smallest acts of kindness. And none took the help for granted. “If this happened to other nations and we, Ukrainians, would have to do this for somebody else, would we have done the same? I am not sure,” said one woman.

Few discussed the wider political implications of the war. They didn’t talk about Putin or his goals, or the future of their country. Their concerns were more practical and immediate: food, clothing and the well-being of their children, their elderly mothers.

But I remember one woman, Nina, and her fiery indignation: “What have we done to Russians? What do they want from us? We didn’t bother anybody. Nazi? What Nazi? We live peacefully with our neighbours: gypsies, Jews, Ukrainians, Russians. We all speak Ukrainian and Russian!”

Another, older, woman, while waiting for the bus to Germany, was even more emphatic: “You tell me why Russians believe Putin’s propaganda? Why do they have the mentality of slaves? We Ukrainians may have our problems. But we’re free people. Russians are slaves! Slaves.” (The word “slave” in Russian usage has strongly negative connotations, implying the qualities of subservience, fear, and the desire to please the master.)

I thought about these words. I don’t have an answer to her question. Nor do I have any convincing arguments against her harsh indictment.

* * *

photos - Refugees entering Poland from Ukraine at the Medyka border crossing point — Refugees entering Poland from Ukraine at the Medyka border crossing point. *(photo © UNHCR/Chris Melzer)*

I’m still trying to comprehend and, in some way, come to terms with what I experienced over 16 days. It began when I flew into Warsaw from Vancouver and was picked up at the airport by a JDC representative. Together with two volunteers from the United States, we were driven to the Polish-Ukrainian border, where a small group of Holocaust survivors was to arrive. The drive took four to five hours and, by the time we got to the border, it was totally dark and bitterly cold.

Arrangements had been made with Germany that it would take in the Holocaust survivors. The German Red Cross ambulance bus had traveled 13 hours. I learned later that everybody in the ambulance was a volunteer – the driver was a history teacher, the three women were professional nurses donating hours and hours of service.

I wondered how it was possible to find a few Holocaust survivors in a warring country and bring them to safety. It turned out that the Jewish Agency had used the lists of survivors receiving financial assistance before the war to contact and evacuate them.

What struck me most at the time was the sight of several empty white canvass stretchers on the dirt next to the bus. It started to drizzle; the Germans stacked the stretchers and covered them with a tarp. The stretchers, soon to be filled with people, were a menacing sign of the proximity of war, invisible yet close. When the bus from Ukraine finally arrived, one body was carried out on a stretcher. So emaciated and skeletal was this body that, for a moment, I wondered why they were transporting a corpse with the living. When I looked closer, I saw that it was a woman, wounded and emaciated to an extreme degree but alive. For the next while, the Germans administered an IV to the seemingly unresponsive body. I overheard a conversation between two nurses: one wondering if the woman would be able to make it to Germany. They asked her a question – I translated – was she in pain? The woman shook her head. The Germans proceeded to take care of others.

Six other women got off the bus with some help from the Red Cross people and us.

One lady clutched her battered black purse that was overflowing with some papers. She refused to board the ambulance bus. A nurse and I held her up against the bitter wind, while she told us that her son was waiting for her here, around the corner, that he was going to pick her up. We finally figured out what she meant: her son was in Germany and she believed that she had arrived to Germany, not Poland. Efforts were made to contact her son right there, and somebody got him on the phone or they said they did, I’m not sure. But somehow the matter was settled: the woman agreed to board the ambulance.

None of these old and frail women escaped with any possessions to speak of: a handbag, a sack, was all they managed to take. But that little something was now the focus of their attention; a symbol of their lost nests, and they feverishly clung to it.

One woman finally settled on a stretcher inside the ambulance, her purse sitting on top of her chest. Another plowed through her handbag in search of a watch, the only item left from her late husband, she said; she couldn’t find it, believed it was stolen and was distraught.

Yet another was worried about her frequent need to urinate. A nurse and I led her to the blue booths on the side of the road. She whispered in my ear, asking if I could take her alone: the nurse had accompanied her to the booth before; it was too embarrassing to need to go again.

None of the Holocaust survivors seemed to be clear about what was going on and where they were going next. Finding out that there would be another 13 hours of travel to Frankfurt on top of the hours of travel behind her, one of the passengers refused to go. “I won’t be able to take it,” she said. “I lived through German occupation once and now it’s the Russians. I’ve had enough.”

The last to arrive (I think in a separate bus) was a man. With nothing in his hands, he seemed to be unperturbed by the lack of any worldly possessions. He came from Kyiv. “I didn’t want to leave. But I’m an invalid. I live on the third floor and can’t go downstairs into the basement during the air raids,” he explained. “My son was worried and decided to pack me off to Germany. One way or the other, what difference does it make for me after all I’ve lived through? I remember the Germans. They didn’t do to us what the Russians are doing.”

For almost anyone, this would be the most stunning statement. The Nazis, the Germans, and their allies, committed terrible atrocities during the Second World War (“the Great Patriotic War,” as it was officially called in the Soviet Union, where I grew up). They were inhuman in their cruelty; they were beasts. I still remember the games of my childhood that we played in our yards: the good guys were Russians, the bad ones were Nazis, the Fritzes, as we called them.

I thought about it as I was watched the German nurses taking care, with utmost attention and patience, of the elderly Ukrainian Jews, the Holocaust survivors, escaping Russian atrocities in the 21st century.

Marina Sonkina is a fiction writer, and teaches in the Liberal Arts Program 55+ at Simon Fraser University. She immigrated to Canada with her two then-young sons, as the Soviet Union was breaking up. When Russia attacked Ukraine, she applied as a volunteer with the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. She arrived in Poland early this month and was a frontline responder for 16 days, offering refugees medical and psychological support.

A new story every year

Each year, we revisit the same Torah portions but, while the words remain the same, our understandings change based on what is happening in our world or in our lives. The exodus story, the story of Passover, remains as relevant as ever, as people in many parts of the world are being oppressed, are stateless or are living amid war.

As Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues, citizens of that besieged country are seeking refuge in neighbouring states. It does not appear, at present, that Jewish Ukrainians are suffering any more or less than any other citizens of that state. However, history has shown that whenever and wherever upheaval occurs, it almost inevitably affects Jewish people in some particular way.

The age-old question, “What does it mean for the Jews?” is an acknowledgement that events that ostensibly appear unrelated to Jewish people specifically will have unique consequences for Jews.

As Russia’s invasion has faced an unexpected reply from the Ukrainian military and people, the risk of Vladimir Putin being backed into a corner opens the door to worrying potentials. He has already made threatening noises about chemical weapons and, even more worryingly, nuclear weapons – the very suggestions being an untenable line to cross for any nuclear-capable world leader.

It should be remembered, but it has been too infrequently mentioned during this crisis, that Ukraine once had the third-largest nuclear arsenal in the world, a legacy of the dismantling of the Soviet Union. In 1994, Ukraine was persuaded to transfer its entire arsenal to Russia to be decommissioned with the promise from the Western world that we would ensure that country’s security in return. As Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky continues his virtual global tour, prevailing upon the West to provide more military aid, we should remember that he is asking for the Western world to fulfil the promise it made to his country less than three decades ago.

We should also not need reminding that the existence of a Jewish state is a modern miracle that provides a place of refuge, mere decades after the absence of a homeland led to Jewish history’s worst cataclysm. There are some 200,000 Ukrainians who would qualify for Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return, and planeloads of Jewish Ukrainians are making their way to Israel, fleeing a modern-day pharaoh.

Of course, the land of milk and honey is, in reality, a real-world country facing an enormous range of problems. Recent terror attacks have some people fearing a third intifada or, at least, a season of upheaval like we saw last year when violence erupted. In turn, that hostility spread worldwide, with spikes in antisemitic incidents around the world, including in Canada. While Jews are securely ensconced in the Promised Land, Israelis still seek liberation from the figurative enslavement by terrorists and their supporters. And, at the same time, Palestinians also do not have the freedom they desire and deserve. This latest violence does not serve either people’s dreams of peace or justice; it further enslaves us to cycles of justifications of more violence and pain.

Meanwhile, Jewish families in North America are excited to return to comparatively normal seders and celebrations after two years of pandemic. This is itself a form of liberation. As we reenact the ancient exodus at our seder tables, we will hope for and commit ourselves to a world where all who are oppressed find freedom. This is not a rote rereading and it is not a theoretical wish. In a world with so many challenges and dangers, the story of escape from bondage remains as relevant and urgent as ever.

Again: war triggers memories

Again and again the world does not learn. The ego of dictators and high-ranking politicians is inflated, bordering on insanity. There are many conflicts in the world, but it is Russia’s war on Ukraine that I’m thinking of at this moment.

Who is suffering from all this? The mother with her scared child in her arms, the father who is forced to stay behind and fight, the old and frail, the children in the orphanage who have nowhere to go, the 36-day-old baby boy who does not have yet an identification paper, a name of his own. Who is suffering? The expecting mother who is running, injured, between the ruins of the hospital; the children, scared, hiding in the bomb shelters, hearing explosions and not knowing if they will have a home to return to.

Again and again, people are running in fear, looking for safe shelter. All around them, shelling, sirens, bombardment, hundreds of tanks parading on main city streets, explosions, ruins and distraction.

All this is taking me back decades to another time, the Second World War: Romania, 1940. It triggers memories of my early childhood journey of displacement, fear, cold and hunger. Then 2 years old, my family and I – and thousands of other Jews from northern Romania – were driven out of our homes to the unknown. For one year we were forced to live in a ghetto in a city called Czernowitz (now in Ukraine) in terrible conditions.

After one year, the ghetto was dissolved and we were forced for days to walk by foot in deep mud, carrying bundles of our meagre belongings on our backs toward an area called Transnistria. Long lines of frightened people, old and young, crying babies, the sick and those with disabilities. Those who could not walk were left behind or shot. The Romanian or German soldiers riding on their horses where shouting and beating up anyone who did not comply with their orders.

They forced us to walk from village to village until we arrived in a place called Djurin, where we settled down. There, we lived for four years in terrible condition. My father was taken from us to a work camp. My mother collected dry wood bunches from the nearby forest and exchanged them for food with the Ukrainian women who felt sorry for us. Toward the end of the war, my mother was injured in a bombardment when the Germans were retreating.

I am glad that I was too young to remember most of my fears, but I can’t escape the ripples of horror from those times. They are engraved in my psyche, in my pores. I tremble now when I see the young children on the TV screen with their big, scared eyes. Maybe they are hungry, cold or frightened. I wish I could hug and console them and feed them with my special chicken soup.

image - “Earth Don’t Cover Their Blood” by Sidi Schaffer, Gesher Project, 1998, mixed media — “Earth Don’t Cover Their Blood” by Sidi Schaffer, Gesher Project, 1998, mixed media.

For us, there was no place to seek shelter, nobody wanted us, and nobody cared. The world was silent to our plight. We were denied refuge from most countries. We should remember the destiny of the St. Louis ship, which carried Jewish refugees trying to escape the terror of the war in Europe but was not allowed to enter Cuba, the United States or Canada. The ship had to return to Germany, where 254 of the passengers were murdered by the Nazis. Nor should we forget the ship Struma’s disaster – it was torpedoed and sunk with 800 Jewish refugees, who were on their way from Romania to Palestine. We should not forget Canada’s Frederick Blair, who was in charge of the immigration branch at the time, or then-prime minister William Lyon MacKenzie King’s immigration policy “None is too many,” just when the Jews of Europe were in despair and looking for shelter.

War is evil, then and now and always. Still, I can’t stop being amazed at the differences I see in the world’s reaction of kindness and compassion toward the Ukrainian refugees these days. Moldova, one of the poorest countries in Europe, Poland, Romania and Germany – all have opened their gates with outstretched arms to help the tired mothers, scared children, orphans, the sick and the old. The world’s reaction shows me that the world is changing – including Canada – and that gives me hope.

Israel is bringing in thousands of people from the war zone. They give humanitarian assistance wherever needed. Synagogues in Ukraine, and Jewish congregations from around the world, help bring people to safety, like the Odessa orphanage children that were taken to Berlin.

Still, millions of people suffer because of politics and a madman who wants to expand his territory and his pockets.

I wish that we had in our camps some support, food and warm clothing, medical attention and safety. For us, the world was blind. Only the ones who survived live to tell.

We child survivors are now home for one another.

Sidi Schaffer was born in northern Romania. In 1940, she and her family were put into a ghetto in Czernowitz and, one year later, they were driven toward a concentration camp named Djurin, in northwestern Ukraine. There, in terrible conditions, they survived for four years. In 1945, they returned to Romania and, in 1959, they immigrated to Israel, where she received her degree in art education. In 1975, with husband David and their three sons, she came to Canada. In Edmonton, she went back to her studies and graduated with a bachelor of fine arts from the University of Alberta. In 1998, she and her family settled in Vancouver. Schaffer is a proud member of the Child Survivor Group of Vancouver.

Sponsoring a refugee family

The Alsidawi family, sponsors and congregants at the Vancouver International Airport, January 2019. (photo by Adele Lewin Photography)

Canadian Jews have a long history of standing up for the rights and welfare of refugees. And while Jewish immigrants have often been at the receiving end of this generosity, Vancouver Jewish congregations have played a frequent and often crucial role in ensuring the safe relocation of many non-Jewish refugees as well. They have sponsored refugees from Tibet, families from Vietnam, as well as helped relocate Jews from North Africa and Hungary during times of political unrest. When Canada announced its intention to accept some 25,000 immigrants from in and around wartorn Syria in 2015, many Vancouver congregations once again stepped up to help.

The news of a little Syrian boy whose body had washed up onto a Turkish resort beach in 2015 became a haunting symbol of the war for many Canadians, Rosalind Karby and Miranda Burgess told the Independent. In November of that year, the two women, along with a small cadre of volunteers from congregations Beth Israel and Beth Tikvah, launched an appeal to sponsor a Kurdish family’s immigration to Canada. Karby, who is no stranger to philanthropic initiatives, said the decision to mobilize a sponsorship was a “no brainer” for her, and for many in the local Jewish community. “There’s no question. That [image] sort of galvanized us.”

By 2016, the effort to save Syrian civilians in peril had become an egalitarian issue: Orthodox, Conservative Reform and Renewal congregations here were finding their own ways to fundraise and reach out. In the Lower Mainland, Schara Tzedeck members voted to contribute funds to the Joint Distribution Committee’s humanitarian aid efforts, while Or Shalom, Temple Sholom, Beth Israel and Beth Tikvah applied to the federal government for permission to sponsor families to Canada.

Burgess said, for many, the decision to help fleeing Syrian families emanated from longstanding Jewish experience. “From wandering Aramaeans and other dispossessed Jews to post-Holocaust migrations, to a situation like this, it felt like a very direct line, I think, to a lot of people,” she said.

But, if the ethical decision to provide a lifeline for refugees was a “no brainer,” as Karby put it, the path to bringing that sponsorship to fruition was anything but simple. It was not merely a matter of overseeing their resettlement in Vancouver. There would be a long list of forms to fill out. There were meetings with immigration representatives and members of the Anglican Church archdiocese, which coordinated the sponsorship process for this program. And there were lengthy virtual meetings with the applicant family, who, for the time being, was living in a crowded refugee camp in eastern Jordan.

There was also an “exhaustive” number of details to collect, often over spotty wireless connections, to verify the family’s eligibility: education backgrounds, family histories, residences and connections for all adults. In all, about 40 pages of forms to fill out, said Burgess.

For the family, the application process had its own challenges. For Hanan Alsidawi, the mother, it meant repeated trips to the capital, Amman, an hour-and-a-half drive away from the refugee camp, to secure paperwork, signatures and permission. Her husband, who had been reported missing when the family fled Syria, had not been found. Making it to Canada safely now rested on Hanan’s own initiative and the kindness of strangers thousands of kilometres away in Vancouver.

Sponsoring a refugee family came with considerable financial responsibility. According to the Canadian government, the sponsors were in charge of covering all out-of-pocket costs for the family for one year, including food, lodging and incidentals. That meant the sponsors would need to have a minimum of $40,000 in the bank to qualify. Moreover, Burgess and Karby estimated, that was actually low: for a family of three, the cost of living would be closer to $50,000 a year. The team would need to raise at least $10,000 more than mandated by the government.

“At the time, BI had just completed five years of fundraising for the [synagogue’s] new building,” Karby said. It was also just wrapping up its annual High Holy Day Appeal, another important humanitarian project that relied on the congregation’s support. Asking the entire congregation to take on a third project – and quickly – seemed unrealistic.

After some thought, the sponsorship team decided to take a different tack: they would reach out to a smaller, select group of family and friends who might be able to cover the sponsorship. And they would put a top limit on each donation.

“We determined a maximum gift of $1,000 so that no one person would feel that they should just pay the whole thing and no one person could feel they had to meet up to some high standard,” Karby explained.

But that still meant coming up with at least 40 to 50 donations.

“So, we cast a wide net,” Burgess said. “We worked our networks.”

They appealed to donors both inside the congregations and out. They contacted people they knew had contributed to humanitarian initiatives before. And they appealed to friends far away.

“I went to graduate school in the United States and I have a big network south of the border,” Burgess admitted, noting that the idea struck a chord with American residents as well, “who, because of their own governmental circumstances weren’t able to do sponsorships but felt the same urgency.”

By the end of the appeal, they had received donations from as far away as Michigan, Massachusetts and Maryland. “All were very small, but contributed to the whole,” said Burgess.

They had met their goal – and then some. Karby said Beth Tikvah’s donation of $10,000, whose fundraising was coordinated by David Numerow, put the project over the top, bringing the total to just over $50,000.

Still, it took more than two years for the family to receive approval to immigrate. In January 2019, Hanan and her two children, Mahros and Safa, arrived at Vancouver International Airport to a fanfare of elated family and Jewish congregants. Some of the Alsidawi clan was already living in Vancouver, so Hanan and her children would be able to count on help with things like language interpretation and getting settled in their new city.

We were strangers, too

According to Congregation Beth Israel president Helen Pinsky, quite a number of BI congregants stepped up to support the initiative privately when it was announced. She said she chose to donate because the endeavour resonated with her values as a Jew.

“Many of us had been involved in sponsoring the Vietnamese refugees in the 1970s,” she said. “It had been a very happy, very successful experience for me.”

She said the experience taught her the value of such initiatives. The sponsorship, she said, “is certainly in keeping with our beliefs and how we should behave, according to our forefathers, and it seems like it is consistent with an organization of people who have strong feelings about pikuach nefesh, the saving of a soul.”

Rabbi Jonathan Infeld, who serves as Beth Israel’s head rabbi, said helping others is a core principle to the Jewish faith, specifically because of the historical experiences of the Jewish people.

“Torah tells us that we were foreigners in a foreign land and we need to care about foreigners, and people suffering,” Infeld said. That’s why the congregation – and other synagogues as well – felt it was essential to help Syrian families in distress. “We wanted to take up what the Torah told us in a very real, concrete way.”

Even though sponsors’ financial responsibilities ended in January, their bond with the Alsidawi family has not. Burgess and Karby continue to visit Hanan and her children and check up on their progress. By law, the sponsors are not permitted to offer further funding, and Karby admits that the transition will continue to take time for the small family.

For the volunteers, the past four years of effort was more than a gesture of generosity. It was crucial they help.

“You save one life, you save a world, and we were fated to do what, well, any human being should do, really,” said Karby. “But I think that our Jewish tradition of helping the needy, of trying to save a life definitely propelled Miranda and me.”

“Saving one life is as if you saved a whole world,” Burgess agreed. “And, now that geopolitics has intensified the Syrian crisis again and people are once again fleeing in vast numbers, I am so thankful we were able to help one family. I wish we could have helped all families, but to help one family is something and we were grateful we were able to do it.”

Jan Lee’s articles and blog posts have been published in B’nai B’rith Magazine, Voices of Conservative and Masorti Judaism, Times of Israel, as well as a number of business, environmental and travel publications. Her blog can be found at multiculturaljew.polestarpassages.com.

***

Note: This article has been amended to correct Rosalind Karby’s first name, which was misspelled in the original version.

Local team’s global impact

Ran Sommer (photo from the Walking School Bus)

Ran Sommer was working as a project manager for a health region and moonlighting as a volunteer for a very small Vancouver-based international education charity. A trip to India to see the charity’s work in action changed the direction of his career – and the course of the organization.

The Walking School Bus was the brainchild of another young innovator from the Vancouver area, Aaron Friedland, who has received numerous recognitions, including a Next Einstein award, which was presented by CNN’s Anderson Cooper, and as one of the Jewish Independent’s 18 Under 36 honourees. TWSB, as it is shorthanded, emerged out of a trip to Uganda

Friedland took, where he learned that many students in that country do not attend school because it is too far for them to walk. The first step in his venture to resolve the problem was a book by the same name, which started a fundraising campaign that led to the purchase of the first vehicle, which shuttles Ugandan kids to school then does duty as a taxi in the off hours to cover expenses and generate revenue for school materials.

When Sommer returned from earning undergraduate and master’s degrees at Wilfred Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont., Friedland was one of the first people with whom he reconnected. Both alumni of King David High School, they had been in the same social circles and Sommer had followed Friedland’s successes via social media. He came on board as a volunteer, serving as director of communications.

While Sommer was getting some good training at project management in his day job at the health authority, when he joined a self-funded trip to see TWSB’s operations in India, he was inspired to take a leap into the uncertain territory of a startup nonprofit.

“I was just so blown away to actually see what I was communicating about for the last year,” Sommer said, adding with a laugh: “To see not only that it was real [but] it was 10 times better than I thought it was and I should probably be communicating it better.”

The inspiration was mixed with sadness that he didn’t feel his full-time job was as meaningful. He and Friedland sat down, figured out how to scrape together enough to give Sommer a salary that would just cover his rent and expenses and Sommer became first-ever employee of TWSB, as director of operations. (Friedland was still unsalaried at the time.)

Despite rapid growth since Sommer’s hiring, it’s still a streamlined organization, with seven employees in Vancouver and eight overseas. But, with its tight budgets and small team, the organization has branched out in a range of directions.

The organization was never simply about getting kids from Point A to Point B. First, there is a research component. Graduate students develop symbiotic relationships with TWSB, joining self-funded excursions to the operations – now in India as well – and looking at data from the projects to enhance their delivery and outcome.

Once TWSB put in place the infrastructure to get students to school, they realized some were arriving hungry and thirsty, which impedes learning. The organization added water-catchment systems, chicken coops and community-supported agriculture to their operations. They developed supplementary curriculum, dovetailing with the objectives of the school systems where they work, including an offline database that serves as a sort of virtual library. In a country like Uganda, where a vast majority of the population does not have access to electricity, let alone wi-fi, the curriculum is aided by Raspberry Pi microcomputers – about $100 each – which can communicate with one another in a localized intranet, but not access the internet. Teachers can use the tablets to project material on screens – a benefit in places like some refugee camps TWSB works, where the teacher to student ratio can be one to about 260.

Throughout the charity’s projects are economic development initiatives that both help the communities they serve and create sustainable funding for their work. They created the BrightBox Macro classroom – a shipping container retrofitted into a solar-powered classroom. While students learn in a space that takes up about seven-eighths of the space, a solar charging room powers not only the shipping container classroom but the entire adjacent school. It also provides a charging hub, where people from the community can pay a few cents to charge their cellphones, tablets, flashlights or other electronics, similar to for-profit charging hubs common throughout the developing world. These fees will add up, according to projections, to eventually pay for the entire facility over time.

TWSB also has a small but aggressive fundraising arm that obtains grants from foundations and groups including National Geographic. The academic expeditions are funded by participants themselves, who are asked to raise an additional $1,000 to $2,000.

Based on studies that indicate students can double their reading comprehension exponentially in just months through the multisensory experience of reading the words while hearing them spoken, TWSB developed Simbi.

This “reading-while-listening application” uses different voices, accents and dialects to give the reader the most relevant voice available in their respective region. Again, outcomes are studied and the data shared to make the impacts greater. Simbi began as a part of TWSB curriculum program and then expanded independently as a startup aimed at an even broader market, with Friedland as chief executive officer, while he continues as executive director of TWSB. In addition to the thousands of students served by TWSB, Simbi is in use by another 10,000 who are not part of the project and the objective is to make Simbi available to unlimited numbers.

Through partnerships with Uganda’s minister of education and the United Nations refugee agency, TWSB has expanded its reach into refugee camps and remote public schools.

“There are currently 32,500 students who are interfacing with our technology,” Sommer said. In Uganda, there are 300,000 refugee students alone – not including others in low-income, remote or otherwise underserved communities. And, with expansion into India and a scalable model that they envision taking off globally,

Sommer predicts further exponential growth.

In addition to Sommer and Friedland both having attended Vancouver’s Jewish high school, there is another Jewish connection. The project began during Friedland’s studies in economics at McGill University, with the initial initiative launched within Uganda’s Abayudaya (Jewish) community.

While the Walking School Bus has grown, with 15 employees now around the world, its strength is still in the power of volunteerism, Sommer said.

“We’ve been able to maintain our values and the pillars of the organization because of an incredibly large army of volunteers that are so involved and motivated,” he said.

Canadian refugee law study

Shauna Labman (photo from Shauna Labman)

Amid the world’s largest refugee crisis since the Second World War, Winnipeg-based legal scholar Shauna Labman has come out with the book Crossing Law’s Border: Canada’s Refugee Resettlement Program, an in-depth look at how national and international law and policies have shaped Canada’s resettlement programs.

After growing up in Winnipeg, Labman did her undergraduate degree in English and religion at the University of British Columbia, then went into law school at the University of Victoria.

“At the end of law school, I was called to the bar in Ontario, and then I got a contract with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in New Delhi, India,” said Labman. “I went to India, knowing about refugee laws that I’d studied in law school … which meant I knew about the Canadian context of refugees – how refugee claims are made in Canada, how the Immigration and Refugee Board works. I didn’t know anything about how refugees receive protection in a country like India, which has not signed the [United Nations] Refugee Convention or anything.”

After returning to Canada, Labman accepted a consultancy with the Canadian embassy in Beijing. Realizing that the life of a diplomat was not for her, she returned to UBC in 2007 for a master of laws, which was followed by a PhD. Her graduate supervisor was the current dean of the university’s Allard School of Law, Prof. Catherine Dauvergne.

Of her master’s thesis – “The Invisibles: An Examination of Refugee Resettlement” – Labman said, “It’s about the fact that refugees waiting for resettlement don’t get seen. We only see them when they are resettled … but the program is very ad hoc and there was very little attention given to it at the time.”

As Labman was starting her PhD, the ships Sun Sea and Ocean Lady arrived off the coast of British Columbia, carrying several hundred Tamil migrants seeking asylum from civil war in Sri Lanka. She recalled how resettlement was being discussed then. “The relationship between law and refugee protection and what I call ‘the layer legality of it all,’ how different laws work to position different refugees differently, became the basis of my doctoral work and this book,” she said.

After moving back to Winnipeg 10 years ago, she worked as a law professor at the University of Manitoba. Last July, she joined the University of Winnipeg and its Global College. As a human rights professor, she teaches courses on refugees, resilience, and concepts and conventions of human rights.

“I find this really rewarding work,” she told the Independent. “I sit on the board of the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization of Manitoba and, in that program, I meet a lot of incredible people who spend a lot of time committed to creating a place of welcome for newcomers in our community.”

Labman’s book looks at Canada’s refugee resettlement program from the 1970s, when there were large numbers of people fleeing Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, up to the Syrian resettlement that’s been happening in the past decade. It covers the different ways that Canada resettles refugees – the government’s resettlement program and the private sponsorship program, including the newly created Blended Visa Office-Referred program, which works with refugee referral organizations to screen refugees before connecting them with private sponsors.

“One way you can think of it is that resettlement itself is a complement to Canada’s inland refugee protection program,” she explained. “Because not that many refugees are able to come to Canada to claim protection, we have a resettlement program. Within that resettlement program, the government is doing resettlement, but the private sponsorship program allows the broader Canada population, individual citizens, to complement the government resettlement program by resettling refugees as well.

“We need only to look south at the U.S. to see how a change in government can affect refugee resettlement,” she said. “We have a legal obligation to asylum-seekers, but a lot of conversation about the border-crossers right now is about whether they are illegally entering the country and whether they are coming in violation of the law when they cross a border. I would say they’re not. I’d say that part of our recognition in the Refugee Convention is that they cannot be penalized for their entry and that, even within our Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, we recognize that refugees may need to cross in a different way or manner to make their claims of asylum.

“In the same way,” she added, “refugee resettlement isn’t a legal obligation, but law still plays out … in how these refugees are selected for resettlement before they enter our borders, which means that, when they are entering our borders, they are entering with a legal document permitting their entrance. They have a legally valid means of entering the country, even though they didn’t have a legal right to enter the country until they were selected for resettlement. So, the book looks at different ways the law operates within these two programs.”

One area in which the book does not delve, but that Labman said is important, is that the required forms are becoming more complicated to fill out, forcing applicants to seek help from lawyers. “It was too complicated for me to fill out when my family did a private sponsorship application,” she said.

While Labman’s book is academic, it is accessible to a broader readership. “It’s not going to be a page-turner if you’re not interested in refugee resettlement,” she said. “But, if you’ve, say, sponsored refugees and want to understand the program in more detail, it might be of interest. If you’ve worked with refugees, whether in a medical or educational context, in a settlement context … individuals working with refugees, there’s so much history and contextual details to the program. When I was writing this book, that information didn’t exist anywhere particularly clearly. So, if you want a comprehensive understanding of what resettlement in Canada is, this book has that.”

Also, for the main target audience – academics and graduate students in history, philosophy, political science, social work, sociology, law and others – Crossing Law’s Border provides a starting point for their own research on refugee resettlement and sponsorship.

“And, as Canada in the past few years has been promoting the expansion of private sponsorship to other countries, and other countries are taking up private sponsorship models, there’s lots of international interest by governments and policy makers and NGOs in those countries, in what Canada’s resettlement program is about,” said Labman.

The Winnipeg launch of her book took place on Jan. 16, and Labman is planning a launch at the Allard School of Law sometime in May.

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.

Searching for a safe harbour

Ben Caplan is narrator and co-creator of Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story, which runs Jan. 24-30 at Frederic Wood Theatre, as part of the PuSh festival. (photo by Stoo Metz Photography)

The 2020 PuSh International Performing Arts Festival opens next week. Among the highlights is Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story, which follows Chaim and Chaya from the pogroms in Romania they are fleeing, to Halifax’s Pier 21, where they meet in 1908, to Montreal, where they end up living. The show, which runs Jan. 24-30 at Frederic Wood Theatre, is narrated and co-created by Halifax-based musician and performer Ben Caplan, with whom the Jewish Independent recently spoke.

JI: How and when did you become involved in the production?

BC: It all started with a phone call from 2b Theatre Company’s artistic co-director Christian Barry in mid-2015. Christian was familiar with my work as a songwriter and performer in the music world and he wondered if I would be interested in collaborating on creating a theatrical production featuring new songs that we would write together.

To be honest, I was skeptical at first. I tend to be a very solitary writer and, though I had a lot of experience in theatre many years ago, it had been a decade since I had performed in theatre. The first few writing sessions were pleasant enough and Christian and I got along great, but we were struggling to find the story that we wanted to tell. As we were searching and exploring to find the substance of what the work would consist of, a confluence of events conspired to show us the story that would become Old Stock.

The first thing was our growing consciousness of the scale of the human tragedy emerging in Syria as a growing number of refugees started trying to find their way out of the violence. Next came Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s comments about “Old Stock Canadians” during the 2015 leadership debate. This othering of “non-Old Stock Canadians” seemed to be vile and absurd. At what point does one get to call themselves “Old Stock”? I am the great-grandson of Jewish immigrants who came to Canada fleeing violence in their own home countries. Was I supposed to think of myself as “Old Stock” or did I fit into some other category in our [then] prime minister’s logic.

Around this time, Christian’s wife, who happens to be the celebrated playwright Hannah Moscovitch, gave birth to their first child, Elijah, and came across the immigration records of her own great-grandparents who immigrated to Canada in 1908 through Pier 2 in Halifax. She realized that, if her great-grandparents hadn’t made the journey to Canada, she would not exist, let alone her infant child. It was then that Hannah asked if she could write the scenes for the show we were trying to create.

With Christian’s vision of the artistic whole, my work as composer and lyricist, and Hannah’s work as playwright, we were off to the races and we worked together to create the show. We thought that the Jewish story from 110 years ago had a striking and tragic resonance with the tragedy unfolding in our own time. I should mention that, of course, the originating cast, musical director Graham Scott, our production manager and designer Louisa Adamson, and many others played a huge role in realizing the vision and bringing the music and the play into the world.

JI: In broad strokes, could you describe how the co-writing process worked?

BC: Christian Barry created the structures and conditions that made it possible for any of these songs to be written. I was probably not always the easiest artist to work with – I tend to desire quiet and solitude when I am writing.

The way it usually worked is that Christian would book a time and a space in whatever city we were able to meet up in (we did writing in Halifax, Montreal, Stratford and Banff) and the day would start with conversations and questions. We would talk, share ideas, listen to music, read texts, Google things, etc.

Out of our conversations and questions, the idea for a song would emerge. The first one we wrote was something for their arrival at Pier 2. We didn’t have a scene or a broader context to work with but, after awhile, Christian would say something like, “We know they are going to come through Pier 2, let’s start there.” I sat at the piano and started mashing out some chords and throwing words into the air. Christian had a wonderfully delicate touch after I got rolling, and would provide helpful comments, critiques, and throw ideas into the room.

JI: What is it about the production that drew you back to performing?

BC: I had stopped performing in the theatre after I became somewhat disillusioned of the possibilities of making a career in theatre. In 2005, the year I did my last theatre performance, I was working on academic pursuits, theatre and my hobby as a singer-songwriter. My life was over-full and something had to give. My logic was something like, in theatre, you need to rely on finding a lot of talented people who are willing to work on a project that takes a lot of time and resources to complete. As a singer-songwriter, there is more room to work solo and bring other people into the project as interest and resources permit. So, that’s the path I chose to express my artistic impulses. I gave up the dream of becoming an actor to focus on the more reasonable and safe path of becoming a songwriter. Ha!

When Christian called me to ask me to make a piece of theatre with him, it was a no-brainer. Being a part of this show has been one of the great privileges of my life. Not only did I get to collaborate with a crazy good team on writing the thing, but I had the opportunity to perform on stages that I wouldn’t have dared to dream of stepping onto when I was making theatre 10 years ago. It’s been an amazing learning experience and one that is sure to influence my work as a performer for the rest of my career.

JI: In what ways does the story and/or themes of Old Stock speak to you as a Canadian in 2020?

BC: What is most meaningful for me about the story and themes of the show is the humanization of the character of the refugee. It has been disturbing to see the ways in which migrants have been portrayed by so many politicians and media outlets around the world. They are often spoken of as hordes, masses and statistics. What is lost are the individual human lives – people with hopes, dreams, fears and trauma searching for a safe harbour.

In Old Stock, we tell the story of Hannah Moscovitch’s great-grandparents coming to Canada. We see their struggles to overcome their past and to generate new and complicated identities. I think that we all, as human beings, have complicated and multi-layered identities. I think that, among other things, this show is about demonstrating layered and sometimes tragic identities with compassion and a healthy dose of humour. That’s basically the most Canadian thing I can think of.

For tickets to Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story and other PuSh shows, visit pushfestival.ca. The soundtrack to Old Stock is available on Spotify, YouTube and elsewhere.