Join writer Marina Sonkina in celebrating the release of her two new books: Ukrainian Portraits: Diaries from the Border and Rupture and Other Stories. About Ukrainian Portraits, she writes: “At the end of March of 2022, I traveled to the Ukrainian-Polish border to volunteer at a refugee evacuation centre. Much as I tried to prepare myself psychologically, what I encountered face-to-face didn’t fit any of my expectations: I saw a disaster on a massive scale. I went to volunteer as someone who speaks Russian, Ukrainian and other languages; someone who had been a refugee herself.
I soon realized that what the Ukrainian refugees needed most (apart from practical advice) was to talk about their experiences. They needed to be heard.”
The double book launch takes place Sunday, Dec. 10, 1:30 p.m., in the Aceman Seniors Lounge at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver. Nibbles and light refreshments will be provided.
With the help of Jewish Family Services, Belmont Properties and others, the Zubrys family – Alexander, holding Artem, Sophie and Katrina – are getting settled in Vancouver. (photo from JFS)
For Oleksandra Liashyk and her family, who fled the Ukraine-Russia war last year, resettling in Vancouver was an opportunity for a new, though unexpected start. The family of three, who have an apartment and have enrolled their son in public secondary school, are learning English and navigating the ropes that come with resettlement. Still, Oleksandra admitted that it hasn’t been easy, that simply adjusting to a new culture, community and language has been a challenge. “This is absolutely another world,” she said.
It’s a sentiment shared by many of Vancouver’s newest immigrants from Ukraine. Fedor and Yulia, who came from wartorn Chernihiv with their two children, had good jobs as a real estate broker and a fitness instructor. While their children aren’t yet old enough to attend school, the kids are struggling with socialization. “The hardest thing to adjust for our children here was lack of communication with children of their age,” they said. “[E]verything looks quite unusual here.”
Like Fedor and Yulia, many others have left behind established businesses and jobs, professions that will be hard to restart in Vancouver. Lawyers, real estate brokers, accountants, social workers and business owners will need licences, education and a practised familiarity with Canada’s certification processes. But first, they need a place to live and a way to support their families.
According to Tanja Demajo, chief executive officer of Vancouver’s Jewish Family Services, the Ukrainian resettlement program was already in the planning stages when Russia formally announced its intended occupation of Ukraine in February 2022. Well-versed in creating programs to assist new immigrants, JFS knew the program would have to be versatile and able to address the many challenges faced by refugees on the move. Not all immigrants would be able to plan ahead before leaving Ukraine; many would arrive unprepared for their new home.
“Families reach out in many different ways,” Demajo explained. “Sometimes they call us from abroad and they are trying to understand the Canadian systems and how to actually come here. Sometimes we receive a call from other [Canadian] cities when families have already left [Ukraine] and they are thinking about relocating to the Lower Mainland. And sometimes we receive calls from families that are already here and are trying to navigate their next steps.”
According to Demajo, more than 80% of Ukrainian refugees enrolled in the resettlement program have advanced educations, but lack fluency in English, so JFS partnered with the B.C. Centre for Disease Control to provide its Food Skills program. In it, participants learned how to read labels in grocery stores and purchase food, which then became the ingredients for new Western-style dishes, which they cooked in the JFS Kitchen. “Throughout the cooking, they were also learning English,” Demajo said. “We also had childcare provided as well.” The classes were so successful that JFS is looking at expanding the program.
But the greatest challenge facing new immigrants to Vancouver has been the city’s housing shortage. Residential vacancy rates, which now stand at less than 1%, and the disproportionate cost of rental apartments have made it harder to find housing.
JFS settlement worker Tanya Finkelshtein helps connect new immigrants with “welcome circles” of volunteers that can help get them settled. “Housing is the number one problem in the Great Vancouver area, especially for newcomers. We [are] able to support some of our clients, but it is a serious issue,” said Finkelshtein, who works with about 70 Ukrainian families in JFS’s settlement program.
Affordable housing is key to creating adequate living conditions, including suitable employment.
“We have a family that was initially living outside of Vancouver,” Demajo said by way of example. The family’s efforts to connect with the Vancouver Jewish community were hampered by distance, as was their effort to find suitable employment. By connecting them with Tikva Housing and Temple Sholom Synagogue’s volunteer network, JFS was able to help the family resettle closer to employment opportunities and Jewish community programs. Tikva has since set aside two other units for JFS’s resettlement program.
But the search for housing continues to be a problem for new arrivals, so Demajo reached out to a property management company with well-known connections in the Jewish community. Shannon Gorski, whose family owns Belmont Properties, said JFS was looking for a couple of apartments that could provide temporary housing for Ukrainian immigrants. Gorski, who also serves on the JFS board and is the managing director of the Betty Averbach Foundation, reached out to Belmont’s board of directors “and then I learned … that they had been approached by someone in the rental world, Bob Rennie, and they had already stepped up to the plate.” Gorski said the board agreed to provide four units free of charge for four months.
The offer couldn’t have come at a better time for Alexander and Katrina Zubrys, who had been living out of a hotel since arriving from Kherson. The 1,200-square-foot apartment meant the couple could enrol their two children in a Jewish day school close by.
“The school is located 10 minutes from our house,” said Alexander, who acknowledged that, for his 5-year-old son Artem, “the biggest problem is English.” With the school’s help, Alexander said Artem and Sophie, 13, are adapting to their new surroundings and new language.
According to Gorski, the Zubrys family is the only one so far to request temporary housing from Belmont. “My concern is there are so many other families out there that don’t know that the Jewish community is here to help them,” she said. Thus, the challenge isn’t just finding available housing for current clients, but getting the word out to those arriving who don’t know who or how to ask for help.
As for finding new housing for the program, Gorski encourages other companies to get involved. “We are proud to be able to help the Zubrys family and we would like to help other families once identified,” she said. “And we challenge other property management families to step up as well.”
She is confident that, once alerted that Belmont Properties has donated temporary accommodations to the program, other property owners “would answer the call. I have no doubt that they would.”
Demajo said the settlement program wouldn’t have gotten off the ground without the assistance of the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver, which sent out an emergency appeal to the community to fund the project.
“Our community and our Federation have a history of responding quickly and generously whenever and wherever help is needed and we can be incredibly proud of the way our community responded to the crisis in Ukraine,” said Federation chief executive officer Ezra Shanken. “We didn’t spring into action the day the war broke out – we work year-round building communities and partnerships around the world and here at home so that we have the systems in place to make an impact.”
Demajo said Temple Sholom and Congregation Schara Tzedeck are playing a role in supporting new immigrants. Both run their own programs and have collaborated with JFS to make sure new arrivals are supported, she said.
“We continue to support these families now, helping some find vehicles, others looking for new jobs,” said Temple Sholom’s Rabbi Dan Moskovitz.
For the Zubrys family, the support system is what made the 9,100-kilometre migration possible. It’s Gorski’s “big heart” and the help of JFS and other volunteers that made it possible to finally find a new home, said Alexander.
For information about how to offer temporary housing and other help for Ukrainian refugees, contact Tanya Finkelshtein at 604-257-5151.
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.
The harrowing history of Ukraine’s past was recounted recently in the annual lecture honouring Rudolf Vrba, the late Vancouver scientist whose 1944 escape from Auschwitz brought the most concrete proof of the Nazi “Final Solution” to the world.
Dr. Nataliia Ivchyk delivered the 2023 Rudolf Vrba Memorial Lecture, titled The Holocaust in Ukraine: Violence, Gender and Memory. Ivchyk is at the University of British Columbia on a visiting fellowship that was created by Dr. Richard Menkis and Dr. Heidi Tworek to bring to Vancouver a Ukrainian scholar at risk. Ivchyk is associate professor in the department of political sciences at Rivne State University for the Humanities in her hometown of Rivne, Ukraine, and her work is focused on public history and memory politics.
Ivchyk’s presentation was based on survivor testimonies held at the USC Shoah Foundation, and narrowed in on the experiences of Jews in the western Ukrainian region of Volhynia and Podilia. Of the approximately 27,000 Jews who lived in Rivne (then known as Rovno) in 1937, it is estimated that just around 1,200 survived to the 1944 liberation by the Red Army. In a single day, on Nov. 6, 1941, about 21,000 Jews were murdered by Einsatzgruppe C and Ukrainian collaborators. The surviving Jews were imprisoned in the Rovno Ghetto, which was created the following month. In July 1942, remaining Jews, about 5,000, were transported to a stone quarry and murdered.
About 1.5 million Jews died in Ukrainian territory during the war years, most of them shot in what has been called the “Holocaust by bullets.”
“The Holocaust has long remained on the margins of collective memory in Ukraine,” said Ivchyk. Babyn Yar, a ravine outside Kyiv where more than 33,000 Jews were murdered over two days in 1941, has become a national symbol of Holocaust remembrance, she said. “However, the local level of remembrance remained low.”
There are many other sites of atrocities that were committed in Ukraine. “Some are marked by monuments, others are still forgotten and lost,” she said.
Of the several thousand Jews who survived the initial mass executions, anyone over the age of 13 was forced into slave labour.
“Nobody wanted to work for the Germans,” Ivchyk quoted one survivor, “but we had to. We hoped it would somehow balance our relationship with the Germans and would help us survive.”
Violence against women was mainly carried out by Ukrainian collaborators, she said, though Nazis also took part.
“I remember many times Germans came at night, knocked on the windows, took away beautiful girls,” Ivchyk quoted a survivor. “Sometimes, they raped and killed them right away. Sometimes, they said we will come again.”
Rabbis became a particular target of violence against men, given their social and symbolic status, and their role as spiritual leaders.
In the Soviet era, historical memorialization was subordinated to the priorities of the regime.
“The Holodomor [the deliberate Soviet famine that killed millions of Ukrainians], the deportation of Crimean Tatars, the Holocaust and the genocide of the Roma – all of these events were suppressed in collective memory by the Soviet regime,” she said.
Today, support in Ukraine for Holocaust memorialization is ambivalent.
“The activities of the state today do not prohibit academic, educational or public activities in the field of Holocaust remembrance, but neither does it act as a financial or ideological initiator,” she said.
The Vrba event was funded by the Holocaust education committee of UBC’s department of history, which is responsible for the annual lecture, as well as a number of other organizations, including the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre and the Diamond Chair in Jewish Law and Ethics.
Menkis, associate professor of modern Jewish history at UBC and chair of the Holocaust education committee, noted that the event recognizes Vrba’s contributions to two primary areas to which Vrba’s life was devoted: Holocaust education and science, particularly pharmacology. The annual lectures alternate between these topics.
Menkis told the audience how Vrba and his friend Alfréd Wetzler made the momentous decision to escape from Auschwitz after overhearing conversations around the planned deportation of Hungarian Jewry. After a difficult and dangerous trek, the pair reached northern Slovakia, where they compiled a report documenting the layout of Auschwitz and the extermination process there.
“Although the report is credited with saving many lives,” said Menkis, “Vrba and Wetzler were keenly aware that more decisive action could have saved more. After the war, Dr. Vrba continued to speak about Auschwitz and his experiences. His book, I Cannot Forgive, written with Alan Bestic, was first published in 1963 and has been issued in a number of translations and re-editions since. He is also well known for his unforgettable testimony in Claude Lanzmann’s [documentary film] Shoah and perhaps less well-known but also important was his effective testimony in the Canadian trials against Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel.”
Vrba’s widow, Robin, attended the event virtually. Vrba died in 2006.
This article was originally presented as a d’var Torah called “Healing our relationship, as Jewish Canadians, with Ukraine and Ukrainians.” It was delivered at Or Shalom Synagogue on Shabbat, 14th of Tevet, 5783; Jan. 7, 2023. It is intended as a beginning of a conversation about how we, as Canadian Jews, can heal our relationship with Ukrainians and Ukraine.
When many of us Canadian Jews think about Jewish experience on Ukrainian territory, we think of antisemitic violence. We think of pogroms, of rape, of plunder. And, ultimately, of either escape or death. For those of us with personal ancestral history in the territory of Ukraine, this pairing of the land with violence is particularly acute. One Or Shalom member told me, with raw emotion, about his father’s experiences at the hands of brutal Ukrainian guards in various Nazi concentration camps. My Uncle Leo referred to Easter as pogrom season in the town of Yavorov, the town presently in western Ukraine, called Yavariv in Ukrainian, where he lived until the age of 11. He spoke to me of his childhood as a past from which he had, thankfully, escaped.
It is not uncommon for individuals to seek escape from a painful childhood past. However, we are learning from contemporary trauma theory that, as much as we may want to leave the past behind us, it lives on within us. Ukraine lives on in the deep psychic life of many of us and in the psychic life of the Canadian Jewish community with its extensive roots on Ukrainian territory.
As we are all aware, the Ukrainian people are heroically resisting a brutal assault by Russian forces. As well as eliciting fear, horror and outrage, this situation presents us with an invitation to move beyond our feelings of separation from our history on Ukrainian soil and from the Ukrainian people. The war provides us with the opportunity to claim our own legacy and place in the new, complex, multiethnic, multiracial, democratic Ukraine, with all its triumphs, challenges and contradictions. This is an opportunity for healing.
I want to share some of what I have learned that has helped me on this healing path.
If we look at the historic record of Jewish life on Ukrainian territory, we see that Jewish-Ukrainian coexistence was deep, complex and multi-dimensional. Demographically, Ukrainian territory was one of the main centres of Jewish life for more than 400 years. On the eve of the Holocaust, there were more than two-and-a-half million Jews in that area.
There were periods of horrific violence and crippling antisemitism against Jews on Ukrainian territory, as well as periods of ongoing systematic prejudice. These realities must not be overlooked or minimized. But we also see many examples of interconnection between Ukrainian Jews and ethnic Ukrainians. We see many examples of shared music with similar melodies and even bilingual songs; of similar folk stories; and of similar folk remedies and folk healing practices, with Jewish Ukrainian and ethnic Ukrainian folk healers sharing their remedies with each other and tending to both populations.
And there is considerable similarity in those quintessential Jewish activities – food preparation and consumption. This past summer, I made pickles with my Ukrainian-Canadian friend Beverly Dobrinsky, using an old family recipe of hers. The next day, I discovered the exact same recipe, grain of salt per grain of salt, in my own disordered family recipe collection.
Looking at literary translation, one of my passions, we find many examples of the translation of works between Yiddish and Ukrainian and between Ukrainian and Yiddish. In the late 1920s, Ukrainian writer Yuriy Budiak wrote two bird-themed children’s books that have been described as delightful and playful. Shortly thereafter, the books were published in Yiddish translation and enjoyed by Yiddish-speaking Jewish children. These books were recently published by Naydus Press in the United States in a trilingual edition – Ukrainian, Yiddish and English – to raise funds for the Ukrainian war effort.
During the 1930s, both Yiddish and Ukrainian writers experienced repression by the Stalinist Soviet government and experienced difficulty publishing their own writing. In response, they began translating one another’s work and the work of Soviet-sanctioned writers from one another’s cultures. The esteemed Yiddish poet Dovid Hofshteyn translated the work of Taras Shevchenko, known as “the national bard of Ukraine.” The Yiddish writer Leib Kvitko taught Yiddish to the Ukrainian writer Pavlo Tychyna, who went on to translate a number of Yiddish writers into Ukrainian.
As Prof. David Fishman from the Jewish Theological Centre in New York points out, all these similarities and interconnections‚“only happen with close contact.”
Moving into the present, by focusing solely or predominantly on past violence and persecution, we fail to take into account the cataclysmic changes Ukraine has undergone, notably since the breakup of the Soviet Union and the country’s emergence in 1991 as an independent nation with a sizable contemporary Jewish population. David Klion estimated, in Jewish Currents, that the Jewish population of Ukraine at the time of the Russian invasion in February of 2022 was more than 100,000 people.
Since independence, Ukrainians have been redefining what it means to be Ukrainian, moving from an ethnic category of belonging based on ethnic and religious identity to a civic category based on citizenship. This is an important issue for all Ukrainians, but particularly for the many individuals, including Jews, who are not ethnically Ukrainian.
Last April, I had the enormous privilege of hearing a Zoom talk organized by the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre and given by Dr. Magda Havryshko, a Ukrainian academic. Havryshko spoke of two different national narratives in Ukraine, an ethnocentric narrative focusing on the country as the homeland of the Ukrainian people, and a multiethnic narrative “that priorizes examining Ukraine’s difficult history in relation to Jews.” Havryshko shared information about several inspiring initiatives undertaken in Ukraine in relation to its Jewish population. I will outline three of these initiatives here: during the celebration of Ukrainian independence in 2021, Holocaust history and memory was central; the history of the Holocaust on Ukrainian territory is now taught in all schools beginning at the elementary level; and, lastly, President Volodymir Zelensky and his government have set out a definition of antisemitism, introducing legal punishments for antisemitic acts.
Prof. Amelia Glaser, who studies and teaches comparative literature and translation, has spoken about a desire among contemporary Ukrainian writers to “look very closely at past moments of history and of ethnic violence as Ukrainian tragedies‚” rather than solely as Jewish tragedies. The book-length poem “Babyn Yar in Voices‚” by Marianna Kiyanovska, a non-Jewish Ukrainian, about the 1941 slaughter of Jews in a ravine outside Kyiv, was recently published in English translation by Oksana Maksymshuk. Further, several works by Ukrainian Yiddish writers have been recently translated into Ukrainian, including the fabulous avant-garde Yiddish poetry of Debora Vogel and Sholem Aleichem’s Tevye, which many of you know as Fiddler on the Roof. By the way, Sholem Aleichem lived most of his adult life in Kyiv, a city that he loved.
Without in any way discounting the violence and antisemitism against Jews on Ukrainian territory, I hope I have provided a little forshpayz, an appetizer, about areas of cooperation and interconnection between Ukrainian Jews and ethnic Ukrainians. I have focused on translation and literature, two of my passions, but I encourage you to look for examples of interconnection in the areas of your own interest.
When I think about healing my relationship with Ukraine, it helps me to think about the complexity of my own identity and experience. I am the granddaughter of Jewish immigrants who fled poverty and persecution in different parts of the former Russian Empire, including Ukrainian territory, at the beginning of the 20th century. My maternal grandparents settled in Montreal; my paternal grandparents, in New York. It is telling that I do not know the specific history of the Indigenous nations in the areas in which my grandparents settled but I think I can assume that the lands had been forcibly taken from the Indigenous inhabitants. Two generations later, I continue to live on unceded (that is – stolen) territory, that of the Squamish (Sḵwx̱wú7mesh), Tsleil-Waututh (səlilwətaɬ), Musqueam (xʷməθkʷəy̓əm) and Kwikwetlem (kʷikʷəƛ̓əm) First Nations.
Canadian society is involved in a collective process of teshuvah, of redefining the relationship between us settlers and the Indigenous peoples on this land. Like all settlers, as Canadian Jews, we are challenged to take responsibility for our active involvement or silent complicity in the ongoing Canadian genocidal project against our country’s Indigenous inhabitants. Can we see our commonality with Ukrainians as we both address our brutal oppression of “the other”? Are we, as Canadian Jews, willing to embrace the complexity of our lived experience, to look both at our privilege, especially when it is experienced at the expense of others, as well as at our own painful experience of victimization? Can we hold both at once with integrity?
I finish by sharing the wisdom spoken by an Indigenous man, whose name I unfortunately did not get, at Grandview Park at this past year’s Orange Shirt Day. “When you take a step to heal, you also heal the ancestors. You heal the ones behind and the ones ahead.”
I welcome ongoing dialogue on the issues raised in this talk. Thank you for your kind and open attention.
Helen Mintz’s translation of Vilna My Vilna: Stories by Abraham Karpinowitz (Syracuse University Press, 2016) garnered three literary awards, and her translation of Janusz Korczak: Teacher and Child Advocate by Zalmen Wassertzug is under consideration by the University of Poznan Press. Mintz’s translations have appeared in In Geveb, Jewishfiction.net and Pakn Treger, and her writings about translation in Words without Borders and BC Studies. Her website is helenmintz.net.
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.”
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.
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.
During a Dec. 4 Zoom lecture organized by Kolot Mayim Reform Temple in Victoria, historian Elissa Bemporad offered a nuanced look at the Jewish experience in Ukraine, as well as perspective on the Russian invasion of Ukraine
“It was a history marked significantly more by coexistence between Jews and non-Jews than it was by violence,” said Bemporad, a professor at Queens College and CUNY Graduate Centre in New York City. “I am saying this not only in response to the genocidal war that Russia has launched in Ukraine, justifying it by manipulating the past and demonizing Ukrainians as quintessentially violent. We should resist the view of the Jewish experience in the region, as tragic as it might have been, as if it was doomed from the very beginning and enveloped in perpetual violence.”
The current war, she underscored, has brought about the worst refugee crisis in Europe since the Second World War, with cities destroyed and civilian populations terrorized. “The aim of this war seems to be putting an end to Ukrainian sovereignty and identity,” she said. “As a historian, one of the most painful moments was reading about how the Russian occupiers were seizing and destroying books. As Jewish historians, we know all too well what happens when a society destroys books.”
Showing images of the destruction of Jewish buildings in Ukraine, such as a synagogue in Mariupol and the Hillel building in Kharkhiv, Bemporad spoke to the irony of one of Russia’s stated goals of the conflict: to rid the country of Nazis. Most of the Jews in these bombed-out cities have left, she said, and there is uncertainty as to whether they will return; many have either fled to Israel or settled in the West.
Bemporad discussed the pre-Second World War period, when 1.5 million Jews lived in what is today Ukraine, the largest community being in Kyiv, where 226,000 Jews resided, or one-third of the city’s population. Addressing the anti-Jewish violence in the region, she spoke about – among other uprisings, dating back to the 17th century – the Russian Civil War (1918-21) and the resulting atrocities committed against the Jewish population by both military units and the civilian population. Many of the pogroms took place in Ukraine and tens of thousands of Jews were killed.
“Jews were thought of as interlopers in the national body and imagined as forces connected to Bolshevism that would tear apart the nation’s fabric,” Bemporad said. “The fact that Trotsky was the leader of the Red Army did not play in favour of the Jews.”
But Bemporad highlighted a history of coexistence as well, stories in which some Ukrainians heroically stepped in to save the life of Jews, notably the writer Rakhel Feygenberg, who, along with her infant son, was hidden by non-Jews during a 1919 pogrom.
About the post-First World War era, she noted the ambivalentattitude the Soviet state had toward antisemitism. “While the state condemned antisemitism on paper, it was often eager to ignore antisemitism or to weaponize it in its best interest,” she said. “With regard to the pogroms, the Soviets shifted between acknowledging and downplaying the anti-Jewish violence. They were ambiguous in their treatment of the Jews, and they were the ambiguous in their treatment of the perpetrators, creating a state-controlled memory. However, when the discussion of the pogroms was perceived as at odds with the regime’s interests and priorities of building socialism based on the brotherhood of peoples, then the memory of anti-Jewish violence was silenced and the Soviets preferred not to investigate and punish the perpetrators.”
In other examples, she said the Soviets would use antisemitism among Ukrainians as a means to demonstrate they were prone to nationalism. And both Ukraine and Russia have provided recent examples of reviving the memories of and glorifying national heroes who were responsible for carrying out pogroms.
In a final slide, Bemporad displayed the results of a Pew Research Centre survey on antisemitism in Europe. Despite Russia’s attempts to portray Ukraine as a hotbed of antisemitism, more Russians had an unfavourable opinion of Jews than Ukrainians. And, in Bemporad’s view, Ukraine, despite its corruption, has become the most democratic of the post-Soviet states, excluding the Baltic countries. Further, as has often been mentioned in referring to the present situation of Jews in Ukraine, the country elected a Jewish president, Volodymyr Zelensky, with more than 73% of the vote.
“Siding with Ukraine today does not entail dismissing or forgetting the dark pages of anti-Jewish violence in the region,” Bemporad said. “It is rather a reminder that we can start turning those pages and writing new ones in the book of the Jews of Ukraine.”
Bemporad, a two-time winner of the National Jewish Book Award, is the author of Becoming Soviet Jews: The Bolshevik Experiment in Minsk and Legacy of Blood: Jews, Pogroms and Ritual Murder in the Lands of the Soviets. She is the co-editor of two volumes: Women and Genocide: Survivors, Victims, Perpetrators and Pogroms: A Documentary History.
The next speaker in Kolot Mayim’s Building Bridges series will be Sari Shernofsky, a retired community chaplain from the Calgary Jewish community, on Stories from the Narrow Bridge: Meeting People in Their Time of Need. She will speak on Jan. 8, 11 a.m. Visit kolotmayimreformtemple.com.
Sam Margolishas written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.
הישג ישראלי: ‘איי.טו.זד’ מדורגת בין עשר חברות הטכנולוגיות של בורסת טורונטו
החברה הישראלית לעגלות סופרמרקט חכמות ‘איי.טו זד’ התברגה בין עשרת החברות הטכנולוגיות המובילות בבורסה הקנדית. החברה נכנסה לרשימת המדדים המובילים בבורסה בזכות ביצועיה האיכותיים מאוד
קבוצת הטכנולוגיה הישראלית – חברת הטכנולוגיות החכמות ‘איי.טו.זד’ יכולה לרשום לעצמה הישג משמעותי נוסף, בענף העגלות החכמות, עם כניסתה לממד החמישים של חברות בינלאומיות מובילות, של הבורסה לניירות ערך בטורונטו שבקנדה. על חמישים החברות נמנות אלה שיש להן ביצועים איכותיים יוצאי דופן בחמישיה מגזרים עיקריים: טכנולוגיה, אנרגיה, תעשייה, כרייה ומדעי החיים. וזאת על פי על פי מספר קריטריונים שעליהם נמנים: צמיחת החברה ביחס לענף שלו היא שייכת, וכן ביצועי המניה של החברה בשנה האחרונה
בנוסף למסחר בבורסה לניירות ערך של טורונטו חברת הטכנולוגיות החכמות ‘איי.טו.זד’ נסחרת במקביל גם בבורסת ‘נסד”ק’ האמריקנית, שמיועדת לחברות היי טק טוכנולוגיה. ‘איי.טו.זד’ זוכה אפוא להמלצות קנייה חמות וטובות לאור איכות המוצרה שלה – העגלות החכמות
חברת הטכנולוגיות החכמות ‘איי.טו.זד’ שממציאה ומפתחת פתרונות חדישים לאתגרים מורכבים שונים, היא זו שעומדת מאחורי העגלה החכמה. בשלב זה העגלה החכמה היא מוצר הדגל שלה והוא זוכה לחשיפה גדולה. מדובר במוצר המתקדם מסוגו בעולם בשלב זה. העגלה החכמה מתפקדת גם כקופה עצמאית לכל דבר, וכן יש לה אף מסך מגע ומערכת ראייה ממוחשבת. העגלה החכמה שנקראת ‘קסטומייט’ מייעלת את חוות הקנייה על ידי שימוש באלגוריתם חכם והיא נחשבת מאוד ידידותית למשתמש. בעזרת העגלה שיש, לה מסך מגע ומערכת ראייה ממוחשבת, אפשר לסרוק את המוצרים שנרכשו וכן יש אף אפשרות לשלם באמצעותה. וחאיר כן יכולים הקונים לעקוף פשוט את התור הארוך בקופה ולצאת עם העגלה החוצה. או רק עם המוצרים שנרכשו. ובכך נחסך זמן רב מצדם של הקונים שכידוע בדרך כלל מתלוננים על התורים הארוכים בקופות. כן נחסך כוח אדם רב, בזמן שלמנהלי החנויות יש שליטה ובקרה מלאים על כל התהליך של הרכישה והמכירה
העגלה החכמה ‘קסטומייט’ מאפשרת למנהלי החנויות להפעיל גם פרסום ממוקד למי שמשתמש בה, כולל שיווק ישיר וכן מבצעים מיוחדים. כך שהכנסות חנויות יכולות לעלות בזמן ששהוצאות שלהן יקטנו שמעותית
לדברי מנכ”ל פרוייקט ‘קסטומייט’ של חברת הטכנולוגיות החכמות ‘איי.טו.זד’, רפי ים, העגלה החכמה נמצאית בתהליכי שיפור מתמיד, מבחינת החומרה והתוכנה. זאת כדי להשיג פתרונות משלימים, אפלקציות ויכולות שונות שיתנו ערך מוסף ללקוחות, לחנויות ולמשקיעים בחברה הנסחרת בבורסאות כאמור של טורונטו ‘ונסד”ק’ האמריקנית. ים מוסיף כי פלטפורמת העגלה החכמה ‘קסטומייט’ תופץ ותשווק בחנויות שונות בכל רחבי העולם. ים מציין עוד שהחברה גאה להיות בימים אלה חלק ממדד החברות האיכותיות של בורסת טורונטו שבקנדה
הישג קנדי: ביקושי ענק לדגנים ותבואות מכל העולם
המלחמה הבלתי נתפסת של נשיא רוסיה, ולדימיר פוטין, באוקראינה המיסכנה, שינתה משמעותית את מפת אספקת הסחורות העולמית. רבים במערב לא האמינו שפוטין הדיקטטור יחרחר מלחמה ברמה כזו ויחליט שיום אחד הוא רוצה לחסל את אוקראינה על תושביה. מקביל מדינות המערב בהן קנדה יעשו מעט עבור אוקראינה וזה מצער
ולפיכך משבר חמור זה יצר מחסור עולמי גדול בדגנים ותבואות, בין היתר כיוון שרוסיה מקשה על אוקראינה ליצא חיטה באמצעות חסימת המעבר בים השחור. רוסיה עצמה אף נתקלת במחסומים קשים ביותר לייצא את החיטה שלה, לאור הסנקציות הכלכליות הקשות שהוטלו עליה מצד מדינות המערב השונות. המרוויחה הגדולה מכך היא קנדה שהפכה לספקית חילופית טובה למדינות רבות בעולם
העולם מגיע לקנדה לאור המשבר הארוך הזה, וקנדה מצידה שולחת דגנים ותבואות של החקלאים המקומיים לכמאה ועשרים מדינות שונות. על רשימת המדינות שפנו לאחרונה לקנדה לקבל את התוצרת החקלאית שלה נמנות: טורקיה, אלגי’ריה, תוניסיה וברזיל. במקביל מדינות אחרות שלא סובלות בשלב זה ממחסור ביבולים השונים, פונות כל הזמן לקנדה ומבקשות להגדיל את היבוא החקלאי. זאת, כדי לבסס את מאגרים שלהן לשעת חירום כי כידוע משברים לא חסרים בעולם: מגיפת הקוביד, פגעי אקלים שונים, סיכסוך ומתיחות בין מדינות שונות ועוד ועוד
ההתחממות הגלובלית העולמית לא פוסחת על קנדה וגם היא יוצאת נפסדת מכך משמעותית ביותר. הבצורת הקשה בקנדה בשנה שעברה, פגעה קשה ביצוא של חיטה וקנולה למדינות העולם השונות. בשלב זה קשה לקנדה לסגור את החוזים בהיקפים שהיא רגילה להם. זה יקרה רק אם אספקה של היבולים השונים תחזור לרמות הרגילות בשנה הנוכחית
בנוסף למשבר הגלובלי הנוכחי שנולד ממלחמתה הקשה של רוסיה באוקראינה, גם מגפת הקוביד הנמשכת כבר כשנתיים ויותר “עזרה” ליצור שיבושים קשים באפסקת סחורות בכל רחבי העולם. עתה מכולות ריקות במספר גדול מאוד נשלחות לסין כדי לסייע בסגירת העיכובים באספקה, שנוצרו במהלת המגיפה. לכן מובילי דגנים קנדיים מתקשים להשיג מכולות להעביר את סחורותיהם למדינות שונות ברחבי העולם
חרף האתגרים הקשים הללו, קנדה ויצרני הסחורות והחקלאים שלה עדיין נמצאים בעמדת יתרון. מחירי הנפט והאשלג הגואים כל הזמן הגדילו את הרווחים וסייעו באיזון התקציב הציבורי של קנדה. מחוז אלברטה שבמערב המדינה, שרוב הכנסותיו מגיעות מתעשיית הנפט והגז, צופה עודף תקציבי בשנה הפיסקאלית הנוכחית, לראשונה זה שמונה שנים. זאת לאחר שנים של מיתון קשה באלברטה, שגרם לרבים להפוך למובטלים ובמקביל חברות רבות בתחום האנרגיה הפסיקו את פעילותן במחוז
לאחר המחסור הגדול בנפט בעיקר בגלל הסנקציות הכלכליות שהופנו כנגד רוסיה, הסכימה קנדה כמו ארה”ב, להגדיל משמעותית את יצור משלוחי הגז הטבעי והנפט שלה. מדובר על גידול ביצור של כמאתיים אלף חביות נפט ביום, וכן גידול ביצור של כמאה אלף חביות גז טבעי ביום
במדינות המערב סוף סוף הגיעו למסקנה שיש “להיגמל” מרכישת אנרגיה מרוסיה, שנחשבת ליצואנית הנפט והגז הגדולה ביותר למדינות ביבשת אירופה. המשבר הנוכחי עם הרוסים מויח שוב ושוב, שכדאי ואף מומלץ למערב לנתק כל תלות ברוסים. השאלה המשמעותית עתה כי כמה זמן זה יקח למדינות אירופה השונות ובעיקרן גרמניה, למצוא תחליפים לנפט ולגז של הרוסים
קנדה נחשבת לאחת מיצרניות האשלגן הגדולות בעולם. חברת נוטריין הקנדית שהיא יצרנית האשלגן הגדולה בעולם, הגדילה רק לאחרונה את הייוצר שלה בעשרה אחוזים לרגל פניות רבות מברזיל
השר למשאבי הטבע בממשלה הפדרלית הליברלית, ג’ונתן ווילקינסון, מציין כי כי גורמים רשמיים מטעם מדינות שונות פנו אליו במהלך כנס סוכנות האנרגיה הבינלאומית ,שנערך לאחרונה בפריז, כדי לבחון היתכנות להחלפת האשלג, אורניום וסחורות חקלאיות רוסיות, בקנדיות. במהלך הפסגה הבינלאומית אמר ווילקינסון, כי קנדה, שהיא הרביעית בגודלה בעולם מבחינת עתודות נפט, תוכל להגדיל בהדרגה את המשלוחים בשלוש מאות אלף חביות ביום. בנוסף גם יצרנית האורניום הגדולה במדינה ‘קמקו’ (בסיסה במחוז סיסקצ’ואן) צפויה להגדיל את ייצור האורניום במכרות שלה, בקנדה ובארה”ב. ‘קמקו’ הנחשבת ליצרנית האורניום השנייה בגודל בעולם, מפיקה כשמונה עשר אחוז מכמות האורניום שבעולם
במסגרת הסנקציות נגד רוסיה, הודיעה קנדה לאחרונה כי היא מטילה סנקציות נגד האוליגרך רוסי-ישראלי, ויקטור וקלסברג, הנחשב למקורב לפוטין
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.
* * *
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.
Among the works for sale is “Spring Time” by Yuri Padal.
On April 3, at Art Works Gallery, Art in Aid of Ukraine was launched. Artists and communities in Vancouver, standing in solidarity with the Ukrainian people, came together for the opening of the exhibit and sale. The opening featured local speakers, as well as guests via video link from Toronto and Ottawa. Among the speakers were members of Parliament, the consuls general of Ukraine and Poland, Ukrainian Canadian Congress leadership, and others.
The fundraiser is a non-partisan grassroots event highlighting the role of community engagement; the humane power of art and the critical importance of defending the democratic process. Donations and partial proceeds from artwork sales will go to the Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress and the Ukraine Emergency Relief Fund of the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver.
The featured artist, Yuri Padal, was born in 1949 in Kyiv, and studied under the direction of Glushenko. Padal now lives in Vancouver. His works connect to the universal energies of beauty, colour, freedom and positive balance.
For other participating artists, visit artworksbc.com. Art Works Gallery is located at 1536 Venables St., and the fundraiser runs to April 27.
In announcing the results of the 2021 Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver annual campaign, campaign chair Lana Marks Pulver expressed deep gratitude for the generosity of donors. Acknowledging the ongoing impacts of the pandemic, she said, “Yet, we have also seen some impressive achievements. Organizations have innovated faster and better. Volunteers have dedicated countless hours, pitching in wherever they are needed. And donors have given more generously than ever before.
“Together, we have generated $11.16 million for our community!”
The annual campaign raised $9.52 million, while $1.64 million was raised for additional support, which includes additional support for special projects, community recovery, emergency relief and donors’ multi-year commitments to Federation’s international partners.
In addition, the community raised more than $388,000 for B.C. flood relief during the campaign period. And the community has come together to generate more than $850,000 so far for Ukraine relief.
“We can all take pride in this remarkable achievement, which reflects our collective commitment to our Jewish values of tzedakah and tikkun olam (repairing the world), and our responsibility to one another,” said Marks Pulver.
“From the start of the pandemic, Jewish Federation took the lead in getting our community through to a brighter future. A successful annual campaign is a big part of our ability to do that and, as chair of the campaign, I am deeply grateful for your support.”
* * *
The Canadian Friends of the Hebrew University is pleased to announce a major gift of more than $5 million dollars from the estate of a Vancouver resident, to establish the Institute for Medical Research, Israel-Canada (IMRIC) Hub for Addiction Research at Hebrew University.
The mission of the IMRIC Hub for Addiction Research is to bring about wiser policies, better care and new treatment avenues for those struggling with addiction. This new program will focus on medical research relating to addiction, providing insights into the physical and chemical aspects of addiction, its prevention and treatment.
A silent addiction epidemic affects nearly 11% of adults (more than 615,000) in Israel. In any given year, one in five Canadians experiences a mental illness or addiction problem. Addiction can include both substance addiction (alcohol, drugs and other substances) and compulsive sexual behaviour, problematic use of pornography and problematic use of the internet. Moreover, addiction and mental health issues go hand in hand and must be addressed in tandem. Each year, addiction costs the Israeli economy approximately seven billion NIS and causes untold peripheral damage to families and communities.
“As a result of this generous gift, we at IMRIC are able to engage our best researchers in several specific research projects with diverse perspectives on addiction,” said Prof. Rami Aqeilan, chair of IMRIC. “Additionally, the hub will promote national and international interaction and foster collaboration with Canadian researchers.”