Time is running out for Survivors in Eastern Europe

noreply@blogger.com (The Survivor Mitzvah Project) — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 20:22:00 +0000

Zane Buzby & Eva K. (Belarus 2007)

Scattered across Eastern Europe there are thousands of elderly Holocaust Survivors in desperate need of food, medicine, heat and shelter. Most are sole survivors of their families who were brutally murdered by the Nazis, some are survivors of the killing fields where hundreds of thousands of men women and children were systematically massacred in every town and village on the path of the German invasion, some fought with the Russians or were Partisans in the forests of Belarus, and some were slaves in the Gulag long after the war ended. All are elderly and in dire need of help.

I am a television comedy director by trade, having directed over 200 sitcoms for all of the major networks. During a hiatus between Golden Girls and Blossom, I decided to take a brief journey to Eastern Europe in order to find the birthplaces of my grandparents. In Lithuania, I met the brilliant Professor Dovid Katz of Vilnius University who urged me to stop along my way and visit 8 elderly, isolated Holocaust survivors living in tiny towns and villages in Belarus. He told me to bring food, medicine, reading materials and American dollars. My visit to these people was both life-changing and inspiring.

As soon as I crossed the border, it was as if I had gone back in time 100 years. No cars, only horse drawn wagons, little slanted huts, no shops or restaurants, only endless fields, ancient apple orchards left fallow and the ghosts of millions.

The only sign of what were once thriving Jewish communities for Centuries were markers for mass graves from Hitler’s SS Einsatzgruppen – mobile killing squads - and desecrated cemeteries - tombstones half buried, dating before the time of Napoleon.

200-YEAR-OLD GRAVESTONES in VISHNEVEH, BELARUS

And suddenly, a revelation: here and there, the "last of the Mohicans," elderly Holocaust survivors in dire straits, barely struggling to survive.

I returned to Hollywood and the world of comedy but I couldn’t get these people out of my mind. What would become of them? How would they last through the harsh winter? Who could they turn to? I was compelled by a force much greater than myself to take action. I contacted everyone I knew, all of my friends and all of the members of my family and started to collect money and send it on to Eastern Europe. Meanwhile, Professor Katz stayed in touch with me and every time he made an expedition to Ukraine, Belarus, Slokavkia, Lithuania to study dialects and languages, he also sought out elderly and forgotten Holocaust survivors and emailed me their names and addresses. My list started to grow. From 8 people it became 35, then 120, and now it has grown to well over 700. With Dovid Katz’s help, and aid from philanthropist Chic Wolk, The Survivor Mitzvah Project was born.

The Survivor Mitzvah Project is dedicated to providing direct financial aid to those elderly and forgotten Jewish Holocaust survivors scattered throughout Eastern Europe who are sick, impoverished, isolated and receive no aid from any other agency. Their families and communities destroyed by the Nazis, they struggle to survive in their few remaining years, lacking the means to buy even the most basic of human necessities: food, medicine, heat and shelter. Most live alone in horrific conditions. Our project, by bringing help quickly and directly to these survivors, helps ensure that they may live out their last years with some measure of comfort, support, and dignity. 100%, every single penny donated goes directly into the hands of an elderly, impoverished, Holocaust Survivor.

These are people for whom the war never really ended, as each day brings more misery.

~ Zane Buzby

The Survivor Mitzvah Project

Who Are These People?

noreply@blogger.com (The Survivor Mitzvah Project) — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 02:51:00 +0000

Mera A., Lithuania.

Mera A., 84, is one of only six Jews still residing in the small Lithuanian village of Mariampol and the only one who was raised there. She lives with her severely retarded adult daughter, who receives no social service assistance. Her husband died of liver cancer in 1992. Mera suffers from lung and heart problems and walks unsteadily, rarely venturing outside.

Teenage hooligans frequently target Mera and her family in anti-Semitic attacks. They destroyed the front door of her first-floor apartment.

When Mera was 8, her mother died. At the start of World War II, her brothers were immediately shot by the Lithuanian Death Head squads. Mera escaped by running into Russia. The Jews who didn't escape, 8,000 in total, were massacred and thrown into one mass grave. Mera wrote, "Those who did not save themselves were all shot. Everybody was undressed, naked, and shot. Then the hole was covered with lime. And were all put in one grave. All together, children, men, women and elders. Those who witnessed this told us that after that, for three days, the earth in this grave was raising up and down and there was moaning coming out of the grave.”

Mera desperately needs money for food, heat and medications.

"We wait for the winter with horror," she said.

CLICK HERE TO HELP MERA SURVIVE

BASYA K., BELARUS

A tiny woman who’s family was decimated by the Nazis, Basya worked tirelessly for over 40 years in a plywood factory, doing manual labor that men twice the size could not keep up with. She lives with her older sister, Fanya, who is going blind, and has no money for a needed eye operation. Basya has severe problems with her legs, and still she must climb up and down the stairs of their 6th floor walk-up to bring in food and necessities in order to keep her and her sister alive. Her true love was shot during the opening days of the war and she never married. The letters the sisters have received from The Survivor Mitzvah Project are the only letters they have ever received in their lives. They watch their mailbox daily and write, “we cry because you love us so much.”

CLICK here to help Basya and her sister survive, bringing them medical aid, and food.

Photo: BASYA HOLDS A PHOTOGRAPH OF HERSELF FROM BEFORE THE WAR

Malka R., Belarus

Born in 1910, she suffered the horrors of the first World War, the famines that followed, the rise of Nazism, The Holocaust (where her father was shot because he refused to undress and submit to the Nazis dehumanization), Stalinism, and the deaths of her children, whom she has long outlived. Now bedridden and cared for by the sister of her dead son’s long dead wife, Malka needs medications and help.

CLICK here to help Malka survive.

Yudel R., Lithuania

Yudel is a large man; still well over six feet tall. in his late 80s. When I visited him in September 2007, as I walked in the door he said, “How long can you spend with me because I have a lot to tell you.” (All this was in Lithuanian, Russian and a bit of Yiddish so I had a friend who translated for me). He was a teenager when the war started. He lived in a small town and every single Jewish person in the town including all of his brothers, sisters, their children, his grandparents, mother - his entire family was murdered by the Lithuanian collaborators. They were all rounded up and shot. He managed to run into the woods and save himself.

Photo Above: YUDEL , A DECORATED WAR HERO, WITH MEDALS HE RECEIVED DURING THE WAR

He eventually joined the Partisans and then the Russian Army.

YUDEL’S SISTER BELLA WHO WAS MURDERED BY THE LITHUANIANS ALONG WITH HER YOUNG CHILDREN.

YUDEL’S BROTHERS MENACHEM, DOVYD & BENJAMIN – ALL MURDERED BY THE LITHUANIANS

When the war ended Yudel came back to Lithuania and wanted to take revenge on the murderers of his family. (Because they were all killed by local Lithuanians, neighbors, he knew exactly who killed everybody in his town). His friend cautioned him not to take revenge saying that since Lithuania was now in the Russian zone, the KGB would find him and he would be executed. His friend told him, “You’re a smart guy, figure out another way.” So Yudel made a list of all the murderers – using his own knowledge, other eyewitnesses and even Gestapo records. He dressed himself up as a KGB man, in a suit, with a broken starter pistol from track and field sticking out of his pocket. He then went door to door – to each house of the murderers who were now all back home with their families living normal lives. -He informed each one that the KGB knew exactly what they did and they were to write a confession of their crimes, and if they left out even the smallest detail, they would be executed or sent to Siberia. Each and every one gave him a full confession.

His plan was to turn the information over to the authorities so that the murderers would be punished for their war crimes. But at the same time, the United States State Department, was allowing all of the murderers to leave Lithuania and enter the US. Their reasoning was that since the Lithuanians and the Russians were enemies, the Russians would kill the Lithuanians if they were not allowed to immigrate. Although it was nearly impossible for the victims (Jews) to enter the US, these Naziz, Fascists and collaborators were welcomed and became US citizens. So Yudel knew he was running out of time, and there would be no justice. So he started writing anonymous letters, hundreds of them, to the families of the murderers. They all started with “I know what you did” and went on to list all of the atrocities they committed, in detail, taken from their own words. In one situation the letter came to a home and the teenage daughter opened it. She was horrified and went to her father, brandishing the letter, asking him if it was true. The father looked at her and said, “Have I been a good father?”. The daughter replied, “Yes”. The father then went into his study and hung himself.

The daughter then went to the police explaining that her father received this letter and then he killed himself. Shortly, a “real” KGB agent knocked on Yudel’s door. But, as luck would have it, the KGB agent was someone Yudel know from his brigade, someone with whom he had shared a foxhole. The agent asked Yudel if he wrote an anonymous letter. When Yudel answered that he had carefully written hundreds including that one, the KGB agent said, “Yudel, two things. One, be very careful. Two, thank you very much. You have saved us a lot of work, a long trial and an execution. Keep up the good work.”

In the 1980s, Yudel smuggled the list of murderers out of Lithuania and brought t to the US. The US State Department did nothing in prosecuting these murderers who were now US citizens. Then, when Lithuania got its independence in 1991, the Lithuanian government would do nothing as now these same men, the ones who managed to still be living in Lithuania, had fought for independence and were now considered war heroes!

As I was leaving Yudels’s apartment, knowing that he is dying of cancer and wondering about his list, I asked him where the list was. He took me to his room, and in the corner of a small cupboard in a paper bag was a little book, Yudel’s list of hundreds of names in alphabetical order, each one a mass murderer.

PAGES FROM YUDEL’S LIST
It was obvious that when he passes away his room will be cleared out and the book most likely thrown away. I asked him if I could photograph it. Yudel graciously allowed The Survivor Mitzvah Project to photograph every single page.

CLICK Here TO help Yudel.