Believe them when they say they want to kill you

We have decided to help those olim whose families know about the tragedy of Holocaust immediately from the stories of their family and relatives. Those relatives witnessed Holocaust and saw everything with their own eyes.

Mostly, these olim are elderly people who have spent their young age in the USSR where many professions were forbidden for Jewish people and a Jewish last name was like a mark upon their lives.

Out of the 10 olim families that have received support from us, 7 originate from the Vinnitsa region where Jewish people used to live in compact communities. These places and dense forests still remember the agonizing cries of Jewish children thrown alive to mass graves. Witnesses tell horrible stories about the shivering of the earth above the graves where children were buried still alive.

The Jews who once saw all this with their own eyes have made up their minds to leave because they could no longer bear the life in the current circumstances.

The Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry under the charge of the Tel Aviv University has presented a report, which says that in 2017, the number of cases of open anti-Semitism has grown in Ukraine but representatives of Jewish communities prefer not to report about them. Why?

The state doesn’t protect its citizens from the open anti-Semitic threats.

Ukraine is gradually turning into a place where armed gangs, under the cover of national symbols and patriotism, introduce humiliating censorship and terror. They claim that they are fighting for the purity of the nation but, in fact, it’s a pure racism.

“Believe them when they say they want to kill you”, an old Jewish woman who has survived Holocaust once said.

One of the major mottos Ukrainian nationalists have says: “Glory to the nation, death to the enemies”. It’s not just an empty set of words and Jewish people in Ukraine are scared of it because Jewish people can be among the first “enemies” of Ukrainian nationalists. This motto makes Jewish people remember the dreadful events of Holocaust and seek defense in their historical motherland.

This genetic fear is aggravated by the state of poverty. Prices and tariffs have grown, sometimes up to 10 times, while salaries and retirement benefits have become twice as small.

We are grateful to all the donors who are treating the problem with anti-Semitism with understanding and would also like to thank all the donors on behalf of our olim. They cherish the emotional support as much as the financial aid. The feeling that there’s somebody who cares for their destiny helps them survive and start a new life.