By Adar
For the past couple of months I've been volunteering each week at a place called Beit Cham Lenotzlim HaShoah, or Community Center for Holocaust Survivors (rough translation). I go with a couple of my friends from school and help set up tables for dinner, or any other little tasks they have, and then sit and chat with residents there during dinner. It's really quite pleasant and entertaining, I'm not quite sure how it counts as volunteering. The first person I met was a man from Romania named Yakov, who is such a character. He enjoys singing Romanian songs and telling stories about famous people he’s seen on his travels with his grandchildren. He and his wife told me the story of how they met and other amusing heartwarming anecdotes. I quite enjoy going to this senior center.
For my Hebrew class final project, we need to get into pairs or groups of three, choose a topic and interview an Israeli, then present on it. My group is with two girls, Lena and Elana, and because all of us go to this center we asked to interview the woman who runs the place, Chava.
Chava was born in 1933 in a ghetto in Romania, and in 1941 her parents were killed and she was taken to a concentration camp in Ukraine. She didn’t say very much about her time at the camp. She did talk, however, about the cold. The snow couldn’t be melted for water because there was no heat to melt it. There was no food given by the camp itself, they had to attempt to eat whatever was growing around them. She also skipped much over how she got out, but in 1944 she and her three siblings managed to get to Israel, and she became a foster child in Haifa for a few months. She then lived in an orphanage, from age 11 to 16, learning Hebrew and attempting to catch up on her education. She recalled her first day ever in a school, and emphasized how important it was for her to educate herself, make sure her kids and grandchildren went to the highest level of education they could. She considers paying for her children’s education more of a priority than rent.
Lena, Elana, Chava and I continued conversing for the next hour or so, listening to Chava’s stories about her life in Israel – how she met her husband, where they built their house, what life in Israel was like during the six-day war, what working for the Histadrut was like. It was a fascinating conversation for me in particular because I’m studying Israel’s history and society, and anyone who has been here since 1944 adds so much humanity to the facts and dates I’ve been going over in class.
And what’s more, of course, is that my generation is pretty much the last to listen first hand to holocaust survivor’s stories. For an event so important to modern Jewish history, and to world history in general, it’s so important to hear first-hand things that happened, how, and why. I feel so incredibly lucky that I not only got the chance to have an intimate conversation with a survivor – to hear her advice and to understand her philosophies on life. And to have that conversation in Hebrew was probably one of the most meaningful things I’ve done here. I absolutely wouldn’t have been at that level when I first arrived, and I’m so incredibly lucky to listen and learn from someone like Chava in a language she’s comfortable in.
I think going to the Holocaust Survivor’s Center every week as a volunteer hasn’t been very useful for them. I honestly don’t contribute all that much to their programs. But I have had an incredible experience going there myself, practicing my Hebrew and meeting lovely people who have gone through so much.