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August 2011 Project
Forget Them Not Update:
As you may have heard already,
on Sunday July 17 2011, Yad Vashem successfully overcame a serious and unique
challenge – a brush fire which threatened the Mount of Remembrance campus.
“This week's crisis provided the staff at Yad Vashem with a dramatic and graphic
reminder of the immense responsibility entrusted to us by the Jewish people and
humanity – to preserve and safeguard the stories, artifacts and documents
bequeathed to us by those who are no longer present to tell their story and
donated to us by those who survived. This is the task that, together with you,
we have taken upon ourselves and these events showed that we can successfully
meet this challenge, even under unexpected circumstances.” (so far from an
e-mail we received last week from Yad Vashem)
Not only a small fire can harm the inheritance of the holocaust: world politics
daily change the worldview towards these horrible times in the 20th century.
That is one of the reasons the Forsake Them Not team feels the urgency to
continue to tell the stories from the survivors we visit in Israel. In this
update about the assistance and support for Holocaust survivors in Israel we
like to tell you of the new group of survivors in Ashdod and the tragic life of
Israel & Hanna in the middle of the country.
In many cities of Israel the Forsake Them Not project is in contact with a
committee of a group of survivors. Most of them come from the former Soviet
Union. These committees are very important to the survivors. They help them with
legal assistance, keep contact with them, organize meetings and trips and even
can supply the survivors with some goodies. The project is already in contact
with many of these survivors’ organizations. But every year we receive requests
from new groups who like to work together with the Forsake Them Not team. A
first meeting is quickly arranged: last month we went up to Ashdod. The
committee of the group of survivors has invited us in their office. We explain
about our home visits and the scale of assistance towards the survivors. It fits
so nicely in their objectives that we already at the start of the meeting come
to the conclusion that this contact will be a blessing for the survivors. They
support the idea of visiting the lonely, sick and needy survivors. Soon we start
visiting survivors of this organization in Ashdod.
When a survivor is sitting in a wheelchair you always wonder what has happed to
him or her. Both Israel’s feet had to be amputated because they were frozen
during his imprisonment in the ghetto, when he was still a child. His family was
robbed of everything, even a warm coat or blanket to protect him from the severe
winter temperatures. Some fingers on his hand had to be removed also as a result
of the frost bite. Living in Israel he and his wife Hanna had to make a
difficult decision: or to receive from Health Insurance an adjusted car or a
caregiver. Israel chose the car and has used it also for the committee in which
he still serves today, in spite of his severe handicap. This was years ago when
they felt much better. Now Hanna is nearly blind and Israel is not able to cope
with the daily duties, so they badly need a caregiver. We hope and pray we can
help them. They were so thankful for having a visit, this special attention they
had not experienced for many years.
Thank you for your support and prayer for the holocaust survivors and for the
Forsake Them Not team,
Theo Breimer
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