Code Red in the former Soviet Union

WE pushed past a young man sitting on the stoop wearing a grubby tracksuit as we entered the flats, which even in the bright sunlight had no warmth or sparkle.

The stairwell smelled sour — there was no fresh fragrance of cleaning products or delicious meals, just the raw, unpleasant odour of poverty.

Accompanied by a social worker, we entered Ratsa Fihman’s dank, dark, two-room flat in the Moldovan town of Beltsy.

In complete contrast to her surroundings, Fihman sat up straight on a flat sofa in the tidy lounge-cum-bedroom; behind her, black-and-white photos of her parents and herself as a teenager, in front of her, a modern, stainless-steel walking frame. Despite obvious hardship, she was dignified.

Emotion filled her voice as Fihman, 60, described her ­predicament.

She had been born to two Jewish parents, and she had also been born very poor. Her education was disrupted, her marriage ended in swift divorce, and the little work she could get was degrading and menial.

Then two years ago, she fractured her hip, leaving her bedridden. Eight months after her fall, health workers from the local Hesed welfare centre visited.

Today she remains housebound and continues to be assisted by the Hesed workers. With a pension of only US$32 a month, of which US$28 goes towards her utility bill, the highlight of her week is when Hesed workers visit, bringing food, medications and other necessities. She also looks forward to visits from her neighbour and his dog.

With no family of her own, Fihman said with tears in her eyes that she had no words to describe her gratitude to the mainly American-Jewish donors who fund the Hesed program in her town of Beltsy.

“It is not enough to say thank you,” she said, her eyes damp.

A bumpy, two-hour drive away in Kishinev, 12-year-old Kirill Sidorin, a quiet and serious boy, lives with his HIV-positive mother Tanya.

Kirill’s father and sister died tragically. Wanting to make a better life for her son, Tanya moved them to the capital, but they were fleeced and ended up living in a tiny one-room flat.

Their kitchen-cum-bathroom, with no bath or shower, is across an external corridor and has no glass in the window, leaving it freezing in winter.

Through the local Jewish family services organisation, NES, which is supported by international Jewish donors, Tanya has received financial help to supplement her $US71 monthly income as a cleaner.

Before the assistance, which includes help paying for utilities, Tanya would light candles so Kirill could do his homework in the evening.

A teacher noticed after a time that he had a strange mark on his head and Tanya realised he had burnt the top of his scalp from leaning too close to the candle. This is in the 21st century.

Kirill knows his mother is very ill but has two dreams: to make aliyah with his mum and to go to the beach.

Moldova, the home of Fihman and the Sidorins, is a skinny country sandwiched between Romania and Ukraine, which used to be a part of Bessarabia and incorporated in the Pale of Settlement.

Until 1903, Jewish life was relatively free in Moldova, but that year, the Kishinev pogrom saw 49 Jews killed, many more injured and the police stand idly by.

Between the world wars, Moldova was under Romanian rule and Jewish practice was again permitted. However, come World War II, an estimated 53,000 of the city’s 65,000 Jewish residents were killed.

From a peak of 77 synagogues during Soviet times, Kishinev was left with only one functioning Jewish house of prayer.

Since the fall of communism, Moldova has struggled, and much of the surviving Jewish community came to call Israel home.

The country has a separatist region in the east, Transnistria, which is bolstered by Russia. The lush green country is also plagued by political instability, severe corruption and a floundering economy based on an old-fashioned agriculture industry.

Driving along the potholed, main road between Kishinev and Beltsy, you see everything from dark-tinted black Mercedes Benz saloons, to rickety carts being pulled by decrepit horses. On each side of the road are fields — some ploughed by tractors, some by horses, some by hand.

This is the situation that has left a third of Moldovans living below the poverty line and Jewish organisations caring for hundreds of poor clients.

Moldova is not the only former Soviet country where elderly Jewish people and younger Jewish families have been left with nowhere to turn.

Eva Szojka, 80, is a Holocaust survivor who never married after spending her younger years caring for an elderly uncle.

Szojka had been a scientist, and worked in London for a time with Hungarian Nobel Prize-winner Dennis Gabor. She was even offered a senior position at Australian science agency CSIRO, which she declined in order to care for her relatives.

Despite her advanced position, Szojka was left in squalor upon her retirement. Saving and investing was impossible during communism, so today she lives on a meagre state pension.

Her dire financial situation is coupled with increasing mental health issues, including constant Holocaust flashbacks — “always, day and night”, as she described it.

The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) provides Szojka with, among other things, medicines, hot, kosher meals, and a security bracelet with a button she can press in case of an emergency.

SZOJKA is one of 5000 elderly Hungarian Jews who are assisted by the JDC, according to Taly Shaul, the director of JDC’s welfare services in the country.‚Ä®While the Hungarian government does fund the Jewish community, this money does not filter into all aspects of welfare.

Apart from donors, a major source of welfare funding is Holocaust restitution, but having begun the restitution process in 1992,  money in Hungary is drying up.

Unlike Moldova, Budapest is not, on the whole, a poor community. Its battle, though, lies in convincing the local community to support its needy.

Shaul explained that in the early 2000s, the JDC did some serious soul-searching about the organisation’s future in the country.

Today, it is making a concerted effort to create self-funded Jewish renewal programs, such as informal education, community events and celebrations for the festivals. However, Shaul was realistic: “If we stopped providing welfare, it would not be provided.”

The welfare budget has more recently been bolstered by a Claims Conference injection and international donors continue to help out with programs both for the Jewish elderly and for underprivileged Jewish children.

“The basic problem is that people in Western Europe have [money in] reserves and they have a good social system,” Shaul said. “Here, that is not the case.”

In order to change attitudes and to place some of the welfare responsibility onto Hungarian Jewry, there has been an attempt to change the culture.

“The values and activities of ¬≠volunteering disappeared from this country after World War II,” she said. “People learnt to live individually, not in groups or communities. We need to teach people to volunteer again.”

Additionally, the JDC has established a tzedakah program in Jewish schools, where students earn credits in exchange for volunteer service.

It is vital that those types of programs work, particularly for children like 13-month-old Dina.

Dina and her mum sat on plastic chairs in JDC’s Jewish Family Service’s cheery Budapest office.

She looked to be a healthy, ¬≠inquisitive child with huge blue eyes. In contrast, her mother’s eyes were tired as she sat with a social worker.

Dina’s mother explained that without the Jewish service, she would not know where to turn to sort out her personal problems. She also would not know how to teach her daughter that she is part of a caring, global Jewish community, which tries to leave no Jew behind.

Naomi Levin travelled to Hungary, Moldova and Russia as a guest of the JDC. Enquiries: www.jdc.org.

NAOMI LEVIN