 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |  |  |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
After Years of Hiding, Olusia Proudly Celebrates Every Sabbath at the JDC-Sponsored Hesed Center
By the time Olusia was born in 1925 in Kharkov, her father had changed their family name from Finkelberg to one of Ukrainian nationality to thwart the anti-Semitism he had experienced as a youth. Despite this gesture, Olusia and her two sisters grew up knowing well their origins and taking on a covert Jewish identity. "Our relatives would visit us for important family events and the main Jewish holidays," recalls Olusia. Her grandparents, who helped to instill Jewish values and traditions, were especially loved by the girls. However, to avoid persecution under Stalin's rule, Olusia's father taught his children to identify themselves as "internationalists."
Olusia was 13 when the Second World War began and her father was arrested by the NCDA (National Commissariat of Domestic Affairs) and falsely accused of espionage. The family was told that he had been banished for 10 years of strict isolation and that correspondence was prohibited. At the time, Olusia's family was considered a public enemy and was not allowed to evacuate. Her mother, left alone with three children, could not escape and all of them stayed in the occupied Kharkov. When the occupying authorities announced that all Jews and city residents related to the Jews had to assemble in public squares, Olusia's mother did not go. When a Nazi officer came to her apartment, she presented documents attesting to the family's Ukrainian roots, which bought them time until an investigation the following morning. Before the officer returned, Olusia's mother had taken her three girls and fled, hiding themselves at a friend's home. When the risk became too great for the host, they found an empty room in a basement with a brick stove. There, in the smoky, dark room, terrified and suffering from frost-bite and hunger, the foursome remained in hiding until Kharkov's liberation. Having heard nothing of her father for nearly 20 years, Olusia presumed him dead. Though in 1957 he was among thousands "pardoned" by the Kiev Command Military Tribunal in absentia, one year later Olusia received notification that he had died in 1943 from pneumonia, with no burial place indicated. Thereafter, when the NCDA archives were discovered and brought to the Kharkov Regional Archive, it was discovered that her father had been sentenced to be shot by the NCDA resolution in September of 1938, and that the sentence had been executed in October of the same year. One of the charges listed in the sentence was the concealment of his true nationality. "My father had managed to produce fake documents in order to save his family at the expense of his own life," says Olusia. "I have wonderful memories of him and will always appreciate what he did for us." Last year, Olusia and her husband came to Hesed for the first time. Though she is now totally deaf, Olusia takes her spouse’s hand and brings him to the JDC-sponsored Hesed social welfare center. According to the staff, the couple doesn’t miss a single holiday, and attends the center each and every week for Shabbat. They joined in the community celebration of Hannukah and recent Purim festivities. Though Olusia's husband is of Russian origin with no Jewish roots, he attends all Hesed activities with great interest, writing down on paper whatever his wife does not hear during the activity. "We are extremely grateful to Hesed and JDC for the care we have been given," says Olusia, who relies on Hesed events as an outlet for Jewish expression and learning. "Here we have somewhere to belong and feel a part of our friends and our community." |
