A Week to Smile Again: Beslan School Survivors Spend a Week at Camp Szarvas

Hosted by JDC, 75 boys and girls, ages 7 to 18, who survived the Beslan tragedy, were invited to Szarvas to participate in a specially designed program that integrated traditional summer camp activities such as sports, arts and crafts and informal education with ongoing post-trauma therapy.

Most of the camp participants, who had experienced the siege that took the lives of 300 of their peers and teachers, also lost a sibling or parent in the carnage, and many had themselves suffered serious injuries during the three-day massacre.

None of the students from Beslan were Jewish and few even knew anything about Judaism. Still, to many including Sasha, program director of the Moscow Jewish Religious Community which raised funds to send the children to camp, Szarvas seemed the optimal environment in which to immerse them. "We are trying to make them feel normal again," he said. "The best thing that happens is when they smile."

To further the impact of the camp, at the request of Sasha and his organization, JDC provided a madrichim training seminar in Moscow for the group of professionals who accompanied the youngsters from Beslan and worked with them in Szarvas.

This camp program for young survivors of Beslan is only one facet of JDC’s work with victims of last September’s attack. Immediately following the siege, JDC allocated funds raised in its emergency mailbox campaign to create a Trauma Relief and Resilience-Building Project in Beslan. Since that time, three groups of Israeli trauma experts have traveled to southern Russia to train local professionals — particularly psychologists and social workers who deal directly with children — on how to help the community to cope with trauma, and to provide the professionals with the most updated techniques for dealing with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The next training will be conducted in August.

Additionally, later this summer, 15 Beslan survivors will participate in a summer camp in Nalchik, coordinated by the local JDC-sponsored Hesed, in support of their healing process.

Sasha, who accompanied the group of campers to Szarvas and helped coordinate their stay, observed a behavior pattern that professionals associate with PTSD. "They behave normally and feel good, but sometimes you will see them crying for no reason," he said. "And some of the girls don’t smile, because they lost their teeth in the attack."

Ina, 16, is clear that the week at camp is helping her to deal with the trauma. "I wish no kid anywhere in the world would even see what we saw," she said. "Szarvas is making me feel much more comfortable and to realize that life can go on. Here, we are not thinking about what happened there."

Observing the children as they ate a kosher chicken lunch and participated in a lively singing session in the dining hall, Jorge, JDC Country Director for Hungary, said, "This represents a big mitzvah that we, the Jewish people, are doing not just for others, but for ourselves." In the face of human tragedy and in the hope of restoring faith and a sense of security to young people, cultural differences seem to fall away. "It is amazing to me, given all the history, to hear these kids singing in Russian, in a Jewish camp, in Hungary. It makes me hopeful that we can overcome the past."