To Live with Dignity: Receiving Food and Love

Everyone of her generation in Iasi, Romania, fondly remembers when Beila, now a slight 87-year-old woman, was a young beauty married to an important man about town. The sole survivor of a family of six siblings wiped out during the Holocaust, she struggles with memories of the past and faces the difficulty of making ends meet in her golden years.

Today, though homebound, Beila rarely turns on the lights in her apartment. It is a luxury she simply cannot afford on her $18 a month pension. But thanks to JDC-supported cash assistance, food packages and meals-on-wheels, Beila has the basics she needs to live with dignity.

"To have survived without my family, I can't say for certain whether I was lucky or not," Beila confides. "But to have the help and love of our Jewish community and the Joint, with this I am blessed."