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Medical Student Heals the Body and Soul of Volga Jews
Growing up Jewish was a confusing experience for Ilya, currently the director of JDC's Volga office. The Jews of Siberia are isolated and scattered. Living in the city of Tyumen, 500 miles east of the Ural Mountains, Ilya knew being Jewish made him different. But he didn't understand anything more than that.
"I knew two things," says Ilya, whose Belorussian mother lost her entire family in WWII. "Jews didn't get baptized and V-E Day, was for us, a day of mourning." Adding to the confusion were the constant insults from neighbors. "We were targeted and I didn't know why," he recalls. Ilya is part of a generation of young Jewish professionals who first experienced Jewish life at University during the era of perestroika. Realizing they had similar experiences of growing up Jewish, they were emboldened by a feeling of comfort and began to organize. They created a network of Jewish culture societies, which grew and became training grounds for the current generation of young Jewish leaders. Ilya served as President of the society when he was just a 19-year-old medical student in Tyumen — a role which made him the de-facto leader of the Jewish community. "It was a time of new democracy, new politics and a new Russia," Ilya says. "Government was very interested in supporting our effort, and the hope was that Jews who weren't affiliated would notice us." The culture society in Tyumen became Gesher, a state-funded center of Jewish culture. Its main project was an annual festival that attracted Jewish students across Siberia. By 1995, Gesher had spawned a network of youth groups, welfare organizations and women’s groups. Ilya, graduated medical school in 1994, had a difficult time finding a job as a doctor due to the collapse of the medical system. His work with Gesher caught JDC's eye and he was asked to become the field coordinator for the Ural region. "I couldn't be a doctor and heal bodies, but I could cure the Jewish community which had suffered for decades — body and soul." In 2004, JDC transferred Ilya to the Volga Region, where he runs the regional office in Nizny Novograd. His operation covers the 27 provinces of Moscow's periphery, an area with 100,000 Jews and six cities of more than 1 million people. The Children's Initiative in the Volga region assists more than 3,500 families-at-risk, providing nutrition, social support, medicine and educational support for children with special needs. Yet, the biggest challenge he faces is in the area of welfare services for the elderly. More than 60 percent of his 20,000 elderly welfare clients did not live under Nazi occupation and are therefore not eligible for welfare services subsidized by JDC's restitution partners. As a result they have seen their services — meals-on-wheels, homecare, medical assistance, winter relief supplies — cut dramatically due to a shortfall in JDC's core budget, the primary source of funding for non-Nazi victim welfare. For every dollar JDC has to spend on Nazi victims, it has 50 cents for non-Nazi victims, many of whom live on pensions of less than 100 dollars per month. "Services for non-Nazi victims are very basic," Ilya says. "It’s only food packages and limited medicines. There are no hot food or dining room services for them." Despite the frustrations that have come with reality of this two-tier system of services and the lingering poverty many Jewish families face, Ilya marvels at the opportunities for Jewish communal life in today's Russia. He commutes from Moscow where his children, 8 and 4, attend a Jewish day school. "At that age, I didn't know anything but anti-Semitism." April 2006 |
