Syla's "Sign on the Doorpost": Bags of Salt

Born in a small Ukrainian town, Syla learned to speak German from neighbors. This was rare among Jewish girls—so rare, in fact, it would eventually save her life and those of countless others. In 1941, Hitler's army occupied Ukraine. Einsatzgruppen, the Nazis' mobile killing squads, went from shtetl to shtetl in Ukraine and Belarus and murdered nearly every Jew they found. Speaking German without any trace of an accent, Syla managed to convince the occupiers that she and her three children were German. So the Germans gave her amnesty.

Syla often opened her home to Einsatzgruppen officers passing through. Serving food and beer, she paid close attention as the Nazis boasted about upcoming massacres. Syla created a crude but effective warning system for Jews in neighboring shtetls. Through her two sons—they made regular rounds under the cover of darkness—Syla delivered bags of salt to the doorsteps of Jews targeted for slaughter. Upon seeing the salt, the neighbor knew he and his family had less than 24 hours to flee eastward.

It's impossible to know how many Jews Syla saved. But we do know that this woman does not live like she should. She is widowed. Two of her three children have died, and she does not have contact with the third. Her dilapidated, two-room hovel in the shtetl of Korostichev has neither electricity nor running water. Due to leg ulcerations and arthritis, she is almost completely immobile; she also suffers from asthma.

Through JDC's HesedMobile, which delivers life-sustaining materials and services to elderly Jews in more than 2,200 remote locations throughout the Former Soviet Union, Syla receives homecare, Meals-on-Wheels, holiday food packages, medication and medical consultations, emergency home repairs, blankets and heating fuel for the bitter winter months.

"I want to thank people like you," Syla says "for not forgetting people like me."

How could we?