David Hathaway first traveled to Israel in 1961, organising the first over-land trip by road from Britain to Israel. From that point, David’s heart was burdened for Israel, seeking to bring blessing to its people, longing to see the fulfilment of Bible prophecy.
Each month we support Russian-Holocaust survivors living in Israel, providing them with practical and spiritual support. These are the stories of three of the recipients.
Fuhsh Moesey
My name is Fuhsh Moesey and I was born in 1939 in the city of Tulchin, Vinnitsa, in Ukraine. Our city was invaded at the beginning of December 1941. As I remember it was a winter without snow. Since the Romanians had joined with the fascists, we were rounded up by Romanians, there were few Germans at that time. My father was a soldier and went to the Front, my mother, grandmother and I stayed at home. When the fascists arrived, we were thrown out of the house, like everyone else, I was two years old and I didn’t understand what was happening. They herded us to the school, where they kept us locked up for two days. It was terrible, they didn't give us anything to eat or drink. After that they took everyone to the square to decide what to do with us Jews. The answer – get rid of all the Jews by isolating us from society. We were sent to a camp called ‘Dead End’. I cried a lot because it was far away and we walked all the time through swamp, we twisted our ankles in it, it was very painful. When we came to the camp, we saw houses, a pre-Soviet estate, many rooms. About 60 people lived together in one room. Later on we were separated out, the dying in one house, they lived there in one place, and after death they were burned or buried. We lived in another house, we were given potato husks and sometimes grains, we boiled and ate them. There was no bread. We got water from the nearby river Southern Bug. People from our camp were taken to Vinnitsa to work in Hitler's headquarters there. So that no one would know where the headquarters were, they were shot, people left for work and did not return. I was in the camp for 3 years, from December 7, 1941 to March 14, 1944. Then the Red Army came and freed us. I remember some people tried to leave this camp before the liberation, but where the river Southern Bug flows there was a sentry, and as soon as Jews approached that place, they were shot. I survived the Dead End Camp with my mother, but my grandmother died there at the age of 45.
I thank God for helping and saving my life, because today at the age of 81, I can enjoy life, I live in Israel with my big family, children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren! I love life!
Milia Berlin-Rabinovitch
Milia Berlin-Rabinovitch was born on May 7, 1933 in Vinnitsa Region, Ukraine. Her family were the only Jews in the village. Every Friday night, her father dressed in the tallit and prayed, always ending the prayer with one phrase that little Milia remembered for the rest of her life: ‘Next year in Jerusalem.’
At the very beginning of the Second World War, just 8 years old, the Nazis invaded Ukraine, and Milia ended up with her mother in a concentration camp. Usually, children were shot on the spot, because the Nazis needed labour only, but from the first moment when the Jews were rounded up, mother Riva hid her daughter under her skirt, and so Milia survived, hiding in rags. But not for long, someone reported them to the Commandant, and he, finding the girl, aimed his gun at her mother and said that he would kill them both. Mama Riva managed to shout that Milia is not a child, she is 16 years old and she’s a ‘dwarf’.
From that moment on, this 8-year-old girl worked for 3 years on a par with adults in her job. “Barefoot I pulled stones out of the sand and carried them to another place. The Commandant watched me and my mother closely, therefore my mother would take a larger stone, put it on my shoulders and say, “Be patient, daughter, carry it, otherwise they will kill you and me.”” Little Milia’s health began to deteriorate rapidly. She began to struggle to breathe...
During her 3 years in the death camp, Milia saw and went through a lot of things. But there were also good moments, which, as she believes, saved her and her mother from certain death. At that time, they had 2 supervisors: “Commandant” and “Engineer”. The Commandant was a terrible man, an evil and a vicious killer. The Engineer was more humane, and as it turned out later, he helped them to escape. After the war, Milia tried to find out what happened to the Engineer, writing letters to the Embassy of the GDR, they gave her an address in Frankfurt am Main, but she could not find anything out about him. “I really wanted to express my gratitude to him.” Like the Commandant, he had looked at her and realised she was still only a small girl and that her mother had lied. He did not betray her, he took pity on her: on his shift, he took her away from hard work, fed her, and shod her in footcloths and galoshes so that she did not have to go barefoot. But the most important thing that the Engineer did at the end was to give Riva and Milia a covering note that they could take to the nearest village – this was the last time Milia ever saw the Engineer – it turned out to be the salvation of their lives and got out them out of the concentration camp unharmed. A few days later, the Nazis left the camp with the corpses of the Jews who worked there – they had all been shot...
After the war, she and her mother and two sisters returned to their native village, built a house, and planted an orchard and a vegetable garden which fed them. They, like everyone else, worked on the collective farm. After finishing school, Milia decided to fulfil her dream – to live by the sea. Odessa became for her a safe, calm haven for many years. She graduated from the university, she married and had a daughter and grandchildren. But in the 1990s, ‘bandit’ people appeared in Odessa, they were looking for Jews – and the chaos began. Milia’s daughter was very scared and made aliyah with her family to Israel. Milia and her husband followed.
For 25 years now, she has been an Israeli citizen living in Bat Yam. Here she worked for 10 years as a carer for elderly women, though sometimes she was older than some of her ‘old ladies’ herself; she looked after them, washed, cooked, cleaned. She had a very responsible approach to her work.
Today she is 87 years old and has her own round-the-clock young carer. Physically it is very hard for her, for many years now she has suffered from oxygen deficiency, sleeps in an oxygen mask, lives with tubes. When we come to her, she is always glad to see us and to talk. When she is in the mood ‘not to chat’, we read the Bible, pray, hold hands, thank God for saving her life, that she is still alive, for good memory, for health. When we were listening to her life story, for the first time I got the idea that God knew everything from the beginning. Those people who have gone through difficult times love life very much, want to live, and every day, approaching the window, thank God for life!
Milzer Mikhail
I am Milzer Mikhail and I was born on January 10, 1930. My family was from Ukraine, the Chechelnik Region, I ended up with my family in the ghetto when I was 11 years old. When we were taken prisoner in 1941, we were brought to the Ghetto Coda camp; it was already built. I remember when we got to the camp, the Nazis took us to be shot, but we fled from the column. We ended up in a village where Ukrainian women gave us shelter. At that time there was a famine, some helped us with food, but some people on the contrary, robbed us. After our escape the fascists searched for us, and after a while they found us and returned us to the ghetto. Miraculously we survived, they didn't shoot us, me, my mother and my sister. We remained in the ghetto until the Red Army liberated us!