Making a Difference in Macedonia - Part One
By Alexandra J. Wall
What began as a conversation between two men in April, in the kibbutz apartment of Simcha Stein (director of Beit Lohamei HaGhetaot, the Ghetto Fighter's House in Israel), resulted in a group of 20 people from New Jersey, New York and Israel -- including a reporter and photographer from The Bergen Record, and myself -- traveling together to a refugee camp in Macedonia in early May. Mark Sarna of Englewood, N.J., president of American Friends of the Ghetto Fighter's House, said his motivation was simple: The son of Holocaust survivors, he grew up knowing of the bitterness his parents felt that no one did anything to help them. "Even when they came to America, they were given a bed, some clothes, money, a place to work, and sponsorship," Sarna said. "But the human touch...rarely happened. And when it did, it was as if people were doing them a favor. On those occasions, when they did receive the real generosity and friendship, they remember it to this day."
And so when his wife, Anita, started crying over the pictures of the refugees on television, they felt they had to do something. Sarna had originally planned to have at least 100 refugees released and brought to Israel. But when that fell through due to various bureaucratic reasons, he decided to go himself. He did not ask anyone to go along except for Stein, wanting it to be a joint delegation of Israelis and American Jews.
He did, however, call Rhonda Barad, the Eastern director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, who goes way back with Sarna. "He had been wanting to do something together," she said, "and basically he came to me with this idea and said, 'You have no choice.'" The Wiesenthal Center had already initiated a project in Kosovo of its own, but Barad was ready to help. Dr. Efraim Zuroff, director of the Israel office of the center and an expert on Eastern Europe, was asked to join in.
As our group grew bigger, the community responded in kind. Sarna's rabbi, Shmuel Goldin of Congregation Ahavath Torah, decided that he would like to join, as well. He called local Jewish schools and used the synagogue's automatic calling machine to solicit donations. Sarna called other second-generation people he knew, and got an estimated $30,000 worth of medication donated. And then goods started coming by the carload. The piles of toys, shoes, and clothing threatened to take over Ahavath Torah's ballroom. New Milford, N.J. resident Jeanette Friedman got in touch with Yechiel Bar-Chaim, the Joint Distribution Committee's man in charge of the former Yugoslavia. Bar-Chaim, who is based in Paris but had already visited the camps, said that many of the children were in need of shoes.
"There were piles of shoes in the shul's ballroom," said Goldin, "and it was one of the most powerful images. I couldn't look. But there was something very ironically appropriate about it."
Community members of all ages worked at a feverish pace to pack everything into 32 large bags -- leaving most of the donated goods behind. "We ended up taking about a tenth of what we got," Goldin said. We were a mixed group, ranging in age from 19 to early 50s, from the non-observant to an Orthodox rabbi. Many of us were children or descendants of Holocaust survivors; most were parents, and wanted to set an example for their children. As for Manuel Beckier, of Valley Stream, N.Y., this was to be the second time in a refugee camp; he was born in one in Munich in 1947. He brought his vaccination certificate with him.
"I want to relate to them that other people can build their lives, to make them feel that they have a future and that they're part of the human race," he said. As the granddaughter of survivors and the daughter of a hidden child, I knew I had to join this group. All of us were driven by the desire to feel that somehow, in whatever small way, we were making a difference. And so, off we went, with 32 huge bags stuffed with toys, shoes, and medicine, first Athens-bound, then onto a short flight to Thessaloniki.
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