A 5-year-old lady’s drawing at a summer time camp in Poland’s capital caught the attention of one in all her counselors. Why did she use black and white, and never pink or pink, to make a coronary heart, Rabbi Ilana Baird requested the kid.
The lady, sighing closely, mentioned it was black just like the canine she left behind in Ukraine.
Baird, who lives in California, volunteered with a number of different Jewish individuals initially from Russia or different elements of the previous Soviet Union to mentor Ukrainian refugee kids on the camp in Warsaw. The program, which ended Friday, was designed to present some pleasure to kids traumatized by warfare, to assist put together them for a brand new college 12 months in Poland, and to present their moms a while to themselves.
After performing puppet reveals and studying tales to her group of 5- and 6-year-old campers, portray lots of little faces and allotting a lot of large hugs, the rabbi noticed one other coronary heart drawing. This one was pink.
“Happiness,” the lady defined.
Baird, 48, was pleased to see cheerful colours and rainbows additionally rising within the paintings of different kids underneath her care on the Kef Be Kayitz camp, a Hebrew title which means Fun within the Summer.
For the volunteers, the choice to take time without work from their traditional jobs within the United States and fly to Poland to work with the Ukrainian kids was pushed by need to assist these in want, a worth that’s common and a central a part of Jewish spiritual teachings.
“Jewish people have suffered so much in the past. We suffered pogroms, we suffered the Holocaust and we suffered antisemitism,” Baird mentioned. “And we have a sense of obligation to help people who are suffering right now.”
After Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, individuals throughout Poland sprang into motion to welcome and assist refugees from the neighboring nation. Poland has accepted extra of the warfare’s refugees than some other nation.
Local and worldwide Jewish organizations additionally wasted no time in making an attempt to fulfill essentially the most pressing wants: to deal with and feed the Ukrainians, most of whom are ladies and youngsters.
With the warfare about to enter its sixth month, the camp on the Lauder Morasha School in Warsaw displays the kind of programming being developed to fulfill the altering wants of refugees. Many Ukrainians understand they will not have the ability to go house quickly, or maybe ever, mentioned Helise Lieberman, the director of the Taube Center for Jewish Life and Learning.
Mornings have been dedicated to Polish, English and math classes so the kids will likely be in a stronger place to adapt to highschool. Many of the Ukrainian youngsters who arrived in Poland since February completed the Ukrainian educational 12 months remotely however will likely be getting into Polish faculties in September.
Campers spent afternoons doing arts and crafts, enjoying sports activities and making excursions to metropolis museums and parks. About a 3rd of the 90 kids who attended the camp are Jewish, in line with Marta Saracyn, the pinnacle of the Jewish Community Center of Warsaw.
“It’s a lovely bubble for kids to be kids,” Saracyn mentioned.
Some of the Ukrainian refugee moms must search for jobs, and a few are severely depressed after being separated from companions and family again house, organizers mentioned.
The Taube Center and the Jewish Community Center of Warsaw organized the camp together with the Jewish Federations of North America, the Jewish Agency for Israel and the American Joint Distribution Committee.
The Jewish Federations of North America recruited almost 90 Russian-speaking educators and rabbinic leaders to assist Ukrainian refugees in Poland and Hungary, and 10 helped out on the Warsaw camp, mentioned Hannah Miller, who runs the volunteer program.
The 10 camp volunteers are Russian-speaking immigrants who left the Soviet Union many years in the past, or the kids of Russian Jewish immigrants. Only a pair spoke Ukrainian, in order that they principally spoke to the kids in Russian, which can also be broadly utilized in a lot of Ukraine.
Baird recalled portray the face of a boy who turned upset when he realized she wasn’t from Ukraine. “Why did you come here?” he requested her.
“Because you don’t need to be from Ukraine to help others,” the rabbi answered, “you just need to be human.”
The Jewish college the place the camp occurred is positioned blocs from the previous Warsaw Ghetto, the place Jews have been imprisoned by German forces, killed and starved in the course of the Holocaust earlier than they have been despatched to focus and extermination camps.
Poland was house to just about 3.5 million Jews earlier than World War II, most of whom have been killed by German Nazi forces. But Jewish life has reemerged within the nation because the fall of Moscow-backed communism in 1989.
“If this had happened 30 years ago, there would not have been Jewish communal institutions to provide relief and care,” mentioned Lieberman, an American who was the founding principal of the Lauder Morasha School.
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