Zane Buzby with survivor, Fira Bronfeld, Ivankov, Ukraineon an SMP Humanitarian Aid Expedition
The Survivor Mitzvah Project is doing something to alleviate that.
The L.A.-based 501(c)3 nonprofit provides cash, aid and caring communication to elderly Holocaust survivors in Eastern Europe.
Most of SMP’s recipients – some 2,000 of them at this point – live in dire poverty in rural areas of Lithuania, Ukraine, Belarus, and other former Soviet States.
I actually call these people “The Unluckiest Generation,” said the SMP’s Zane Buzby, a former actress and TV sitcom director who has essentially devoted the last dozen years of her life to aiding these forgotten survivors. “The oldest, over 100, survived the Czar’s army,” she continued. “They survived World War I, the Russian Revolution, the pogroms of the 1920s, upheaval, starvation, dislocation, the whole thing. Then in the 1930s, Stalin’s enforced collectivization famines and the rise of Nazism and anti-Semitism. Then the invasion of their country by Germany and the Holocaust. Then the Iron Curtain falls. It’s not like there was an Internet and everyone went to Israel because they heard about it on Twitter; they got stuck there.” And still are today, ill and destitute in many cases.
A fundraising event at the Museum of Tolerance last year brought out a battery of Hollywood actors – Ed Asner, Frances Fisher, Elliott Gould, Valerie Harper, Lainie Kazan, more – and others who read from the survivors’ letters.
“I thought it was an amazing opportunity to get the word out on something that I knew nothing about,” said Fisher (“Titanic,” “Unforgiven”). “I read a lot of the letters, and it’s just heartbreaking and inspiring to hear how grateful they were for the little that came to them…. I was very touched by it.”
Tzylia B. in Bucha, Ukraine with Zane Buzby on SMP’s 2010 Humanitarian Aid Expedition
“I thought it was tragic, absolutely tragic,” Kazan said of the situation. “I couldn’t believe it. First of all, I didn’t know there were this many survivors left, and living in squalor, the most horrendous conditions, in a country where they were abused and caged. I would encourage people to support Zane and her efforts and attach themselves to this wonderful cause.”
David Siegel, Israel’s Counsel General to the southwest United States, is also a fan.
“Not only is it people, but they’re pointing out whole communities that don’t exist anymore,” Siegel said. “Cemeteries, burnt-out synagogues, Jewish institutions that our historians don’t even know existed. They’re the last witnesses, and we happen to be… maybe privileged, but we also have that responsibility as the last generation that will have a firsthand experience with Holocaust survivors. We all have an opportunity to reach out to them and help these people, so it’s almost a sacred thing that Zane is doing.”
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