On Friday, November 22, a meeting of members of the Association of Jews - former prisoners of ghettos and concentration camps of the Khmelnytsky region, headed by Borys Isakovych Shlain, took place at the Thiia Community Center. Unfortunately, not everyone was able to attend the meeting, mainly due to advanced age and health. However, members of the association from the regions of the region came to the meeting, which allowed the meeting to be fruitful and diverse.
The meeting was opened by the chairman of the Khmelnytskyi Oblast Association, Borys Shlain. His speech included a brief report on the activities of the organization he heads for the past reporting period, achievements, and issues related to the financial component. A significant part of the speech was taken up by the story about the Conference of the Association of Jews - Former Prisoners of Ghettos and Concentration Camps of Ukraine, which was held in early November in Kyiv. Borys Isakovich represented the Khmelnytskyi Oblast at this important gathering of Holocaust memory keepers, so reporting the results of the Conference to the members of the organization was very important. Those present, however, were depressed by the fact that in the section of the report of the chairman of the Association of Ukraine, Borys Zabarko, which talked about museums commemorating the victims of the Holocaust, not a word was mentioned about the museum in our city. Opened by the Khmelnytsky Charitable Foundation "Hesed Besht" back in 2010, and the only one operating in Western Ukraine, this museum deserves the attention of the Jewish community.
Particular attention was paid to the condition of memorials and memorial signs in the Khmelnytskyi region, relating to the sites of mass graves of ghetto prisoners. It was pleasing to hear that in some places, such as Dunaivtsi, the condition of the monuments was assessed as ideal. However, in many other cases, the memorials require repair work.
The saddest moment of the meeting was the time when they remembered those who did not live to see it. Over the past few years, the number of members of the organization has almost halved, many people feel worse every day and, unfortunately, there are no culprits in this situation. It is simply that fate is increasingly taking away from our community witnesses of the cruel times of the Holocaust, people who did not surrender in concentration camps, but are powerless against time. The bright memory of all former members of the organization was honored by a minute of silence.
Leonid Iosypovych Pidlisny reported on his trip to Germany as part of a delegation of scholars and living witnesses of the Holocaust. He showed photographs and spoke about the attitude of the Germans to the actions of their former government. In Germany, our delegation met with schoolchildren, students and young people who, like a sponge, absorbed and empathized with the tragic information about hundreds of thousands of innocent victims of Nazism.
Social questions that arose among the participants of the meetings were answered either by the head of the Association (such as travel benefits, state support, or the Claims Conference program), or were forwarded to an employee of the Khmelnytskyi Charitable Foundation "Hesed Besht", manager of the Center for Rehabilitation and Regional Development, Halyna Atamanchuk, who clarified them whenever possible. Currently, the Foundation fully provides all necessary services to victims of fascism, including prisoners of concentration camps and ghettos. The social policy of the Khmelnytskyi Charitable Foundation "Hesed Besht" and the Joint is aimed at comprehensively relieving social tension from this category of clients.
And the highlight of the gathering was the performance of the amateur duet of Halyna Atamanchuk and the head of the vocal studio Anatoly Muzyka, who performed well-known songs in Russian, Ukrainian, and Yiddish. Life goes on, and with it, the painstaking work to improve the lives of the long-suffering prisoners of the fascist regime continues.
