Russkaya Reklama - 05.09.2007

At 6 O'clock at Night, 62 Years After the War

By Vitaliy Orlov 

Former prisoners of ghettos and concentration camps visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., sponsored by the tourist agency News-Tours. 

The staff of the museum took great care of the New York delegation of visitors. The group was introduced to a Russian-speaking guide and translator, Vadim Altskan, and after viewing the exhibition (almost half of the group had never visited before), they met with staff member Ellen Blalock, Director of Survivor Affairs.

Moreover, guests who met with the survivors upon their arrival included Mark Levin – director of the American-Jewish organization NCSJ, famous for its battles for the rights of Soviet Jews, in addition to Martin Peled-Flax – Minister Counselor on Domestic Political Affairs at the Embassy of Israel in Washington, D.C., as well as other political and social figures. 

Senator Hillary Clinton welcomed the survivors to her office in Washington, D.C., congratulating them on Victory Day. 

Fira Stukelman organized the visit with the support from directors of the Association of Former Ghetto Prisoners, Pavel Vishnevetzkovo and Michael Siroti. 

After the trip, I asked Michael Shempera, visiting the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. for the first time, if this is what he was expecting: “Looking at pictures of the killed and tortured in the Nazi concentration camps, I remembered myself. I was put into the ghetto at the age of six, in the city of Balta, near Odessa. I saw everything: hunger and daily shootings. There was a well in the middle of the ghetto where bodies were thrown into, from which we drank water out of…I experienced much of what was shown on the walls of the Museum; workers of the Museum did this very well. Thank you to them for their hard work, because if we do not want something similar occurring to our grandchildren, then the truth must be known. The Museum reinforces ‘No one is forgotten, nothing is forgotten.’”

Ivetta Klinger felt similarly: “My feelings can be summed up in one short word – ‘pain.’ A specific pain arose when looking at the children’s suffering, like in the exhibition called ‘Children of the Lodz Ghetto.’ I was put into the ghetto between the ages of 8-9, first in Kishinev, and then in Ukraine, where I survived the barracks, the cattle train cars, and the killings of loved ones.”

Translated by NCSJ