Washington Jewish Week  - 12.16.2004

Washington Jewish Week

To Beslan with love

Russian Jews in America give back to terror victims 

by Paula Amann, News Editor 

Anya Kadalayeva is like any 10-year-old, to a point. She sports a leopard-skin shirt, watches cartoons with her 7-year-old sister, Alona, and prizes her recent trip to Florida's Disney World. 

But the Russian girl's dark glasses and the haunted look in her father Albert's face hint at a tragic story. 

Anya and her sister lived through the deadly terrorist attack on a Beslan elementary school Sept. 1. Their mother was killed during hostilities between Chechen hostage-takers and Russian troops. 

And Anya herself is wrapping up several weeks in the United States for operations that will give her a prosthetic eye. The explosion that killed her mother three months ago hurled a piece of shrapnel through her left eye and into her brain. 

She, her sister, recovering from a shattered leg, and father visited Washington last week as guests of NCSJ-Advocates on Behalf of Jews in Russia, Ukraine, the Baltic States and Eurasia. 

While in Washington, they toured the White House and met with State Department Russian affairs staff and attended an event at the Russian embassy with Russian press. 

Meanwhile, the Russian Jewish community in the States is supporting Anya's medical care and her family's trip. The International Foundation for Terror Act Victims, an Internet-based volunteer-run nonprofit, coordinated aid to the family. 

Lawrence Weinberg, president of Novoye Russkoye Slovo (a New York Russian-American daily newspaper), underwrote some of the travel costs. And Dr. Daniel Branovan of Russian American Jews for Israel arranged for Anya's pro bono surgery at the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary, where he works. 

"They're smiling," said foundation president Andrew Mogilyansky of the two sisters, then frolicking with Branovan's 10-year-old daughter, Rebecca. "We, you, all of us helped make that happen." 

As Russia reels from the Beslan attack, which killed 335 people and seriously wounded some 500, about half of them children, Jewish expatriates in America, once themselves beneficiaries of aid, have been organizing to help. 

"It's the maturation of this group," said NCSJ executive director Mark Levin. "It's the recognition that philanthropic activity is part and parcel of being a part of the American Jewish community." 

The Kadalayevs, who are not Jewish, learned of a Jewish doctor in Vladikavkas, a town near Beslan, who connected them with the World Congress of Russian Jewry. This group, in turn, linked the family with the American groups who sponsored the trip to the United States. 

Mogilyansky's foundation began by raising funds for victims of the 2002 terrorist attack on Moscow's Nord-Ost theater. When the strike on the Beslan school occurred, the group's campaign for relief raised close to $1.2 million dollars from donors, including children, in 51 countries. 

"We were receiving donations virtually every minute over the next three days even though it was a long weekend with a hurricane in the middle of it and there was no media attention," said Mogilyansky. 

As many as 112 children in Beslan lost parents in September's attack and nine of those became complete orphans in the process. The IFTAV hopes to provide free college for young people whose families no longer have a breadwinner. 

Four other Beslan children are slated to come to the United States early next year for their own eye implants. 

"More important than money is not to be forgotten, not to become just another statistic, just someone who's handicapped, but who knows why, to have someone who still remembers," said Mogilyansky. 

His organization is managing a project, Virtual Family, that will allow donors to help a Beslan household, providing everything from birthday gifts to school assistance. 

As for Anya, she and her sister are nervous about going back to school again, but managed to attend a class with their new friend, Rebecca, according to Branovan. 

Meanwhile, Anya says she's looking forward to finishing her medical treatment and heading back to Beslan. 

"It's really nice here, but it's much better at home, because I have all my friends there," said Anya through the translator. 

Already laden with presents from her American friends, Anya told her translator that she and her sister have more toys than her old nursery school in Beslan and will donate half the loot when they get home.