Nona Ozdovsky suffered tremendously in frozen Siberia, as a child who escaped the Nazis. “The allowance is meager, and I am afraid to turn on the heating,” the Holocaust survivor tells us in despair.
Nona Ozdovsky (86) is also on the long list of Holocaust survivors who have been abandoned by the government: ill, suffering from a cold and financial distress, and in addition to everything – lonely and longing for a connection.
The cold haunted her as a child, when she grew up in Siberia. “My father was a soldier in the army and he was at war,” she said yesterday (Tuesday). “I ran away from the Nazis with my mother and my brother. We were without anything, without water and without food. We slept on the floor in the houses of people who helped us hide. They gave us blankets but it was not enough. The cold was terrible.” On top of all that, she got typhus. “It was very difficult,” says Nona.
After the war she married and had a son. When she was 51, her husband died, and she has not remarried since. Nona immigrated to Israel 30 years ago. Here, like many survivors, she hoped for a good life, but reality struck her. To support herself she worked hard until the age of 79, long after retirement age. But the effort did not help and the difficulties haunt her every day, even now. “I have no pension, and the allowances I receive are not enough. I have to pay for rent, food, electricity, gas and water, and there is not enough money for all that.”
Editor: Hadar Gil-Ad
The article is one of a series of articles “In Their Eyes: A Special Project Ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.”
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