Letter From Professor Dovid Katz, Vilnius

May 2007

Professor Dovid Katz
Research Director, Vilnius Yiddish Institute
Vilnius University, Lithuania

It is a pleasure for me to offer my highest recommendation on behalf of the wonderful work being carried out by the Survivor Mitzvah project to help poor, elderly Jews in Eastern Europe make it through the month.

What the Survivor Mitzvah Project does is to actually send income supplements to these very poor senior citizens. Those who were incarcerated in a ghetto or concentration camp and are "survivors" in the narrower technical sense often get 1600 euros a year compensation from Germany; but the vast majority of elderly Jews are alive due entirely to their escape to Soviet-held territory where many joined the Red Army and continue to be proud of their medals won fighting the Nazis and their allies. These groups do not get that or any other compensation. They returned to their devastated homes where their loved ones were all killed, and stayed on-site for all those decades after the war, right up to the present, now often guarding sites of Jewish historic interest.

The Vilnius Yiddish Institute's own expeditions for Yiddish folklore and dialectology have led us to meet more and more "Mohicans" in smaller towns in Lithuania, Belarus, Latvia, Ukraine and Moldova (Moldavia). And it has warmed my heart, on subsequent visits, to see the joy derived from the little (or more than a little) bit of extra that comes from America each month.

It is hard to find words to explain the happiness that these income supplements bring to the faces and souls of these poor, elderly people who have had such difficult and painful lives. They speak about the Survivor Mitzvah Project as "di malokhim fun Amerike" (the Angels from America).

Professor Dovid Katz
Research Director, Vilnius Yiddish Institute
Vilnius University, Lithuania