Emily Corbatό accompanied the APSJ staff on a trip to Ukraine in November 2001 to document our Adopt a Bubbe program and other aspects of the Jewish communities we work in. Below are some of her pictures - a sampling of the close to 100 black and white photographs she developed. Many have been framed for display and are available through the photographer.
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| Yan and Tanya Sidelkovsky from
Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine, our Adopt a Bubbe coordinators in Ukraine, who find
and train the many volunteers who work with the pensioners to see what they
need. They also handle the reports and thank you notes which the
Bubbes and Zaydes send back to us in Boston as well as distribute funds and
medicine sent from Boston for the smaller cities. In fiscal year 2002-2003, over 1,300 pensioners in Ukraine were helped by Adopt a Bubbe. |
Lydia Alesandrovna, born in 1917, with her husband, Isaak Abramovich Kherson, born in 1916. They live in Pavlograd. Isaak paints pictures and plays the piano. He graduated from the Military Academy and attained the rank of major during WWII, fighting all the way to the Berlin Reichstag. He also studied engineering at the Dnipropetrovsk Mining & Mineralogical Institute, where Lydia studied economics. Lydia was formerly married to Isaak's brother, who died early on at the front in WWII. | Esther Moiseevna Nechas, born in
1910, moved to Rubizhne in 1930 to work as a lab assistant in the now closed
State Paint Factory, formerly the main industry for the entire city.
Esther was born in Starokonstantinov in western Ukraine, where he parents and and all her relatives were murdered in the Holocaust. Esther was evacuated to Siberia with others from her factory. She never married. She told us that Jewish Ph.D.'s were executed in Rubizhne during the Holocaust. |
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| Student at the Dnipropetrovsk Jewish Day School, the largest in Europe with over 650 students. | Three boys in the corridor of the Dnipropetrovsk Jewish Day School | Lydia Greenberg of Zhovty Vody holds a matzah cover she embroidered with the Western Wall in Jerusalem in the center and parts of the seder plate around it. APSJ brings her embroidery to Boston where it is offered for sale. The proceeds go back to Lydia and the Adopt a Bubbe program. |
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| A former Poltava synagogue, which the Soviets turned into apartments. This street used to be in a Jewish neighborhood, but since WWII and the Holocaust, few Jews live here anymore. | The very modern interior of the newly refurbished Dnipropetrovsk Golden Rose Synagogue. The building was used for many years as a coat factory and storage facility. It re-opened for worship for Rosh Hashanah 2000. No one knows what the interior used to look like - there are no surviving pictures. |
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| The Beit Baruch Choir of pensioners practicing for their Boston guests in the Golden Rose Synagogue. Yan and Tanya Sidelkovsky are trained musicians who have assembled this group and taught them many Yiddish and Israeli songs, which they perform for special holiday programs. | Yehudas Kaminezki, the oldest daughter of Rabbi Shmuel and Chani Kaminezki. Yehudas studies at the Mahon, an intensive Jewish Day School in Dnipropetrovsk. |