“My biggest fear is to be forgotten,” said Oksana Nelina, the coordinator of The Associated’s partnership between Baltimore and Odesa, Ukraine, who visited Baltimore for the first time since 2016 and since the 2022 Russian invasion devastated the country.
Nelina’s visit was focused on making sure her biggest fear never comes to fruition by sharing the story of the Ukrainian people and the Odesa Jewish community through this war to Baltimore’s Jewish community and maintaining this strong partnership that has saved lives over the past few years.
According to Aviva Schwartz, The Associated’s director of Israel and Global Initiatives, The Associated is hard at work sharing stories like Nelina’s to ensure that people know that the situation in Ukraine is still a priority for the organziation even with the heavy focus on Israel over the past year. She noted that Nelina’s visit serves as a reminder for the local community about The Associated’s ongoing commitment to Ukraine.
The Baltimore-Odesa partnership began in 1992 and has been an invaluable resource and source of cultural exchange for decades, but the connection has taken a significant importance since the invasion with the often-dire need for physical supplies and a source of hope within the Odesa community.
Schwartz said that The Associated supports a summer camp through The Jewish Agency for Israel for kids that gives them a break from the reality of war, teen and elderly programing and support through The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, PJ Library in Odesa, The ORT Jabotinsky School and Moishe House Odesa, which has become a safe place for Jewish young adults during the war.
Nelina added that she works with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee that provides humanitarian aid and with Hesed, a group that cares for the poor and elderly, which have all been important during the war.
“The partnership is more than just a partnership. It’s long-term friendship for more than 30 years,” Nelina said. “They are our friends [from then] until now, especially [the] last three years of the war. They showed a great involvement and empathy to our community, which is of great value. That is why I’m here, and that is why this visit is of great importance for me.”
Schwartz said that part of Nelina’s visit will include an Associated campaign kickoff that will involve hundreds of letters for the holidays and New Year’s that Nelina will take home with her.
Nelina added that having those letters, which have been done before for Passover and other similar times, is a great boost to the morale of the Odesa Jewish community in knowing that they are not alone or forgotten.
“Every small message can prove that we’re not alone actually, and we’re not forgotten,” Nelina said, “I see the reaction of people. I see how thankful they are for this. It just, it seems that it’s a simple message, but it’s more; it’s just the human attitude.”
But the aid from the partnership doesn’t end at cards and organizational collaboration, as Nelina said that since the war, the living conditions in Odesa are sometime perilous due to multi-day and even week-long blackouts.
Nelina said that Russian attacks destroyed more than 80% of the area’s infrastructure and shut down lights, water, heat, air conditioning and appliances, which became a serious issue especially in the summer and winter months.
Nelina said that these blackouts were nothing like anyone had experienced before and they had to put out calls for help when people were suffering due to a lack of resources.
“The Jewish community of Baltimore, they gave us a chance to survive because they sent us the generators, the lighters, the warm blankets, the canned food, the power banks, everything which can be used during the long-term blackouts. And it literally saved our lives,” Nelina said.
“I had the fortune to travel to Odesa this past spring with our then-Board Chair Yehuda Neuberger. While there, we were privileged to show our solidarity and to see first-hand the impact of The Associated’s Baltimore-Odesa Partnership support. We saw the power of work both financially and through our deep people-to-people connections. Our partnership coordinator, Oksana Nelina, is literally saving lives on the ground with her strategic work making sure our Associated funds get to the people who need them most,” said Andrew Cushnir, president and CEO of The Associated.
Nelina emphasized that despite the war, the Jewish community in Odesa has a rich history that has taken on some new elements with the community demographics changing after people have become displaced. She said that there are now 15,000 Jews in the city down from 35,000 before the war.
Nelina said that a volunteer culture has risen in the Odesa Jewish community since the war began and that it’s a culture she hopes lasts forever.
And now that Nelina is back in Baltimore, she reflected on the similarities of the Baltimore and Odesa Jewish communities.
“There’s a time difference and a language difference, but if we see deeper, we have more in common than differences,” Nelina said.
That similarity is part of what Nelina and Schwartz are hoping to drive home to the members of the local community they met with, that these are regular people who will need the continual support of their sister Jewish community as they fight this long grueling war.
“The biggest fear of my community is also to be forgotten by other communities. And this meeting for me personally and for our community,
just to understand that we’re not forgotten by our friends all over the world, and we are not alone [is important]. I know for sure that I will come back home, and I will be able to tell them that people here care about us,” Nelina said.
