The school offers an extended day program, enrolling youngsters in various after-school activities until 6:00 p.m. Although some youngsters are brought to school by parents or other family members, four rented mini-buses transport others between home and school. In common with other Jewish schools in the post-Soviet states, the school provides several meals each day to its students and operates a small welfare service for families in need.16 As current pupils grow older, the Markoviches would like to obtain a campsite that would offer opportunities for school and summer camping as well as family programs.



Youngsters play in the late afternoon after school in the yard of the Markovich school.

Kyiv -- With Physicians
From Chicago And Jewish Healthcare International

5. Building on a sister-city relationship established on a municipal level between the cities of Chicago and Kyiv in 1990, the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago announced a similar relationship between the Jewish communities of the two cities shortly thereafter. However, the relationship developed slowly and sporadically, in part due to the inchoate nature of the Jewish community in the Ukrainian capital. In 1999, the Jewish Federation in Chicago initiated a more systematic approach to this communal connection, appointing a chairman (the author), committee, and professional staff to plan and implement an organizational relationship. A survey team of nine individuals from Chicago made a site visit to Kyiv in September 2000 to assess opportunities for collaboration between the two Jewish population centers. The assessment group focused on social services, education, and religion.17

Concurrently, discussions developed in Chicago regarding establishment of a medical team to evaluate opportunities for medical collaboration between Jewish health care professionals in Chicago and healthcare professionals in Kyiv. Consultations were initiated between representatives of the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago and Jewish Health Care International (JHI), an Atlanta-based organization that encourages and supports Israeli and Diaspora healthcare professionals who wish to provide medical support on a voluntary basis to Jewish communities in the post-Soviet states, eastern Europe, and other areas. Agreement was reached with JHI to use their model in developing a site evaluation visit to Kyiv, which would be scheduled for early September 2001.


The JHI symbol is seen at left.

Marc Rubenstein, a Chicago urologist, was appointed chairman of the Chicago medical team. Dr. Rubenstein named three additional Chicago physicians to join the site evaluation team: Bruce Greenspahn, a cardiologist; Daniel Johnson, a pediatrician; and Edward Linn, a gynecologist-obstetrician. Other doctors traveling in the group were Stephen Kutner, an Atlanta ophthalmologist and Medical Director of JHI, and Mark Blat-ter, a Pittsburgh pediatrician and JHI Board member.

Consistent with the JHI mission of working with Israeli and American healthcare workers in partnership, JHI attempted to enlist Israeli physicians to join their American Jewish counterparts in this project. However, the “development town” character of Kiryat Gat/Lachish/Shafir, the Chicago Partnership 2000 region, made it difficult to recruit physicians from this area. The medical director of Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon, who also is a JHI Board member, agreed to join the site evaluation team; many residents of Kiryat Gat, Lachish, and Shafir use this hospital. Unfortunately, this physician withdrew from the mission several days before its departure, too late to find a replacement. Orit Jacobson, a Registered Nurse and Chief Nursing Officer of Clalit Health Services in Israel, was the only Israeli medical professional on the evaluation team; Ms. Jacobson has been a participant in several other JHI visits to the post-Soviet states.

Linda Epstein, Director of the Israel office of the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago, and the writer represented the Federation. Gaby Blauer, JHI Project Manager in Israel, and Jay Shofet, Director of the People-to-People Center of the Jewish Agency for Israel, also participated in the visit.

6. Dr. Stephen Kutner, the Medical Director of JHI, came to Chicago in early August to conduct an orientation session for the Chicago participants. Various JHI materials were distributed to the group at this time. The writer conducted an orientation session about the Kyiv Jewish community later in the month.

7. The writer arrived in Kyiv on September 3, two days before the arrival of the American participants. On September 4, she met with Sam Amiel, Joint Distribution Committee Representative for Western Ukraine, to review arrangements for the site evaluation tour, which was to include visits to both medical and Jewish institutions. Having no infrastructure of its own in the post-Soviet states, JHI works with JDC to plan its itineraries in these countries. Although numerous e-mail messages had been exchanged between the Jewish Federation in Chicago, JHI in Atlanta, and JDC in Jerusalem and Kyiv, several questions remained about the program.

Two outstanding issues concerned meetings with representatives of US AID (the United States Agency for International Development) and with Anna Azari, the Ambassador of the State of Israel in Ukraine. Both Steven Pifer, the immediate past Ambassador of the United States to Ukraine, and Carlos Pascual, the current American Ambassador, had advised representatives of the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago to work closely with US AID in any medical projects in Kyiv, noting that the large US AID mission in Ukraine would be able to provide various forms of assistance. Reflecting Israeli government support for Jewish Healthcare International, Ambassador Azari was known to be enthusiastic about a JHI project in Kyiv. Although the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago could have arranged both meetings through its own resources, it deferred to the JDC planning role for this trip.

Mr. Amiel acknowledged that meetings with a representative of US AID and with Mrs. Azari had not yet been confirmed. He observed that the Joint Distribution Committee in Kyiv does not maintain close relations with representations of either the American or Israeli governments. However, he pledged that JDC would do its best to arrange the requested meetings.

8. In the evening of September 4, the writer went to Boryspil Airport just outside Kyiv to meet the Israeli members of the delegation (Linda Epstein, Orit Jacobson, and Jay Shofet). She was accompanied by Alexander Feinin, the JDC Missions Coordinator in Kyiv. The atmosphere in the arrivals hall was surreal; flanking the passage from the customs area were two columns of musicians, a drum and bugle corps bedecked in marching band uniforms of bright blue and yellow, the Ukrainian national colors. As we suspected, the musicians were not awaiting the arrival of the flight from Israel, but were there to greet a Ukrainian soccer team coming home on another flight; the team had just won the gold medal at the University Games in Canada. The musicians were still in place when the Israelis emerged from the customs area a few minutes after the victorious Ukrainian athletes.

Upon return to the airport the following afternoon (September 5) to meet the American participants, the passageway was again lined with a welcoming committee. Somewhat less well organized than the drum and bugle corps, a Baptist missionary group was at one end of the corridor, singing and waving banners for their fellow disciples from abroad. The American Jewish physicians and two-person JHI greeting party managed to find each other among the singers.

9. From Boryspil Airport, the Chicago/JHI group proceeded by bus to Babi Yar, site of the slaughter of more than 33,000 Jews in September 1941. As had been the case with a previous Chicago group, local guides had intended that the group stop at only one of the two Babi Yar monuments. However, plans were revised to accommodate the wishes of group members to visit both monuments, the Soviet-era memorial that ignores the majority Jewish victims of the slaughter and the 1991 menorah erected closer to the ravine where the shootings actually occurred. Natan Gomberg, Director of Hesed Avot in Kyiv, provided background information, as did the writer, and prayers were said.

10. A breakfast meeting at the group hotel on September 6 provided an opportunity for Sam Amiel of JDC and Jay Shofet of the Jewish Agency to explain the missions and programs of their respective agencies. Although it is likely that the joint presentation was an effort to present the work of the two organizations as complementary components of a unified whole, the reality that each group assigned its own representative to accompany the Chicago/JHI mission suggested the existence of competition between them.


Sam Amiel (left) and Jay Shofet explain the work of their agencies to the Chicago/JHI group

11. Following presentations by both JDC and JAFI at breakfast, the Chicago/JHI group visited the major JDC installation in the city, Hesed Avot. Hesed Avot is a welfare center, extending aid to 16,000 Jewish elderly and some younger handicapped Jews in Kyiv and 76 smaller cities and towns in Kyiv oblast.18 Many of the smallest towns are former shtetls in which fewer than five Jews now remain.

16. Upon learning that the writer would be meeting a group of American Jewish physicians soon to arrive in Kyiv, Mrs. Markovich asked that one or more of the doctors visit the grandmother and an aunt of one of the pupils. The elderly woman was suffering from an advanced case of cancer of the mouth, jaw, and tongue, and the aunt had unspecified balance and other problems possibly stemming from a head injury during adolescence. The visit was made, and care is being extended to the family. (The grandmother has been receiving some assistance from the Kyiv hesed for several years.)
17. The team included seven Federation and agency professional staff and two volunteers. See the author’s A September Journey to Ukraine, September 2000, pp. 28-55.
18. An oblast (область) is an administrative region in Ukraine (and Russia) with authority between that of a county and a state in the United States. Ukraine contains 26 oblasts, two of which are cities with oblast status; these are the capital city of Kyiv and the military district/seaport of Sevastopol. Kyiv oblast refers to territory surrounding Kyiv, not the city itself. (Crimea has the status of a republic within Ukraine.)

Most experienced observers believe that between 250,000 and 325,000 Jews live in Ukraine, 70,000 to 100,000 of whom reside in Kyiv.