 A visit inspired by the Lord.
This is what we call the visit paid to the CF “People Who Care” by our friends from Dundee, Scotland.
Before the meeting on October, 21-28, we have never known each other, but each of us used to do their best in order to fulfil the Lord’s commandments.
The divine revelation descended on Mairi Brunton, and the Lord showed her the way that could help implement her desire to help poor Jewish people in their difficult life in Ukraine and also render them support on their way home to Israel.
With the help from the fund’s friends in England, Mairi Brunton got to know about our fund. And this was no ordinary occasion: for long years, the fund has been helping poor Jewish people in Ukraine, and searching for those who shared the idea and could render concrete help.
The Lord helped us meet each other and join our efforts for the sake of those whom we want to help.
The CF “People Who Care” is grateful to Mairi Brunton, Moira and William Wallace and Tunde Szombathy for their visit to Ukraine and the support they rendered to poor Jewish people.
Within the week they spent in Ukraine, our friends from Scotland managed to do a lot.
They learnt the acting system of supporting Jewish people, and not just learnt but also saw it in practice.
Our guests from Scotland saw with their own eyes how the fund PWC helped poor Jewish people in Ukraine in this specific sphere of working that, due to various conditions, is not funded by big donors at the moment. It happens due to a wrong opinion that Aliyah has decreased, and now it does not require much finance.
However, there has never been such poor Aliyah within the long years of repatriation to Israel.
Now, people who are leaving for Israel have incomes no bigger than 100EUR monthly, (at the same time, in Ukraine food products, clothes and shoes are far more expensive than in Europe). State social programs in Ukraine are very poorly funded in Ukraine.
Our Scottish guests could see it after visiting a few Jewish families who were going to make Aliyah. 
Future Aliyah. Kazyonny family. Khmelniki, Vinnitsa region. 
Mira Perets (Holocaust survivor, imprisoned in Vinnitsa ghetto at the age of 14 months). Within their short visit, our Scottish friends could get acquainted to the whole structure of organisations rendering help to Jewish people in Ukraine. They have visited Kiev Hesed (JDC), a regional JAFI affiliate (Sokhnut) in Vinnitsa, and one of Kiev synagogues. 
Our Scottish guests in Kiev Hesed (JDC). 
A considerable part of the visit was spent honouring the memory of Holocaust victims, travelling to places of mass shooting of Jewish people at times of WWII. Such mass graves are numerous all around Ukraine. This is not just Babiy Yar in Kiev. 
Igor Levenshtein, President of the fund PWC, tells our Scottish guests about the tragedy of Babiy Yar. 
Each region of Ukraine where Jewish people were numerous before WWII, keeps its own tragedy. Numerous mass graves show how many there were and how many perished years ago. Our guests visited one of such graves in Pechora, near Tulchin, Vinnitsa region. We made our way from Tulcin to Pechora (40km) on a comfortable car. It was a beautiful day of early autumn when leaves are hued in greens, yellows and reds. Early in December, 1941, a few thousand Jewish people were gathered in Tulchin from all the nearby settlements. They were forced to walk this horrible way on foot. It was early winter, and at nights, it was freezing cold, and at daytime, their feet were soaked with the half-frozen mud. There were women, children, elderly people in the column of many thousands. They were encircled with German soldiers with machine guns and dogs.
They spent their first night in horse stables that still remained there, beside the road of death from Tulchin to Pechora. Jewish people were so numerous that they had to stand upright during the whole night in those stables. It was impossible to sit or lie down, so in the morning when the column moved again, there were lots of dead left in the stables. Those who remained alive were to drain the cup of their anguish to the lees.
There was a little girl, Rita Shveydysh, in that column, walking beside her mother and father. She was five at the moment. Her father never reached the concentration camp in Pechora. During their long way, he tried to exchange a tablecloth for a loaf of bread by the local people. But a German bullet stopped him forever. The starving little Rita could not realise at first that her father was dead. She can still remember the bread stained with blood, the bread in her father’s dead hands, the bread she had awaited for so long! Rita’s mother was killed in the Pechora camp a bit later, and now her remnants lie in a mass grave together with bodies of hundreds of other Jewish people.
Little Rita marvellously escaped death from an axe of a Ukrainian collaborationist. She asked his wife for something to eat, and he nearly killed her. She remained alive, but the scar on her leg still reminds her of that horrible axe.
Rita was lucky to flee from the concentration camp. Local people hid her in their cellar. When this part of Ukraine was liberated from German troops, Rita was sent to an orphanage, because her parents were dead.
Such was her childhood.
Now Rita is in her eighties. She is the head of the local Jewish community in Tulchin. It was Rita who took a trip with us along that dreadful way she walked as a five-year-old girl in 1941, a little child full of dread and despair, starving and cold. Resurrecting the events of those long-gone days, Rita wept, and we all wept with her. 
Our guests prayed on the mass grave of Jewish people killed at times of WWII. 
Praying on mass grave of Jewish Holocaust victims. The fund PWC is thankful to Mairi Brunton, for she and her friends from Dundee, Scotland, brought to Ukraine not only aid for poor Jewish people, but also warmth of their hearts. Special thanks for remembering Holocaust and keeping in mind the Lord’s commandment regarding the Promised Land. | 
