International Outreach

Holocaust Memories Still Vivid

By Dan Reany
The 700 Club

CBN.com — Ines Gurskaya often spends her days alone in her apartment in Safed, Israel. She's a holocaust survivor from Belarus. Her earliest memories are of Nazi tanks and her mother's last words.

Ines remembers, "Bombs were falling as we ran and the city was on fire. A young boy was killed right in front of me. I remember my mother stopped, hugged me, and said, 'I will not see you again.' I only understood what that meant later."

Her mother was taken away by Nazis, shot, and killed. She and her three siblings struggled to survive as orphans in a ghetto in Minsk.

"We were constantly hungry. Our clothes were rags and we had no shoes. To this day, I still have problems with pain in my feet from running through the broken streets and the snow," says Ines.

She survived with the help of a Christian man. He smuggled her from house to house in the back of a horse drawn cart as the Nazi SS hunted Jews in hiding.

"That man took a great risk. He saved my life," says Ines.

Years after the war, Ines moved to Israel to begin a new life. When we met her, we could see she still carries the pain of everything she went through.

"It's difficult to walk sometimes and the winters are especially hard on me. I am cold, and my feet ache so much," says Ines.

So CBN bought Ines a foot spa and soaking salts from the Dead Sea.

Ines says, "I love the foot bath. It's very soothing and helps relieve the pain. It was very sweet of you to give that to me. I feel like I could run a marathon."

CBN Israel also got Ines a portable heater she can keep next to her in the winter. We take her groceries every week to make sure she eats well, and to keep her company.

Ines concludes, "The good food helps so much. And it means even more that it's brought by people who care about me. Thank you very much for all you do for me and the other survivors. You are keeping our memories alive, so that our stories are not just pages in a history book."

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