THIS WEEK'S TRIBUNE  THIS WEEK'S TRIBUNE School communications director talks of family’s travails in Ukraine and happy ending in US
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School communications director talks of family’s travails in Ukraine and happy ending in US |
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Written by Atara Beck
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Wednesday, 10 September 2008 |
TORONTO – “In the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, you and people exactly like you stood up for people like us,” Alina Gervolin Spaulding, who emigrated from the Soviet Union to the United States in 1979, declared with passion as the guest speaker at the Lion of Judah luncheon last week at the Four Seasons Hotel’s main ballroom.
Almost 250 people attended the event, which marked the 36th anniversary of the local branch of UJA Federation’s Lion of Judah. Women who give a minimum of $5,000 annually are eligible to attend.
Gerlovin Spaulding, director of communications at the American Hebrew Academy in Greensboro, NC, described the horror of life in Kharkov, Ukraine, which she left, along with her parents, when she was 5.
Her father, a skier, was an “Olympic hopeful,” and therefore deemed “useful” in the Soviet Union. A serious skiing accident, however, immediately diminished his value to the Soviets, and his 21-year-old wife and infant daughter were given until the end of that very day to leave their apartment. He was “Jewish and useless,” Gerlovin Spaulding said, and had to wait eight days to be seen not by a doctor, but by a medic. It took his wife almost an entire year, while the family resided with the grandmother in cramped quarters, to raise the funds and collect from the black market all the items – bandages, medicine, etc. – necessary for surgery. The operation was unsuccessful because his condition had deteriorated from lack of care, and in fact the infection had spread to his heart.
“I want to make this clear,” Gerlovin Spaulding stated. “My father was in top condition, an Olympic hopeful, and [was told he] would lose his life within five years because of a broken leg.”
In 1977, her mother learned about the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, “an organization that comes to Russia to rescue Jews.
“An American woman came to the Ukraine to live in someone’s closet in order to save us. She told my mother, ‘from now on, you and I are family.’”
In 1979, nearly 50,000 Jews – Gerlovin Spaulding’s family among them – were rescued from the Soviet Union. En route to their final destinations, many stayed in Austria and Italy and were cared for “by the dollars you raise,” Spaulding told the crowd.
Meanwhile, Gerlovin’s heart condition had deteriorated to the extent that his situation was deemed hopeless. The family was living in Passaic, NJ, and “through a gift that has remained anonymous to this day,” payment was made to fly a top cardiac surgeon and his team from California to perform experimental surgery in 1980.
“In 1981, my brother was born. In 1982, my father went skiing again. In 1983, my mother went for another Master’s degree. In 1985, my father did the same. In 1993, I graduated from high school and my parents were there. In 1994, my brother celebrated his Bar Mitzvah at the Kotel. My parents were there.”
Indeed, Gerlovin Spaulding is a gifted, captivating orator and a very talented entertainer. Notwithstanding the painful topic, she interspersed her serious talk with comical episodes, such as her family’s first morning in America, when her parents – “both engineers, like all other Russian people” – sat around the breakfast table struggling to figure out how to make breakfast cereal.
Gerlovin Spaulding has never forgotten her family’s difficult past, and she and her husband are committed to joining those who make a critical difference for the better in peoples’ lives. In 2001, after volunteering at a summer camp in Moldava to help re-establish Jewish life there, she returned to the US with a brilliant 14-year-old girl, Anya, who would have had no future in her native country. Anya’s younger sister, Sasha, joined them shortly afterwards, and the Spauldings are now the parents of “a 20-month-old son, achieved through more traditional methods.”
“Everything I have in this life, and everything I’ll ever have and achieve in this life and everything I’ll ever contribute, and everything my children will ever contribute or achieve in their lives is because of people like you,” Gerlovin Spaulding said. “Everything, everything, everything. I thank you on behalf of humanity.” |
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 16 September 2008 )
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