Volume 6, Issue 5 / Iyar, 5763 / May 2003
Café Europa - Partnership Style
By Lisa Samin
"It was a miracle that my immediate family survived the Holocaust in Poland, "says sprightly Eda Kleinman from Tel-Aviv. "But my whole childhood was destroyed. We spent years on the run - cold, hungry and frightened to death."
"We didn't talk about the Holocaust," says 80-year-old Romanian-born Betty Guzman. "We wanted to move away from the horror and tragedy and start over in Israel."
Today, Kleinman and Guzman are part of a unique new initiative, Café Europa, spearheaded by the Los Angeles Jewish Federation-Jewish Agency Partnership with Tel Aviv. Café Europa provides, for the first time, a framework for Holocaust survivors to meet and socialize on a weekly basis. "Before the opening there was no place like this," says Guzman.
The successful project was piloted in Los Angeles by the Jewish Family Services. However, when the Los Angeles/Tel Aviv partnership decided to bring this project to Tel Aviv in November, 2002, they were unprepared for the rush of survivors who yearned for just such a program.
"To our amazement, in the first few weeks there were so many people who came, we didn't have room for all of them," says Nissan Pardo, Chair of the Partnership Los Angeles Health and Human Services Committee and an instrumental player in deciding to bring Café Europe to Tel Aviv.
As a result, a second Café Europa was immediately opened in Tel Aviv. For the survivors it offers a chance to meet, talk, dance, listen to lectures and enjoy the company of fellow survivors. "We feel as if we've known each other all of our lives," says Guzman.
"We have something in common here that no one, not even our children, can understand," says Kleinman.
According to Nathan Wallach, deputy mayor of Tel Aviv and the Municipality's champion for Café Europa and for social services for seniors, there are 25,000 Holocaust survivors in Tel Aviv. The Tel Aviv Municipality provides the team of social workers who run Café Europa, while the Partnership funds the remainder of the program.
The name Café Europa is very significant for Holocaust survivors. Directly after the war, there was a Café Europa in Stockholm, Sweden, where Holocaust survivors came to look for their lost relatives. The group of survivors living in Tel Aviv now meets every Sunday for three hours, with a different social program and refreshments for each meeting.
"I have made many friendships here," says Dina Ramon, whose husband came to Israel with Youth Aliyah after his entire family had been slaughtered in Hungary.
"I am not a Holocaust survivor, but my husband suffers tremendously. He rarely goes out. The easy companionship and understanding we have found at Café Europa has strengthened both of us."
At a Café Europa event held last fall, 250 participants invited members of the Los Angeles Leadership Mission to join them. The event, held at one of Tel Aviv's hotels, was a moving evening, a throwback to the slow dancing and classical music of pre-Holocaust Europe.
The Café Europa members, so proud of their program, graciously shared their warmth with their Los Angeles brethren of all ages and backgrounds. It was an evening of old and young, Americans and Israelis, Holocaust survivors and baby boomers, brought together by the common bond of their Jewish heritage, and the strength of the Jewish people to continue in the face of such overwhelming tragedy.
"This was so impressive," said a visibly moved 38-year-old Aaron Willis, Chair of the Los Angeles Federation Education Committee. "It was wonderful to speak with people from other generations, and to share this very special program with them."
Sharing also took place between the Los Angeles and Tel-Aviv Café Europa participants. Aaron Barkay, an international Tel Aviv lawyer and a member of the Partnership Steering Committee, relates the story of a video conference between the two groups that led to an outpouring of emotion in different languages as the participants reverted to their mother tongues of Romanian, German, Hungarian and Greek. Unbelievably (or maybe not given the global Jewish geography which permeates most first meetings between Jews) two people talking across the ocean in Greek, found that they had been neighbors in Saloniki! Fifty-seven years seemed to slip away as they reminisced about their childhood, and made tentative plans to see each other again.
With the success of Café Europa, plans are currently in the works for establishing a similar program for children of Holocaust survivors in both Los Angeles and Tel Aviv, explains Pardo.
"We learned from these people," says Pardo. "They are the heroes. They are the survivors. And it is this continuity that we are striving to instill in the younger generation of Jews."
Credits: Photos by Douglas Guthrie.
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