Vol. LXXXVI No. 33 Omaha, NE
Blumkin residents recruited as hosts for open forums
Attendees of the Tuesday, May 8, 7-9 p.m., open forum for the Rose Blumkin Jewish Home will “walk” through the facility on a virtual tour that features a look inside the Special Care Unit dedicated to those with early to midstage dementia and Alzheimer’s. The computer-generated tour also offers colored renderings of fabrics and furnishings in all reconfigured resident rooms and common areas.The event -- part of the Blumkin Home New Beginning Community Campaign, led by Paul and Sandy Epstein and Richard and Joanie Jacobson, is at Ironwood Country Club and is free and open to all. Dessert will be served. A second open forum is scheduled for Wednesday, May 30, 7-9 p.m. at the Jewish Community Center. Among the hosts and hostesses are Blumkin Home residents: Rabbi Myer S. Kripke, seated left, Sara Lohrman, Norm and Marge Lincoln, standing, and Dave Dvorkin.
Celebrating 86 Years of Service to Nebraska and Western Iowa
9 Iyyar, 5767 April 27, 2007
Three-year-old program building long-term connections to Israel by JACOB BERKMAN JERUSALEM (JTA) -Jared Baluvan is from Highland Park, N.J. Jared Blumenfeld is from Beverly Hills. Both are 18 and in Israel volunteering on an ambulance as part of Young Judaea’s Year Course in Israel. But while the $15,000 tuition for the nine-month program was no problem for the Blumenfeld family, Baluvan’s needed some help. Assisting families like the Baluvans was why the Jewish Agency for Israel and the Israeli government started MASA, (an Israeli acronym) which offers grants of up to Girls from the Young Judaea Year Course Shalem program meet up with friends at a MASA $10,000 to Diaspora Jews event for American youth in Israel, back row: Naomi Mitchell, left, Estee Katcoff, Liat Tretin, aged 18 to 30 to participate Karen Gordon, Racheli Rubin, Katie Wolfson; front row: Esther Shatz, Avi Katzman, and Credit: Avi Katzman in long-terms programs in Deena Wolloch. MASA wants to use the experience to create future Israel. The program has helped bring some 7,800 participants to Israel this year from 50 countries. They par- Jewish leaders and show that Israel is no longer a state ticipate in programs ranging from Orthodox yeshivas to that just takes money from the Diaspora, but is an equal training seminars for secular Zionist youth movements. partner in building broader Jewish community. Assistance from MASA has opened up programs like The idea, MASA officials say, is that extended time in Israel and immersion in Israeli society is the best way to Livnot U’Lehibanot -- which combines volunteerism, build Jewish identity and form a connection to the learning and hiking -- to more people like Ben Pitt. Jewish state. Continued on page 2
Daughter of the “Enemy of the People” learns the secrets of her parents’ trials by MARY ETUS Special to the Jewish Press The year of 2007 will bring two anniversaries in the tumultuous history of Russia and, consequently, the world: the 1917 October Revolution and the 1937 Moscow Trials. These show-trials known in the West as the Great Purges, were campaigns orchestrated by Joseph Stalin to eliminate the remaining opposition, mainly Trotskyists, to the Soviet regime. To the stage of the 1936-38 Moscow Trials were brought high ranking officials: most of the People’s Commissars, Soviet ministers, the most important Soviet diplomats, the leaders of the Comintern, Communist International, the economic chiefs, the best leaders of the Red Army, the Heads of Soviet republics, the NKVD (named KGB in 1953). The defendants were accused of conspiring with the western powers to assassinate Stalin and other Soviet leaders, to dismember the Soviet Union, to restore capitalism. Following the Moscow Trials, numerous smaller scale trials of lower level figures swept over the vast country. Stalin’s macabre plot against his own people yielded heavy losses. Between 1937 and 1939 from five to five and a half million people (alleged traitors, spies, saboteurs, subversive elements, socially dangerous elements, etc., collectively called enemies of the people) were arrested. Not less
Inside Opinion Page see page 24
than a third of them had been shot, and many of the rest died in the camps, (Dmitry Volkogonov and Trotsky). Among those thousands persecuted in the Moscow Trials were the three members of Lydia Linde’s (maiden name Bychovskaya) family: her father, 51, and brother, 21, were sentenced to death and executed, while her mother, 44, got an eight-year term in Corrective Labor Camps. Lydia, then 10, survived. She survived WWII, the rough post-war years, the 11 years as a refusnick when she was denied permission to Lydia Linde, a Volunteer of the Year for the Kripke Library -emmigrate. Against all odds, pictured here in the Russian section, unveils the secrets and she and her husband, Eugene tragedies of her life in the former Soviet Union. Lydia Linde: I dare say, yes. My Linde, ended up in Omaha in 1990. Jewish Press: Lydia, 2007 marked a father’s personality was that of strong milestone event in your life -- your 80th integrity, dedication to principle. He was birthday in March. I also hope you remain one of the old guard. My elder brother the way we all know you -- the “Moscovite” Yuriy had definitely inherited his dad’s brand -- an intelligent, vivacious, definite- genes. Yuriy was an awfully bright young ly elegant, broad minded lady. It is due to man in his own right, but not as revoluyour fine taste in literature and certainly, tionary minded. Before 1937, our childthe financial contribution made by hood passed in an atmosphere of intellecLeonard and Shirley Goldstein, that we tuality and high culture, with lots of boast an amazing collection of Russian books and music; my father played the books. Speaking of a person’s traits, do you cello. Our home was often crowded with papa’s friends and colleagues. Then, one think they could be hereditary?
This Week: Mother’s Day Special Section Begins on Page 17 See Front Page Stories & More at: www.jewishomaha.org, click on ‘Jewish Press’
RBJH volunteers honored by United Way: Page 3
fine day, everything went upside down... JP: Given the extraordinary fate of your family members, I’d attempt to write four part -- one to each of you. Will you be able to survive the “trial”? LL: I’ll try. THE FATHER JP: Lydia, I have a special birthday present for you. I did some research on the Internet and found an article titled “The Moscow Shootings” with your father’s name in it. It reads like this: “Bychovsky Naum Isaakovich, 1887, Smolensk, Jew, Menshevick: a member of the Russian Social-Democratic Party till 1923, Statistics Department Manager of the Central Scientific Research Institute for Water Transport.” Could you ever anticipate seeing your father’s name on the Internet after all those years? LL: Well, that Internet-- I always said it’s shocking. I just can’t imagine something like that could have happened. True, my father threw himself into politics from an early age and he was with the Menshevicks. I assume it goes back to 1903, when at their Second Party Congress, the Russian revolutionaries split into two parties: the Menshevicks,minority or the democratic fraction of Marxists socialists, and the Bolshevicks, the majority or Lenin’s followers. My father was only 17 then. I would say this photo of him (on page 18) belongs to that period. Continued on page 18
Coming May 18: Senior Living Issue
Bearing witness: commemorating Yom HaShoah: Pages 6-7
Omaha celebrates Israel’s 59th anniversary: Pages 22-23