B’NAI B’RITH IN YOUR COMMUNITY AND AROUND THE GLOBE
Summer 2022
Director of Development,
B’nai B’rith International
Dear Friends,
Much of what is on my mind these days is our incredible work helping the people of Ukraine. We have provided a vital aid to those in need in the wake of disasters since 1865.
Of course, our work goes on supporting Israel and seniors, and you can read in this issue about many of these efforts. But for me, the war in Ukraine has been perspective altering. Click here to read about my time in Poland on the border with Ukraine, along with my B’nai B’rith colleagues, helping refugees.
Kind regards,
Andrea
Report from the Ground: Ukraine Aid Mission
By Andrea Cure, B’nai B’rith Director of Development
March 2022
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, B’nai B’rith jumped into action. From our international headquarters in Washington, D.C. to our members and supporters around the world, we raised funds and sent food, blankets, warm coats and hygiene items to Ukrainians fleeing the war across borders in Poland and Romania as well as to people sheltering inside Ukraine, in ever-harsher conditions.
But we also wanted to bear witness to this human rights atrocity. And to provide a human connection to people in unfathomable circumstances. So, we went to the border in Poland.
Edyta Szemiel, B’nai B’rith’s controller, Alina Bricman, our director of EU Affairs and I spent nine days in Poland delivering aid in various capacities in several areas around the country. We arrived first in Warsaw, where we saw the refugee situation in the main train station. Whole families were sleeping on the floor, their baby carriages lined up neatly against the wall. Local volunteers were working tirelessly to help, providing what information they could. There were tents set up outside to supply food and other services. Seeing this firsthand hit home just how real, and close we were to war.
Our first day started with a meeting with Dr. Andrezj Friedman, B’nai B’rith Warsaw Lodge president, who personally showed us all the medical supplies B’nai B’rith had procured, ready to go to Lviv. Dr. Friedman was also kind enough to facilitate a connection for us to the crisis center being run by the Jewish Community in Warsaw. We had been working remotely with the group before our arrival to send supplies via contacts in Poland. We traveled with an assortment of goods to bring to the center—tote bags, teddy bears to comfort children and children’s activity packs were brought and distributed to refugees, as well as a variety of essential items the center outlined. Our goal here was to meet with community leaders, understand needs and go out to get or deliver items locally to minimize costs and maximize impact. So, whether it was shampoo, razors, warm clothing, lip balm or homeopathic anxiety meds, we provided it.
At one point, I saw two little boys come outside the center with our totes and bears—as I snapped a picture, I smiled. They were happy and playing with the items we brought. While this is seemingly a very small thing—kids playing and me smiling—it was an important “normal” moment in a setting that is anything but.
From Warsaw we took a train to Przemysl, the city most central to Medyka, the Polish village near Ukraine’s border. We spent a day volunteering in “Tesco,” a former superstore which had been converted into a refugee center and aid warehouse. We were assigned to the group responsible for cleaning the site and our first job was cleaning the restrooms. This site was completely volunteer driven, and we quickly determined there were not adequate supplies for such a sizable operation. We ran out to a nearby home center and to a supermarket to get whatever supplies we could, anything that could disinfect surfaces, and instituted a protocol to better keep areas clean.
At the time, there were 1,500 to 2,000 people flowing through the center each day. By the time we got back from buying the cleaning supplies we learned of a stomach virus situation and a potential lice outbreak. These health situations brought us face-to-face with the sobering realities of life as a refugee.
The next day we volunteered in the Przemysl train station. To see the throngs of weary travelers, women, children, young, old, their pets—following what we witnessed at “Tesco”—we really began to understand the precarious situation of those forced to flee from their homes. At the train station Edyta, a native Pole, was able to provide tremendous assistance due to her Russian language skills. Alina and I worked in the mother and child room, where we organized and distributed supplies. We served snacks, coffee and tea, and just pitched in however we could, and again, provided needed supplies.
We were able to connect with a staff member from Israel’s embassy in Kyiv, who met us the next day at Medyka. She walked us through the expansive set-up at the border crossing, a tent city referred to as a “festival” which really was a remarkable collage of volunteers and non-governmental organizations from around the globe, set up to aid the refugees flowing over the border. We were connected with Israel’s medical aid organization, Rescuers Without Borders, which was running a mother and child center in the rear of the United Sikhs tent. We went out and purchased baby food and diapers, and coffee, hot chocolate and milk, chocolates for kids and more. We also supplied duffle bags for refugees who were carrying their belongings in plastic bags and made sure the tent had access to diesel needed to provide heat through the night.
Words cannot express how moving it was to work with volunteers from Israel, the United Kingdom and Japan, and alongside a young Ukrainian woman who walked over the border every day to volunteer, as well as a burly guy from Texas who stood guard outside of the tent to make sure it remained a safe space for the women and children it housed.
I recall a particularly moving experience that Edyta and I had. The owner of the hotel we stayed at introduced us to a mom, dad and their little boy. I understood we were being introduced as American aid workers. The mom was crying, the little boy looked so sad, and the father was trying to convey their dilemma to Edyta in Russian. They had escaped Mariupol in their car, which was now leaking fluid. He shared that it took 35 hours to get out of the city, riddled with landmines. The father had been in Odessa with his mother when the war broke out. He was able to reunite with his wife and son to flee to Poland.
The car was very old, but they did not want to leave it behind. We offered to pay for their hotel stay, but they declined.
The father was adamant—he wanted to find a service station and wanted his wife and son to go to the “Tesco” refugee site. Edyta’s friend loaded the little boy and his mother, Edyta and me into her own car and led the father, following in his car, to a service station.
I was in back with the mom and little boy, who started to feel more comfortable and was chatting. I showed him pictures of my own boys, my dogs and even Oreo, my family’s guinea pig, whose species I translated for him via Google Translate.
He took his mom’s phone and showed me pictures of his friends—class pictures from what looked to be a holiday pageant. He spoke in Ukrainian; his mom spoke in Russian to Edyta and Edyta translated for me. He pointed out his friends and I smiled while thinking to myself: Will he ever see his friends again?
When we arrived at the service station, and we were waiting, the mom said to me in halting English: “I am sorry.” I said: “No, I am sorry. I am sorry you are going through this.” Those words have echoed in my head ever since. I am sorry that millions of people are displaced, that they must flee with what they can carry in a plastic bag, clutching documents. Never in my life did I think I would see this in Europe.
Without a doubt this was the most moving experience of my professional life: seeing the impact we were able to make and helping during such a dire humanitarian crisis—the likes of which not seen in Europe since the World War II. The entire B’nai B’rith family, all those who supported our Ukraine Relief Fund, should be tremendously proud and know they made a difference, that they had an impact.
FROM THE PRESIDENT
Our Worldwide Footprint
President, B’nai B’rith International
B’nai B’rith has a bigger footprint than any other Jewish organization. Despite decades of involvement in this organization, I still marvel at how many things we do and do so well.
Allow me to share with you three nearly simultaneous efforts undertaken during this spring to bring the breadth of our footprint more into focus.
At the end of March and into early April, we had a refugee relief mission and a diplomatic mission accomplishing important tasks in two different parts of the world, while other members of our team led a senior housing conference.
We had a team on the ground in Poland, aiding Ukrainian refugees and delivering much needed supplies. We also organized a diplomatic mission to Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, in support of their roles as the two initial signatories of the landmark 2020 Abraham Accords. These accords, which are the first Arab-Israel normalization agreements signed in decades, have provided a reset of sorts, for the Arab world to engage with Israel. With B’nai B’rith’s long history in the realm of international diplomacy, we are encouraged by the positive diplomatic ties and feel it is important for our organization to provide all the support we can.
I am immensely proud of our aid work, helping refugees escaping the carnage that resulted from the brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine. Our Director of Development Andrea Cure travelled from New York, our Controller Edyta Szemiel from Washington, D.C. and our Director of EU Affairs Alina Bricman from Brussels. Together they stopped at multiple sites in Poland to provide desperately needed aid to refugees from Ukraine.
With ample support from our staff and volunteers back home, our team worked at multiple refugee centers, offering the most basic of human comfort to people who had seen the worst that humanity can do. Our team scrubbed bathrooms, bought cleaning supplies, poured tea and provided activity packs and B’nai B’rith “buddy bears” to comfort children. At aid sites in Poland, B’nai B’rith provided warm clothes and hygiene items. Our team members were the smiling, welcoming faces at a train station as rattled Ukrainian citizens, often with no more than the clothes they were wearing, disembarked from trains and wondered where they would go next. We know that escaping war is a first step on a precarious and uncertain path forward to an unexpected new future.
As it so often does, our internationality had important benefits as well: Edyta, who grew up in Poland, used her knowledge of Polish and Russian to provide much needed language translation on site.
Our efforts were joined by fundraising and other aid from across B’nai B’rith locations including B’nai B’rith Europe, B’nai B’rith UK and B’nai B’rith Italy. B’nai B’rith in Germany, including the B’nai B’rith lodges in Frankfort and Munich worked directly with our lodge in Ukraine to determine needs for the community staying behind in difficult conditions in their homes. We funded aid projects in Moldova and in Romania. Our volunteers in Chicago put together a significant delivery of medicines and other supplies. And countless members and supporters of our organization sustained these efforts.
We continue to offer aid to Ukrainian refugees and to those who stayed behind in Ukraine. Our Disaster and Emergency Relief Fund also continues to support the efforts of our members on the ground in Poland. This global mobilization of our members and supporters shows the depth and breadth of our work, of our caring. I encourage you to read Andrea’s first-person account in this issue of IMPACT here. [Hyperlink from the word “here” URL URL URL]
While Andrea, Edyta and Alina were making a difference in people’s lives in Poland, 3,400 miles south, I led our diplomatic delegation, along with our CEO Dan Mariaschin. The growing ties between Arab nations, including Bahrain and the UAE, with Israel demonstrate to the world that forward-thinking is the way of the future. Our discussions highlighted the interests shared by the Gulf nations and Israel, as well as the common birth of Judaism and Islam. In truth, we are simply cousins who want to live in peace. We encouraged the development and deepening of the relationships. There are so many paths for engagement, with shared efforts in energy and defense taking center stage, while common interests in environmental, agricultural, technological and medical efforts will directly benefit the citizens of each country. This remarkable global shift has the potential to create an economic powerhouse in the region, while impeding the efforts of Iran to sow discord through terrorism.
Of course, that worldwide footprint I mentioned is not limited to diplomacy and disaster and emergency relief. What led me to B’nai B’rith decades ago was the organization’s commitment to honoring our parents—our senior housing program, which provides affordable housing to older adults across the country.
Around the same time as the Poland aid trip and the diplomatic mission to Bahrain and UAE, our senior housing network held its annual spring training conference for housing professionals and volunteers. For two days, our housing experts Mark Olshan, director of the B’nai B’rith Center for Senior Services; Janel Doughten, associate director of the Center for Senior Services; and Evan Carmen, legislative director for Aging Policy, led our building board members, management staff and service coordinators in vital discussions on topics such as older adults and technology and lessons learned from the pandemic, and discussed how those lessons can be applied in a meaningful and practical way to enhance the lives of our building residents.
I had the honor of Zooming into the housing conference to welcome everyone. I stayed to hear Andrea join from Poland to share with the conference the incredible work that she, Edyta and Alina were doing, and to bring us all stories from the frontlines.
I have always been proud of the positive difference B’nai B’rith has made in so many lives by sending disaster relief where and when it is needed, by providing affordable housing to our seniors who would have nowhere to go without our help, and by bridging diplomatic differences in the world by fighting anti-Semitism and hate that endanger Jews. I have never been more emotionally moved by our efforts than when I sat in my hotel room in Bahrain, listening to Andrea talk to our senior housing conference professionals and volunteers in the United States via Zoom about what she was seeing and experiencing while helping Ukrainian refugees who needed all the support we could provide.
It is inspiring to be in the president’s seat of this nearly 179-year-old organization at a defining moment of our activities as we meet the challenges and needs of this war catastrophe. Our footprint is big, but our impact can often be felt at the most personal level in the most needed places in our world.
I invite you to learn more about our work by visiting www.bnaibrith.org. I hope that you will join me in providing monetary support for our efforts by regularly hitting the “Donate” button on our website. Thank you for your membership in, and support of, our great organization.
FROM THE CEO
Three B’nai B’rith Leaders: Monsky, Korey, Schoenberg
CEO, B’nai B’rith International
You’ve often heard us say or read about B’nai B’rith’s distinction of being only one of two Jewish organizations present at the creation of the United Nations, in San Francisco, in 1945. Our organization’s then-president, Henry Monsky (1890-1947) was elected to head the delegation of the Jewish umbrella group, the American Jewish Conference. There were solid reasons for the choice: since 1938, Monsky, one of the most recognized and respected American Jewish leaders in the world, had overseen an international organization with thousands of members in pre-War Europe, most of whom were killed in the Holocaust. He continued to do so as the world began to pick up the pieces after six years of destruction brought on by Hitler’s megalomaniacal regime.
In 1947, we were officially accredited at the U.N., and ever since, have taken our role seriously as an NGO dedicated to advancing human rights and to advocating for a safe and secure Israel. In 1960, we opened the first full-time office for U.N. Affairs in the Jewish community, led for many years by two standout champions of human rights: Dr. William Korey (1922-2009) and Dr. Harris Schoenberg (1942-2022).
Bill Korey was one of the world’s leading advocates for free emigration for Soviet Jewry, a cause he eloquently presented in his landmark book, “The Soviet Cage.” Before his death in 2009, Korey was working on a book about Raphael Lemkin (1900-1959), another great human rights leader, and the man who introduced the word “genocide” into the public lexicon.
Harris Schoenberg, who passed away this year, directed our efforts at the U.N. during the tumultuous period following the Yom Kippur War, when in 1975, the U.N. General Assembly adopted it infamous, malevolent “Zionism=Racism” resolution. His book, “Mandate for Terror: The United Nations and the PLO,” is still must-reading to understand the grip that the Palestinian narrative has on the world body.
I had the great privilege of working with both men. When I joined the Anti-Defamation League as Middle East Affairs Director in 1977, both were working out of B’nai B’rith’s U.N. office, in the same building which served as ADL’s national headquarters and which also housed B’nai B’rith’s New York offices.
Bill was one of my most cherished mentors. I spent hours on end in his office, discussing all aspects of the Soviet Jewry issue and USSR foreign policy. I never left without learning something new. He was a master wordsmith; indeed, one of the best writers on foreign affairs I’ve ever known.
Harris Schoenberg knew the ins and outs of the arcane U.N. bureaucracy like no other. He, like Henry Monsky and Bill Korey, was a fearless defender of Israel and the Jewish people. His intellect and his knowledge of the organization’s inner workings brought him the respect of friends—and foes—alike.
Today, both men would be on the front line of the battle against the double standards and bias to which Israel is subjected at the U.N. in New York, at the Human Rights Council in Geneva, at UNESCO in Paris and other agencies in its vast global system. While some incremental progress in voting patterns on Israel-related issues is evident here and there, the bias against Israel continues unabated.
Only a little more than a year ago, the Human Rights Council created a “Commission of Inquiry (COI) on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in Israel.” The commission is chaired by Navi Pillay, who served as the U.N.’s High Commissioner for Human Rights and whose career has been marked by outright hostility to Israel, and two others equally biased against the Jewish State: former U.N. Rapporteur Miloon Kothari and Chris Sidoti, described as a “human rights law expert.”
This commission has no shelf life. It can carry out its work without end and will be staffed by nearly 20 persons, at a cost of millions of dollars. Its mandate is “to investigate all underlying root causes of recurrent tensions, instability and protraction of conflict, including systematic discrimination and repression, based on ethnic, racial or religious identity.”
Photo credit: courtesy of Daniel Schoenberg
In other words, the world body, created on the ashes of World War II and the Holocaust, will now feature a permanent Star Chamber proceeding against the one and only state of the Jewish people. As we say, the Commission’s reports “are already written.”
Why does the U.N. persist is its perverse focus of Israel?
Bill Korey and Harris Schoenberg would undoubtedly say a combination of factors are at play: ideological affinity of many member states for the Palestinian narrative, the U.N.’s famous “go-along-to-get-along” way of horse-trading votes, and—for sure—a heavy dose of anti-Semitism. The COI represents a 21st century version of the old blood libel against the Jews in medieval Europe and later in the Middle East: the Jews (in this case, the Israelis) are responsible for the worst possible crimes against the Palestinians, who get an immediate and forever pass on acts of terror, rocket attacks and calls for Israel’s destruction and demise.
What stands out starkly in this picture is how anachronistic it is. The Abraham Accords and the normalization of relations among the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Israel have been a clear demonstration of how Arabs and Israelis can not only get along but can build an infrastructure of meaningful people-to-people relationships that can benefit all of their populations.
The U.N. is the last redoubt of the rejectionists. It continues to play an enabling role for the sour, angry and zero-sum narrative of the Palestinians. It is living in 1975. The world has clearly moved on: Israel has much to offer its neighbors, and beyond that, civilization as we know it, with its start-up, innovation driven energy and contributions to science, medicine, technology and agriculture. Many countries that know better, but still vote against Israel in U.N. venues, are seeking out Israeli expertise in a wide variety of fields. Hopefully, one day soon, that interest in Israeli ingenuity will translate into more votes against the rote resolutions which continually excoriate Israel.
In the meantime, the Palestinians, living as they do in a nihilistic cul-de-sac, continue to hammer away at Israel, always sure they can attract enough of a crowd of followers in the halls and corridors of the U.N. to join them in ganging up on Israel. That the Palestinian emperor has no clothes, though, is becoming increasingly apparent. The Palestinians don’t seem to feel they are missing the boat to normalization; they revel, instead, on hatred and the glorification of violence.
In the face of the persistent, malign motives of the COI, and of all the other anti-Israel measures adopted each year at the United Nations, B’nai B’rith carries on the work and perpetuates the legacy of three outstanding figures in the fight for Jewish dignity and the rightful place for Israel in the world.
We salute the memories of Henry Monsky, Bill Korey and Harris Schoenberg and honor their vital roles in the history of our organization.
COLUMN
- Message from the President
- Message from the CEO
- From the Vault
FEATURES
- IMPACT Welcome Message
- Report from the Ground: Ukraine Aid Mission
- Project to Address Charges of Apartheid Against Israel includes Discussion series and Online Publication
- Yom Ha Shoah Commemoration Events Acknowledge Holocaust Victims
- Connect: Young Leaders Program Update
- Rome and Saudi Arabia mission
- B’nai B’rith Leaders Make Milestone Visit to Abraham Accords Nations
- Office of EU Affairs Spearheads Digital Publication About Online Anti-Semitism
- Fifth Biannual Leadership Mission to Israel, Cyprus and Greece Celebrates and Strengthens Trilateral Relationship
- Project H.O.P.E. Thrives in 2022
- New Virtual Series Highlights B’nai B’rith in
- Latin America
B’nai B’rith “None Shall Be Afraid” Essay Contest 2022 - B’nai B’rith Extra
- Small Photo Spread (Not Written Yet)
- Disaster Relief Update: B’nai B’rith Donates to Hurricane Ida Rebuilding Efforts
- B’nai B’rith Australia Hosts the “Kabbalah Exhibition”
- Festivities in Frankfurt Acknowledge a Friend and Defender
- Moledet B’nai B’rith