Surviving again: How needy Holocaust survivors cope with poverty
Naum Shagas doesn’t have much.
His studio apartment in North York, no more than 20-by-18 feet, is where he spends most of his time alone. It’s furnished entirely through donations and he sometimes has to put up with cockroaches.
Four hot meals are delivered to the 82-year-old’s door throughout the week and he picks up three additional meals, prepared for him free of charge, at the Bernard Betel Centre, a non-profit community centre for the elderly. Sometimes he’ll eat a slice of bread he bought on his own or drink a cup of tea to supplement his diet.
His wardrobe consists mainly of clothing he purchased decades ago in Minsk, where he worked as a physician for 36 years. But with no pension, he lives on just $400 a month.
It’s not the first time Shagas has had to struggle survive.
“I still have flashbacks, especially coming back now, of how my mother and older sister were running away and trying to escape the Germans,†Shagas said through a translator in his native Russian.
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