Agencies Assisting Jewish Refugees in Addis Ababa Caught in a Dilemma

Jewish agencies seeking to care for the 15,000 Ethiopian Jews now housed in that country’s capital city of Addis Ababa are facing a difficult dilemma.

They must try to sustain the population in relatively good health and humane conditions until they can be brought to Israel. But at the same time, they cannot make the Jews appear to be overprivileged in a country where thousands are ravaged daily by hunger, disease and civil war.

“You cannot make the Jews conspicuous by making them so much better off than everyone else. This would make them targets for jealousy, resentment and even muggings,” said Barbara Ribakove Gordon, executive director of the North American Conference on Ethiopian Jewry.

Yet Gordon, who has just returned from a weeklong stay in Addis Ababa, said it would be impossible for world Jewry to let hunger and disease take their toll on the Ethiopian Jews as they wait for passage to Israel.

“Somehow, we have to strike a balance,” she said.

Gordon painted a bleak and disturbing portrait of life for the Ethiopian Jews now living in Addis Ababa, waiting to rejoin their families and the rest of their community in Israel.

Gordon, along with Michael Schneider, executive vice president of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, and Arnon Mantwer, director general of the Immigration and Absorption Department of the Jewish Agency for Israel, have all visited Addis Ababa over the past month.

Gordon said that the various parties have developed “plans of action,” dividing up responsibilities to provide for the care and maintenance of the Ethiopians during their stay in the capital.

“The complications and difficulties cannot be imagined,” she said.

NO CLOTHING OTHER THAN RAGS

Progress has being made in improving their lot. Blankets provided by JDC have been distributed to the Jews. Until then, most were sleeping on the rock-and-mud floors of their shanties in “the worst slums” of the city, Gordon said.

The North American Conference, she said, would try to supplement JDC efforts by providing additional medical supplies, as well as clothing.

“The people have no clothing other than the rags they were wearing when they arrived in Addis,” she said.

The trip was Gordon’s eighth visit to Ethiopia. She said that in the slums of the capital she met Ethiopian Jews whom she had known previously in their villages in the Gondar region. Their living conditions back then were primitive, but far more orderly and sanitary than their current status as squatters in Addis Ababa.

The Jews fled to the capital from their native Gondar after the area was racked by fighting between rebel forces and government troops.

“It all happened very quickly,” Gordon said. “One day we had 3,000 people in Addis, the next day we had 9,000 and then we had 13,000.”

The Jews arrived in the city starving and suffering from various diseases. A recent story in the Jerusalem Post said community leaders in Addis Ababa has reported 60 deaths in the Jewish community, mostly among infants and children.

The Israeli government and the American Jewish relief agencies are working to combat the sicknesses by inoculating as much of the population as possible and by increasing the medical staff at the clinics set up to care for the Ethiopian Jews.

“We are dealing with malnourished people who have tuberculosis, malaria, and they need a great deal of medical care to restore them to health,” Gordon said. “With additional doctors, nurses and medical supplies, I have real hope that we are going to make a major difference.”