Russian-Israeli family fights to stay united
Published 22 December, 2007, 22:36
An Israeli woman saved by a Russian woman during World War II is facing the threat of her only family member, who ironically is also Russian, being deported from Israel.
As a Jew, Anna Jagnos-Paliashkon was marked for Hitler’s gas chambers, where her entire family, apart from her sister, died during World War II. However, Anna managed to survive because her mother’s friend, a Russian, forged papers and pretended Anna was her daughter.
Five years ago Anna migrated to Israel with her family, but tragedy struck again. Her daughter died of cancer, while she herself had open-heart surgery and her husband went into a geriatric hospital .
Her only surviving family member is her son-in-law, Sergei, who is not Jewish. And because of this the Israeli authorities want to deport him.
As her husband has now been in hospital for five years, Anna Jagnos-Paliashkon fears being left completely alone.
“Sergei is so good! He comes to see me twice a weeik. He is like a son. He does everything for me. We go to the market place to buy food. It will be very difficult without him,” Jagnos-Paliashkon said.
Her son-in-law Sergei Dzhedan doesn’t understand why he's received an order to leave the country in two weeks.
“I just want to stay here. I have a lot of friends and plenty of work as an electrician. I don’t feel like I’ve done something wrong,” he told RT.
Anna says she’ll never return to Ukraine. The family sold everything when they moved to Israel. Sergei has nothing to return to either. His only family is Anna who he calls his mother. Yet again Anna finds herself at the mercy of history.
The Russian nationality that once saved her life now threatens to leave her on her own.
Automatic citizenship
More than one million Jews from the Former Soviet Union have come to live in Israel. They were granted automatic citizenship and even their spouses, thousands of whom were not Jewish, became Israeli. For some reason this didn’t happen with Sergei.
The Israel Religious Action Centre has filed a petition on Sergei’s behalf.
Though he met all the requirements, he still found himself caught up in a never-ending bureaucratic nightmare.
For four years, every two months, Sergei has been going to the Ministry of the Interior to process his application for citizenship but each time he gets turned away.
The Ministry of the Interior in Tel Aviv has refused to comment. Dozens of similar cases are already piled high on their desks.
Sergei’s case has now been submitted to the High Court of Justice and is awaiting a decision.
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