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Mar. 4, 2021
When Germany’s main Jewish organization sought to help the community when the coronavirus crisis hit last year, it faced two unique problems: The Jewish community is scattered across more than 100 locations nationwide; and many local Jews struggle to understand German having emigrated from the former Soviet Union in the 1990s.
The Central Welfare Board of Jews in Germany, founded in 1917, was well placed to meet those challenges, though, and to assist the country’s estimated 116,000 Jews, as the board’s main task in recent decades has been to aid the Russian Jews who headed west.
“One of the first things our organization did was to translate all the COVID-19-related information to Russian,” the organization’s head of communications, Laura Cazés, tells Haaretz. And it wasn’t just facts the board disseminated. “We have a very hands-on approach, which means we’re physically present in the Jewish communities across Germany, delivering more than