Zionist Federation of Australia ZFA Newsletters - Zionist Federation of Australia

A very interesting read about new Olim/Olot who fought COVID-19 in Israel on the frontline including Aussie immigrant Shoshi Dessauer. Shoshi Dessauer is a former leader of Bnei Akiva and was a Zionist Seminar madricha. She made Aliyah from Melbourne in 2011 and is a registered nurse at the emergency room of Hadassah-University Medical Center, in Jerusalem’s Ein Kerem. She talked to Jerusalem Post about her experience at the start of the pandemic: At the beginning of 2020, when reports started to emerge about a new infectious disease from China spreading around the world, Shoshi Dessauer... was not particularly worried it would affect Israel.“We were all a bit skeptical,” Dessauer told The Jerusalem Post. “We did not think that the virus would make its way into Israel and even if it did, we expected it to be just a different type of flu.”Little did she know that within a few weeks, life in Israel and in most of the world would turn upside down, the borders would close and the government would impose a full lockdown – which resulted, among other things, in her first Seder night spent at the emergency room.“It was a weird experience, but if I wasn’t going to spend it with my family at home, I felt the need to be with my family at work while doing something important,” she explained.Dessauer immigrated to Israel from Melbourne, Australia, in 2011, following her dream to build a life and a family in the Jewish state.New immigrants represent about 30% of Israel’s 33,000 doctors and 41,000 nurses. As the health system battled against COVID, many of them found themselves at the forefront of the fight against the pandemic, sometimes with the additional burden of having left their families on the other side of the world, like Dessauer did.“We really felt like we were on the front line because as an emergency room, we had to learn on the job what the virus was, how to treat the patients, what kind of equipment we needed to wear,” she said.The nurse explained that it has been very difficult.“I received a lot of support from people in Israel and abroad, but working so hard, without ever being able to have downtime and seeing family and friends, felt very isolating,” Dessauer pointed out. “The amazing part from the beginning was this big sense of mission and togetherness, that we were going to figure it out together and beat this thing.” ...

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