---
title: ‘You Give Me Wings’
date: 2022-05-04T05:30:00-04:00
author: University of Maryland
canonical_url: "https://today.umd.edu/you-give-me-wings"
section: Articles
---
# ‘You Give Me Wings’

*May 4, 2022* — by [Rachael Grahame ’17](/author/rachael-keeney-17)


> Hearing and Speech Clinic Partnership With Local Agency Provides Hearing Aids to Over 150 Holocaust Survivors

*IMG 4478 1920x1080 — Clinical audiology doctoral student Anhelina Bilokon Au.D. ’24 (right) works with Larisa Tulchinsky at UMD's HESP Clinic. Tulchinsky, a Holocaust survivor who is a client of the Jewish Social Services Agency (JSSA) in Rockville, Md., recently received hearing aids at no cost through a program run by the clinic and the agency. Below, notes from some of the more than 150 people who've received hearing aids are often written in Russian—and sometimes include family photos.*

As children or young people primarily living in the Soviet Union while the bloody tides of World War II swept over Eastern Europe, clients of the Jewish Social Services Agency (JSSA) in Rockville, Md., had to gather whatever they could carry and flee at a moment’s notice, or to dig mass graves in the woods near their homes for community members murdered by Nazis.

Fast forward to today, and the University of Maryland’s [Hearing and Speech (HESP) Clinic](https://hespclinic.umd.edu/)and JSSA have helped more than 150 of those Holocaust survivors, who made new lives in the United States and now reside in Maryland and Northern Virginia. At no cost to the clients, the JSSA and HESP Clinic have been testing survivors’ hearing and fitting them with hearing aids since 2015.

“I am so very grateful to you for such heartfelt tenderness and warmth that you have shown me. You brought comfort and helped improve my quality of life,” said one survivor, Vladimir Bakaleynik, who asked JSSA Holocaust Survivors Program Manager Deborah Adler to pass on his thanks to HESP Clinic personnel.


*Thank you notes*




**Topics:** [Campus & Community](https://today.umd.edu/tags/campus-community)


**Tags:** [Hearing and Speech Sciences](https://today.umd.edu/topic/hearing-and-speech-sciences)


**Units:** [College of Behavioral and Social Sciences](https://today.umd.edu/topic/college-behavioral-and-social-sciences)