The letters are simple, full of gratitude and overflowing with history.
"Zane, I received your letter of May 21 on June 13," wrote Sonia, an 89-year-old Ukrainian Holocaust survivor. "I also received the gelt [money] -- thank you very much to everyone."
She continued, "During the war, our family was evacuated to far Siberia. We lived through cruel deprivations; hungry, naked and barefoot we returned home after Kiev was liberated. My father died while in the evacuation, my brother perished at the front. Much time passed before life somehow straightened itself out."
The letter, among hundreds of others, is a thank-you note, from a beneficiary of the Survivor Mitzvah Project, a charity founded by actress and director Zane Buzby that distributes money to impoverished Eastern European survivors of the Holocaust. On Friday, designated Holocaust Remembrance Day, Buzby talked about her life in Hollywood and her new work.
Buzby was born in New York City to Jewish parents who were first-generation Americans. She came to Los Angeles in 1978 as the singer in a rock 'n' roll band and was quickly cast in a role as Jade East, a wild-haired, pill-popping groupie, in "Cheech and Chong's Up in Smoke." Then came a series of comedies, such as "National Lampoon's Class Reunion" and "This Is Spinal Tap." In the 1980s, she took up directing television sitcoms.
Buzby, who is vague about her age, has long, curly auburn hair that flows loosely around her face in a style that isn't too different from the one she wore 30 years ago. She speaks quickly and passionately, constantly leaning forward and gesturing with her hands.
The project started seven years ago when Buzby went to Eastern Europe to visit her grandmother's hometown, which she thought was in Lithuania but turned out to be in Belarus.
As she rearranged her plans and waited for a new visa, she met a language professor who gave her a list of eight Holocaust survivors living in Belarus and asked her to visit them.
"They're lonely, they're forgotten," he told her.
At the first home, she found a man digging for potatoes in the field behind his small house. He hoped he could get them all dug up before winter set in.
"That's all they eat," Buzby said. "No nutrition."
Back home, she couldn't stop thinking about winter. "How are they going to make it?" she thought.
Her first gift was simple. She took eight $20 bills, folded each inside some heart-shaped paper and mailed them to the people she'd met.
