When asked what drives him to work with Holocaust survivors at Jewish Family and Children’s Service of Greater Philadelphia, Steve Zakusilo said, “it’s a long story,” but in short, it’s his grandmother.
Zakusilo was born and raised on the border of Ukraine under the former Soviet Union and Poland.
The year the Soviet Union officially dissolved, Zakusilo was returning from a trip in the Netherlands. When he arrived, he was told his country no longer existed and his passport was no longer valid.
“We spent, on the border, 48 hours sitting in a big bus not knowing what was going to happen to the country that we left nine months ago,” he explained.
After being permitted to cross the border, Zakusilo said life in Ukraine was “brutal.” He and his family stood in long lines to get food, and some days they didn’t have anything to put on the table. He saw firsthand how the fallout affected the most vulnerable populations, and he thought of his grandmother.
“My grandma, during World War II, was in Germany in a work camp, and seeing the full effect of system breakdown and everything that [was] going on, [I started] thinking about social work,” Zakusilo said. “Of course, there was no social work in Ukraine, the former Soviet Union.”
Zakusilo said that he and his grandmother were very close. “I know her experience.”
“I don’t think she ever told us who she really was,” he explained. “When you grow up in [the] Soviet Union, you don’t talk about those things. You have to hide your identity completely. People change their last names and you do everything that is possible [so as] not to have that yellow marker on your passport.”
Zakusilo’s grandmother grew up in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood in Ukraine. She was taken to Germany by the Nazis during World War II. After surviving the camp, Zakusilo noted she had the opportunity to go to America or Israel, but instead she returned to take care of her mother in Ukraine.
“That drive [to] take care of your elders … that is Jewish-[centered] … It’s fully embedded in me,” he said.
In the late 1990s, when Zakusilo was in his early 20s, he and his family decided to move to the United States. “I barely had a suitcase with me,” he said.
Some of his first jobs in America were trading stocks on Wall Street in the corporate world, but he knew that wasn’t what he wanted to do. He wanted to make a difference, and Zakusilo thought back to the idea of social work and working with older adults.
He spent time researching different social work programs. In 2015, Zakusilo graduated summa cum laude from West Chester University of Pennsylvania with a bachelor’s degree in social work. He then went on to complete his master’s at Bryn Mawr College. Since then, he has been working for JFCS.
“I think [working at JFCS has been] the most meaningful decade in my life,” said Zakusilo.
Today, Zakusilo is the program director of JFCS’ Holocaust Survivor Support Program and describes his job as “working in a living museum.”
“When you walk through [a] museum, you admire the painting or some kind of a sculpture. It doesn’t talk back to you, but this museum actually gives you a narrative and gives you a story,” he explained. “This [experience] is something that I don’t think any other work [can give you]. JFCS gives us the tools and ability to make a difference, and resources and the community partners that we partner with, nationwide and local, gives [us] that ability to do a lot of good for a population who deserve the most.”
At JFCS, Zakusilo and his team serve roughly 500 clients annually, all of whom are Holocaust survivors, in and around Philadelphia, including Bucks, Montgomery, Delaware and Chester counties.
He added that working with his clients is a privilege, not only to preserve their memory, but to learn from them, and the best way to do that is to create a connection.
“When you have that personal connection with somebody who lived through this kind of experience, this is not like reading a book. It’s not like reading a story or watching the movie. It’s not even going to Auschwitz,” Zakusilo explained. “I think it’s deeper … that connection stays with you.”