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Helping more survivors survive

The Beverly and Congressman C.W. Bill Young Treatment Annex will help everyone from refugees to the disabled.

By LORRI HELFAND
Published January 19, 2006

	[Times photo: Douglas R. Clifford]
	Sher Ghorzang of St. Petersburg keeps his daughter, Savera Ghorzang, warm at the center's groundbreaking. Ghorzang, a journalist, and his family took political asylum in the United States from Afghanistan in 2001 after he was tortured by the Taliban for refusing to broadcast propaganda.

LARGO - As a newscaster in Afghanistan, Sher Ghorzang was tortured by the Taliban because he refused to broadcast propaganda.

As a prisoner in three Nazi concentration camps, Rachel Nurman was battered and brutalized because she was Jewish.

As an African youth, Peter Malith was forced to trek through the wilderness without food or water because he was Christian.

All three, now residents of Tampa Bay, have learned to cope with their painful pasts and survive daily challenges with help from Gulf Coast Jewish Family Services near U.S. 19 and Ulmerton Road.

And the fact that so many others like them are moving to the area has prompted Gulf Coast to launch a major expansion of a center to treat refugees, the frail elderly and residents with physical or mental disabilities.

"It gives me hope, and I have people like my mom and my daddy. I feel like I still have a family," said Malith, 26, who lost touch with his family about 18 years ago.

Gulf Coast, which has more than 50 programs, provides counseling, medical care and a variety of social services for about 40,000 people a year in 12 Florida counties.

Through its community care division, it serves the children, elderly, mentally ill and physically disabled of all faiths. It also has specialized services to help refugees, victims of torture from 36 countries, Holocaust survivors and people diagnosed with HIV and AIDS.

"We have big city problems," said the nonprofit's chief executive officer and president, Michael Bernstein. "The needs are tremendous."

They're so great that Gulf Coast decided to add about 5,300 square feet to its 15,000-square-foot facility at 14041 Icot Blvd. On Wednesday, the nonprofit broke ground on the Beverly and Congressman C.W. Bill Young Treatment Annex, a $900,000 addition to its main building.

When complete, the facility will allow Gulf Coast to move its AIDS, torture survivor and refugee programs from their current satellite locations to the main building.

Young helped secure about $492,000 in federal money for the project, which is also supported by donations. The city of Largo contributed about $48,000 to repair the roof in the current building.

"Thank you for what you have done. What little bit of help I can provide, believe me it's going to be here because we understand the value of freedom," Young told a group of refugees and torture survivors before the groundbreaking ceremony.

Nurman, 75, said Gulf Coast helps pay her rent and provides food and counseling. When she was a teen, Nurman, 75, said she bunked near Anne Frank at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, one of three concentration camps where Nurman was imprisoned during World War II. Nurman still remembers how Auschwitz guards sicced dogs on her, kicked her in the shins and beat her with gun butts until she passed out.

"It's amazing what people are able to go through and endure and survive and become stronger and stronger because of it," Young said.

Ghorzang's 14-year-old daughter, Hila, shared a poem she wrote about violence in the world.

"Everywhere I go I see people dying. I take a deep breath, put my hands on my head and start crying. I hope all this stops so I can see all my people with big dreams make it to the top," recited Hila, who grew up in Afghanistan as the Taliban rose to power.

The organization, which counseled Hila's family, helped her father, Sher, 40, find work at a department store and helped her mother, Rona, 32, learn English.

Gulf Coast, established in 1960, is the lead agency in the Florida Center for Survivors of Torture. Since the center began in 2000, it has provided counseling, medical care, legal aid and social services to more than 500 torture survivors like Hila's father.

Lorri Helfand can be reached at 445-4155 or at lorri@sptimes.com

Annual budget: $24-million.

Serves: 40,000 people a year.

Size of annex: 5,300 square feet.

Completion of annex: By end of the year.

To help: (727) 538-7150.

[Last modified January 19, 2006, 01:48:21]