Eastern Europe Relief

Eastern Europe Relief is one of the foundation's more recent projects, yet nonetheless an important one. After the fall of the "Iron Curtain", it became clear to all just how much poverty and hardship the years of communism had left behind in Eastern Europe.

While the people of East Germany received swift help after reunification, in the other countries of the former Eastern bloc bitter hardship persists in many places.

The elderly and the sick suffer particularly. For many years this work was led by Ladislaus Pöhm, a retired teacher from Lohr, who with extraordinary personal commitment helped many people, above all in Romania and Hungary. He stepped down in 2007 on grounds of age, handing the work over to Gerhard Ullrich, who takes up the cause of people in Eastern Europe with equal commitment.

We support families and care homes for the elderly in Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Poland and Ukraine. Time and again we receive moving letters of thanks and joy in response to gifts that are often small.

Total funding to date amounted to EUR 360,000.