Naomi Segal Bronstein saved thousands of orphans

By Joe Spier

CALGARY, Alberta, Canada — Naomi Segal Bronstein died on December 23, 2010 at the age of 65 in her sleep at the orphanage she founded in Guatemala, a country of poverty and calamity. Her heart had given out. At the end, plagued by ill health, her body and mind weary, almost broke, only through inner resolve Naomi was still carrying out what she had devoted her life to for over four decades, saving the sick and orphaned children of the world. Naomi Bronstein’s body was returned to her native Montreal for burial following which the family sat shiva.

Naomi Segal was born on September 22, 1945, in Outremont, the daughter of Tillie and Edward Segal, a textile merchant. She grew up in a comfortable Jewish home, had a conventional upbringing, but even as a child was enthused with the idea of helping the sick and dispossessed. At the age of 18, she married another youthful idealist, Herbert Bronstein, a knitting mill sales manager. By 1969, they already had three children of their own and decided to adopt another. In the process, Naomi and Herb learned of the prejudice against international adoptions especially from Vietnam where children, predominantly those with black fathers, were left to languish in orphanages. They were dying and no one cared. An activist, Naomi decided to go to Vietnam.

Upon her arrival, the Vietnam War was in its 14^th year and the victims were hundreds of thousands of orphaned and abandoned children. At first, Naomi volunteered in overcrowded orphanages and then helped found an adoptive agency “Families for Children” which brought hundreds of Vietnamese and other Third World orphans to North America for adoption. During this time, Naomi adopted four babies herself. By the end, Naomi would be the mother of twelve children, seven of whom were adopted, six from war-torn and third world countries, mostly Asian and one a racially mixed Canadian child.

In 1969-70, the United States escalated the war by secretly bombing Cambodia. To add to the chaos, the extremist Communist Khmer Rouge were attacking from the countryside. Naomi decided to make a trip into Cambodia where she found a large number of malnourished and sick babies abandoned by their parents fleeing from the Khmer Rouge. Naomi started an orphanage in Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh that she called “Canada House”. Canada House received food donated by Canadians. On one occasion, a jar of gefilte fish arrived, presumably because the donor knew Naomi was Jewish. The staffer who received the gefilte fish, not knowing what it was gave it to the local priest to feed his cat. The cat loved the gefilte fish.

As the Khmer Rouge advanced upon Phnom Penh in 1975, all Westerners were advised to leave. Sixty-five of the babies had paperwork for adoption in Canada and Naomi was determined to save them from the Cambodian genocide of 1.7 million people that was about to begin. The only way out was by air to Saigon, where they were flown to under fire by an American Air Force plane.

When Naomi arrived back in Saigon with the sixty-five children, the North Vietnamese were advancing on the capital city which was about to fall. Once again, all Westerners were advised to leave.  U.S. President Gerald Ford announced “Operation Baby Lift” the mass evacuation of children at risk from South Vietnam to America and other countries including Canada. He ordered a C-5A Galaxy, the largest jumbo jet in the world, to Saigon to initiate the airlift.  Naomi and the babies were scheduled to evacuate on that flight. However, a Canadian government plane for anyone trying to get to Canada was to fly out the next day and Naomi decided that she and the 65 Cambodian babies would leave on the Canadian aircraft to free up their spaces on the American plane for more Vietnamese children.

On April 4, 1975, shortly after 4 p.m., the American Galaxy departed Saigon’s Tan Son Nhat Airport with 314 people aboard, 240 of them children, the others aid workers and military personnel. Naomi had helped load the children aboard. Twelve minutes into the flight and 23,000 feet in the air an explosion blew the rear cargo doors of the giant craft and a rapid decompression filled the plane with fog and debris. Some were sucked out. In what has been called “a remarkable demonstration of flying skill”, the U.S. Air Force pilots were able to turn the plane back toward Saigon but wouldn’t make it. Naomi watched horrified as the plane crash-landed two miles from the airfield. The aircraft broke into several pieces and parts became engulfed in flames. One hundred and thirty eight died including seventy-eight children. Many of the survivors were injured. It was one of the worst aircraft disasters in history.

Naomi sprang into action. Commandeering an orphanage ambulance she raced to the crash site to help transport the injured to hospitals. What she saw was gruesome; bloody bodies, crushed lives, burning flesh, limbs falling off stretchers, children like broken dolls.

Next day, Naomi boarded the Canadian aircraft with the sixty-five Cambodian babies and brought them to Canada to start their new lives with adoptive parents. She had saved every one of them.

Back in Canada, Naomi was numb for an entire year, her soul shattered, haunted by the horror of what she saw and the guilt of having survived.  During the day she was like a zombie and at night searing visions of the crash returned. She woke up screaming all the time.

In 1976, Naomi was motivated and galvanized to continue her life-saving work with children. An earthquake devastated Guatemala. Twenty three thousand people were killed and 1.2 million left homeless. In addition, the country was in the midst of a civil war. Naomi located her entire family to Guatemala City, the capital. What she found there were countless orphaned and abandoned children many whose entire existence lay picking through garbage dumps for scraps of food. Malnutrition was more severe than any she had seen in Vietnam and Cambodia. Naomi opened an orphanage, which she again called “Canada House”.  Many of the children in the orphanage died because they had no hope of surgery readily available in the developed world. Therefore, Naomi started “Healing the Children” which sent children to the United States for life-saving surgery by volunteer doctors and hospitals. Five years after starting the orphanage, in 1981, Naomi and her family left Guatemala. The civil war had become exceedingly dangerous and two of her younger children had been victims of a kidnap attempt. It was unsafe for the family. They relocated to Ottawa.

The family lived in Ottawa until 1986 and then returned to Montreal. During the 1980s, Naomi worked with “Heal the Children Canada” a group she co-founded that brought children from the most underdeveloped countries to Canada for crucial surgeries.

In 1989, her children now grown, Naomi was on the road again, this time to Korea. There, on behalf of “Heal the Children Canada” she was arranging life-saving surgeries in Canada for Korean children. Procedures were scheduled for 21 Korean adolescents but had to be cancelled because there was not enough money to pay for them. To draw attention to the plight of the children, Naomi staged a 21-day hunger strike that helped raise the funds and the children all received the operations.

Through the 1990s, Naomi continued to travel the war zones and the poverty-stricken areas of the world arranging critically needed surgeries for children. The marriage could not survive her absences. After 33 years together, Naomi and Herb divorced but remained friends.

By the year 2000, Naomi, now in her mid 50s, was back in Guatemala at the orphanage she began some 24 years earlier.  She was again arranging life-saving operations for the children, but this time the volunteer doctors and support staff together with their surgical equipment were coming to her.

In the rural areas of Guatemala, the mortality rate amongst children under 2 years of age was 80% as there were no doctors, no medicines, nothing. Naomi started a “Mobile Medical Clinic” using donated buses that she converted. The buses were able to bring medical attention to the children of the poorest and worst areas of the country.

Near the end of the decade, Naomi’s financial backing unexpectedly ceased. She lost her house in Montreal. All alone, bereft of all support, in poor health, her heart weakened, yet stubborn and single-minded Naomi refused to leave Guatemala. There she passed away in 2010.

Over four decades, Naomi is credited with saving as many as 140,000 lives by providing medical care and adoptive families for the abandoned, destitute and ill children of impoverished and ravaged countries. She did it largely alone, not trusting the governments of the Third World nor even the developed world to act in the best interest of the children. Naomi was impatient, with a sharp tongue laced with expletives, not given to the niceties of diplomacy and intolerant of the obstacles of bureaucracy.  Earning the admiration of her peers, they dubbed Naomi, “the swearing Mother Teresa.” Naomi was the recipient of multiple awards including an Honorary Doctorate Degree from the University of Quebec and the Order of Canada, our country’s highest civilian award.

Our Talmud tells us that, “Whoever saves a life, is as if he saved an entire world.” Naomi Segal Bronstein saved thousands.

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Spier is a retired lawyer with a keen interest in Jewish history.  You may contact him via joe.spier@sdjewishworld.com