More than four million people have fled Ukraine since Russia invaded in February. Among them are thousands of Jewish people hoping to make a new home in Israel. Some of them are Holocaust survivors who are fleeing for a second time.
“You can imagine the atmosphere: nervous tension and [an] unpredictable destiny. What can one expect other than being murdered?” asked Zinovii Lekarev, a Holocaust survivor and current refugee from Kharkiv.
“Almost all the buildings around us burned down. It was a miracle that our building didn’t burn,” said Liudmyla Polunova, a Jewish refugee who fled Mariupol. “You understand, when a mortar hits a building, it starts a fire and there are no means to extinguish the fire. There is no water in the city.”
While the forced flight is a nightmare for many fleeing Ukrainians, the Jewish refugees have a unique hope for the future.
“I will say something that I heard in the borders when the Jewish community [is] waiting for people there, and there [were] buses and they know they're going to live. And they know that Israel is helping them to come. They say, ‘if already to be a refugee, it's better to be a Jewish refugee,’” said Benny Hadad, Head of the Aliyah Department of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ).
The IFCJ is one of the organizations banding together with the Israeli government, the Jewish Agency and other Jewish groups to make it possible.
Aliona Grossu, CEO of the Jewish Community of the Republic of Moldova, which borders Ukraine, says when they heard about the war, they knew the world would never be the same.
“So, from this day we have started organizing a rescue operation for the members of the Jewish communities from Ukraine,” Grossu told CBN News.
“Here [in Kishinev] with the Jewish community, with the Joint, with all the organizations, we built an opportunity to have places for the people to sleep, to eat and to be in a safe, warm place,” Hadad told CBN News.
Overnight, the municipality of Kishinev (Chi?inau), Moldova’s capital, donated an indoor tennis center to receive refugees, now dubbed “the Hub.”
From the border, these refugees are taken either to the Israeli Consulate in Kishinev or the Hub, where the Jewish Agency determines their eligibility to immigrate to Israel, the Foreign Ministry provides them with travel documents and then IFCJ books them on charter flights. The refugees can choose if they want to go to Israel or elsewhere in Europe. Israel’s emergency medical service, Magen David Adom, also has a team there to treat the fleeing refugees.
CBN News met Liudmyla Polunova, her mother Tetiana and 16-year-old son Andreii at the Hub, while they were waiting for permission to go to Israel.
“It’s a catastrophe. It was a miracle that we were able to leave Mariupol now,” Liudmyla told us. “On March 12th an aircraft bomb fell next to our house. All the windows, glass, window frames, and doors were shattered in the apartments. It was freezing outside, and it was impossible to stay in the apartment.”
Liudmyla and her family took shelter in the basement of the building for a week.
“We are thankful to the neighbors. We survived because of them. We left thanks to my son. We found out that in the 9-story building next door…there was phone reception on the ninth floor,” Liudmyla explained.
“My son remembered that his classmate lived in the neighboring town of Mangush and her father owned a minibus. My son ran to the 9th floor, called her and her father took us out the very next day,” she said.
It wasn’t the first time this family has had to escape. They fled the Donetsk region under heavy fighting in 2014. This time they have a different outlook.
“We expect peace. We expect some kind of wellbeing, [a] peaceful life. Because we were kicked out of Donetsk, kicked out of Mariupol and now I simply don’t know what to do. I want a future for my son,” she said.
“I hope everything will go well [in Israel] - that this whole thing will be over. It’s hard to move of course, all my friends are [in Ukraine]. But at least there will be peace [in Israel],” said Andreii.
“I think Israel is our salvation. And I think everything will go well for us. The main thing is for us to be healthy, to be alive because we couldn’t even hope that everything would end so well,” said Tetiana.