Charles Abelsohn – Letter from Israel – From Oppression to Freedom
14 April (Passover) 2022
Hi again from Israel,
Unless you live on Mars or Venus, you will be aware of the war in Ukraine. There is 24/7 news of the conflict in all the media together with opinions and analyses. Peisach/Passover celebrates how a people went from oppression to freedom. I do not intend to write about this war. Rather, in this Letter and in the spirit of Passover, we will share the personal experiences of a few Ukrainians who successfully were able to escape the hell of the Russian attacks to the heaven of freedom and of assistance and medical services provided by Israel to assist these refugees. From these few stories about individuals and groups, please try to imagine the terror and fear and indeed damage of property and loss of friends and family being endured and suffered by the Ukrainian population of more than 40 million civilians.
As usual, you are welcome to distribute all or part of this letter to your friends and family.
As always, shalom from Israel together with my warm wishes for a Chag Pesach kasher ve`sameach, a festive and kosher Passover and a happy Easter.
Charles
Charles M. Abelsohn
Truth Be Told
Israeli field hospital on Ukraine border performs first C-Section
Israel is the only country to have established a field hospital in Ukraine. The “Kohav Meir – Shining Star” hospital, above, named after former prime minister Golda Meir, was established by the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Health, and Sheba (Tel Hashomer) Medical Centre, with the assistance of the entire Israeli healthcare system and with the help of Sheba Beyond, the remote medicine unit that operates out of Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer. Over 80 medical staff from various hospitals across Israel are working in the hospital, operating even under the threat of Russian missiles. Israel`s field hospital is the only foreign hospital operating in Ukraine.
Sheba Beyond enables patients to be treated and monitored by doctors and medical staff not physically on the scene themselves but located in Israel, allowing for more people to be treated thoroughly and at a faster pace.
Medical workers give treatment to patients at the Israeli field hospital, in Mostyska near the Polish border, in Lviv, western Ukraine
Since the start of operations at the field hospital, more than 2,300 refugees in need of medical care have been treated, of whom many have been hospitalized. Over 300 children have been treated. Babies have been born. We will look at one such birth.
Since its inception, the field hospital has offered a high standard of medical treatment and provided the best quality medical response to a steady stream of refugees, incorporating the use of advanced and groundbreaking technologies from the Sheba Beyond Virtual Hospital.
The most common complaints for which refugees have been treated are hypertension, back pain, abdominal pain, diabetes, and coronary heart disease. The hospital includes a triage area; an ER ward; men’s, women’s, and children’s wards; labor and delivery facilities, imaging and telehealth technologies, mental health services, a lab, a pharmacy, and an outpatient clinic. The medical staff has performed multiple surgeries, including orthopedic surgery. They have also performed to date some 8,000 lab analyses.
The Sheba Medical Center team working in Israel’s Ukraine field hospital has now completed the hospital’s first Cesarean delivery.
The team was led by Dr. Michal Kirschenabum, along with surgeon Dr. Hadas Ilan and midwife Dana Schenkel.
The baby was delivered safely despite the limited equipment and resources available to the medical staff, weighed 3.32 kilos.
The baby after being delivered via a successful C-Section.
“Our mission is to make sure that Ukrainian people know that they are not alone,” said Yoel Har-Even, director of Sheba Global who leads the mission alongside Prof. Elhanan Bar-On, director of the Israel Center for Humanitarian Emergency and Disaster Medicine.
“We have a clear moral obligation not to look away – as human beings, as medical professionals and as Jews.”
100 Ukrainian Jewish orphans arrive in Israel
Around a hundred Jewish orphans, ranging in age from 2 to 12 years of age successfully escaped the fighting in Ukraine as part of a complex rescue operation that ultimately saw them relocated to Israel.
Ukrainian Jewish children on their way to the Romanian city of Cluj-Napoca to be taken to Israel.
Several Israeli diplomats and officials were involved in the effort, with Jerusalem’s consul in Romania, Roni Shabtai, leading the way. Shabtai recounted: “I’m 57 years old and worked for 30 years in service of the state. I’ve had emotional moments in my career, but never anything like this.”
The operation required complex advance planning, since many of the children, who began their journey from the Alumim Jewish orphanage in the northern Ukrainian city of Zhytomyr, did not have proper travel papers. They faced serious logistical problems exiting the Ukraine, with thousands of people streaming to land borders. The children ultimately had to walk long distances on foot in difficult weather conditions, including in temperatures below 20 degrees Fahrenheit and were stranded in the border area for six days before being successfully extracted.
The children were placed on buses after arriving at the border. They were then sent to the Romanian city of Cluj-Napoca and from there to Israel.
Foreign Ministry officials gave the children blankets, socks, hand warmers, and traveling gear, and accompanied them until their arrival in Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett seen with the Jewish orphans.
Upon arrival in Israel, they were greeted at Ben Gurion Airport by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and cabinet ministers.
Israel’s flag carrier El Al transported the refugees, with the airline saying that Ukrainian-speaking staff was on board the flight carrying the orphans to offer assistance.
“We are now seeing the children immigrating to Israel. It is the most moving thing there is,” Bennett told the media as he greeted the children on the tarmac. He later tweeted in Hebrew that he told the children that they are “safe now, you have reached a safe shore.”
Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid: “There is no country like this in the world. Well into the harsh war in Ukraine, there are moments for which words are not enough.”
(Earlier in the day, three flights carrying 300 Ukrainian refugees arrived in Israel from Poland and Moldova).
Jewish-Ukranian orphans celebrate their bar mitzvah at the Kotel
Following their arrival in Israel, several of the boys from the Alumim Jewish orphanage were immediately made part of an annual Bar Mitzvah ceremony for orphan boys made possible by the Colel Chabad social services. Just weeks after being forced to flee the town of Zhytomyr, Ukraine, these boys participated in an emotional bar mitzvah celebration at the Kotel (Western Wall).
“Our goal with this event is to provide each and every boy here today, all of whom have experienced their own individual traumas, with the understanding that this special point in their lives has not been forgotten,” explains Rabbi Sholom Duchman, Director of Colel Chabad. “There is something incredibly rewarding to know that these boys whose lives were in complete turmoil amidst a brutal war just a few weeks ago, are now blessed to celebrate their bar mitzvahs at this holiest and most special of places.”
The boys were presented with a brand-new set of tefillin, gift certificates for new clothing, along with other gifts. At the Western Wall, they were danced down to the Wall where volunteers helped them put on their new tefillin and celebrate their coming of age.
Ukrainian orphans celebrate their bar mitzvah at the Kotel
After the Kotel ceremony, the boys and their families were taken by bus to the Binyanei Hauma (Jerusalem`s International Convention Center) for a fully-catered celebration accompanied by musical entertainment and other surprises. A separate event had been held for bat mitzvah girls last month, before the arrival of the Ukrainian group.
Ukrainian orphans celebrate their bar mitzvah at the Kotel
Among the bar mitzvah boys who came from the Zhytomyr orphanage was Tima Kobakov who described in English how happy he was to be at the celebration and that he was appreciative of Israel for providing a home for him and his siblings in the face of the ongoing challenges in Ukraine. “I don’t know how to explain what I am feeling but I can only say I am very happy and this is a special day.”
Israeli medical clowns bring smiles, relieve stress for Ukraine refugees in Moldova
MOLDOVA — There are nearly 50 Israeli and Jewish organizations providing aid and assistance to all who in Ukraine require such aid and assistance. Among the unbelievable number of Israelis who have dropped everything to go volunteer with refugees fleeing Ukraine are a clutch of funny-looking people with odd costumes and big red noses who blow bubbles, use squeaky hammers and hug a lot.
There are only four of them at any one time, but their effect seems disproportionate to their numbers, as they light up the faces of exhausted women, children, and elderly men, many of whom have been on the road for days.
These are professional medical clowns who in normal times work as an integral part of medical teams in more than 30 hospitals across Israel. Other clown groups are working with Ukrainian refugees already in Israel.
In Moldova, the four clowns, always working in pairs, have collaborated not only with Jewish organizations but also with the Moldovan government, visiting camps for all refugees and working at the Palanke border crossing where Ukrainians enter Moldova.
Israeli medical clowns bring smiles, relieve stress for Ukraine refugees in Moldova
Shemesh (Smadar Harpak), who works at the Sourasky Medical Center in Tel Aviv, jokes with a Ukrainian refugee child at a camp established in Chisinau, Moldova.
‘Luxus’ (Gad Nevo), from Rishon Lezion in central Israel, who normally works in hospitals in Jerusalem and central Israel, holds a Ukrainian refugee at a hotel in the Moldovan capital of Chisinau.
Zaza (Reut Shifman Tsoref) brings comfort and warmth to a Ukrainian child at a hotel complex outside of Chisinau, Moldova, March 2022.
“The clowning helps to release a lot of pressure,” explained Shifman Tsoref, from Givat Ye’arim near Jerusalem, who usually works as a medical clown at Shaare Zedek Medical Center in the capital. “It’s about bringing the most non-rational thing to the most non-rational situation to make it rational.”
Two of the clowns, one originally from Kharkiv, the other from Kyiv, were originally from the Ukraine.
“The clowns were the ones that impacted the work of the whole delegation,” said one of the doctors. “We should have had 24 clowns and four doctors, not the other way round.”
Shifman Tsoref added that the pride of adults often prevented them from accepting a hug, but “They’ll allow a clown to do it.”
Ukrainian sisters discover each other’s existence ahead of flight to Israel
Valentina (l) and Mariana Warszewski
By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News
Two Ukrainian sisters who spent their entire lives in Kyiv discovered each other’s existence ahead of boarding the plane taking them from their war-torn country to Israel.
The revelation came about as they stood in a Warsaw hotel that the Jewish Agency and Israeli consulate have been using over the last two weeks as a base for potential immigrants fleeing Ukraine.
An Agency official called the names of all those boarding the next flight to Israel in alphabetical order, so of course Valentina and Mariana Warszewski came one after the other. They naturally began talking and quickly discovered to their complete surprise and delight that they shared the same father.
“The most incredible thing is that in all this chaos of war, we found each other,” Mariana told Ynet. “We thank the Jewish Agency, thank Israel and love it even more after our meeting in Warsaw. We boarded the flight together, like one big family…. What joy, what a miracle.”
“It’s an amazing thing,” added Valentina. “Who would believe that of all places, here is where we’d discover each other?”
Mariana, 53, never saw her father again after he divorced her mother when she was a child. She has had two careers, first as an engineer and then as a psychologist. Valentina, 46, is the product of his second marriage and worked as a banker until the Russian invasion turned her life upside down.
Both decided to leave Kyiv for Israel on the third day of the war, as each has a son who had immigrated to the Jewish state. Mariana’s son Pavel, 26, came four years ago and settled in Ramat Gan, while Valentina’s son, Nikita, made aliyah when he was 18 and lives in Haifa.
Valentina also brought her 13-year-old daughter Masha and the family cat. Her husband was left behind due to the emergency law forbidding men between the ages of 18 and 60 from leaving Ukraine.
The Warszewskis were on a flight of about 150 new immigrants that landed in Israel recently as part of a major airlift of Ukrainian Jews called “Operation Israeli Guarantees.”
“Our hearts are with our homeland, Ukraine, and our beloved Kyiv. I hope that it will all end quickly,” Valentina said.
For these two sisters, at least, one good thing has come out of the war. As they said, it “has bound us together forever.”
Under fire, Christians help rescue Ukrainian Holocaust survivors
Samuel Chiporniak, a 94-year-old Holocaust survivor from the embattled city of Mariupol, leaving his home for safety in Israel
As the war roars on in Eastern Europe, Christians worldwide are making it possible for Ukrainian and Russian Holocaust survivors to escape to Israel.
This is “the most urgent, massive aliyah operation we’ve ever been involved in,” said David Parsons, vice president and senior spokesman for the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ), which is helping to coordinate the efforts.
ICEJ, which was founded in 1980, has long partnered with the Jewish Agency for Israel (JAFI) and Yad Ezra L’Haver (Helping Hand to a Friend) to help Jews make aliyah (immigrate) to Israel. ICEJ has helped bring over 165,000 Jews from 45 different countries to Israel.
“We’ve sponsored dozens of aliyah flights, and we were very involved in the Soviet aliyah in the 1990s,” Parsons said. “Once they are here, we help them get integrated through programs with the Jewish Agency.”
As such, when the war broke out in that region, ICEJ was poised to assist.
After partnering with Yad Ezra L’Haver for 13 years, assisting in their mission to care for Holocaust survivors, ICEJ is no stranger to working with survivors. During ordinary times, Shimon Sabag, Founder and Managing Director of Yad Ezra L’Haver, runs a Home for Holocaust Survivors in Haifa. The home has approximately 70 residents. A handful of Christian volunteers work alongside the Israeli staff, primarily as nurses and physiotherapists.
Shimon Sabag rescues a Holocaust survivor in Ukraine
Today, Sabag is in the Ukraine, locating and transporting weakened elderly Jewish survivors from their homes to safety and, eventually, to the airport so they can board a flight to Israel.
This aliyah, Parsons said, is “so abrupt and disruptive and disorienting.” ‘She did not want to leave her home
Parsons explained that working with lists of names that are painstakingly constructed, Sabag and his team must go from one city to another, from one address to another, to locate individual survivors. Sometimes, the city is being barraged by active fire, and getting to the survivor is dangerous.
Once a survivor has been located, it is often a challenge to convince them to leave. Parsons told of one survivor from Kyiv, living near the monument that commemorates the September 1941 massacre at Babyn Yar when close to 34,000 Jews were murdered over two days. This woman was living in the same house in which she was born around 1942.
“In the middle of [WWII], she was born in the home, and she was still living there 80 years later,” Parsons explained. “She did not really want to leave, but her children came with our team to talk her [into it].
Once a survivor has been identified, located and convinced to leave, there is still the challenge of transporting them to safety. For the most part, the survivors are elderly and often living reclusive lives. They rely on walkers or wheelchairs for mobility. Parsons explained that the rescue teams often need specially equipped ambulances or vans to move them.
An elderly Holocaust survivor waits in Lviv after being rescued
Asked why he went into Ukraine exactly when most people were trying to escape, Sabag said, “The day before the actual outbreak of the war, I traveled over to Ukraine. Yad Ezra L’Haver was one of the only ones that actually went into Ukraine ahead of this war.
“It was very dangerous at that time, but I felt I had a calling and a certainty that God would protect me,” he said. It is just incomprehensible to me that 80 years after the Holocaust that Jews are targeted again and so that is why I went over to rescue them.
“Some of the first days were just horrible in terms of humanitarian aid,” Sabag continued. “It was just a horrible scene to see hundreds of thousands of people, refugees, running away.
“We got to Mariupol. There is no water, no electricity, no heating and it was -4 degrees. When we were able to extract [the survivors], it was just an incredible feeling,” he said.
Holocaust survivor Mila Chipornak, 93 from Mariupol, is rescued by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews and Yad Ezer L’Haver to be brought to Israel
“There was one lady we extracted, a Holocaust survivor. She showed us her number from Auschwitz, and she ended up in Krakow and as we extracted her, she was just so thankful. She is actually now back in Israel.”
Some individuals were rescued via stretcher because they were too old to walk. And some were pulled out of their homes under fire.
“When we say that we are ‘extracting’ Holocaust survivors: These are people that live deep in Ukraine, and it is difficult to extract them. We had to have military escorts at times.
“Some rockets fell around 200 meters away from us and we could hear the explosions,” Sabag recalled.
“I feel that I helped a lot of people in my life, but I never [before] felt that I helped people, to save their lives,” he concluded.
“We know there is a long, bad track record of antisemitism. Our ministry is motivated to try and heal those wounds,” Parsons said. “I do not think there is anyone more worthy of our help than Holocaust survivors today. We want to see them live out their lives in dignity and peace… It is just a horrible thing to think of Ukrainian Jews who witnessed the Babyn Yar Massacre and other atrocities. They should not have to face this again.”
Holocaust survivor’s granddaughter saves grandchildren of Ukrainian rescuer
Sharon Bass (top right) with Alona Chugai (left), and Lesia Orshoko (bottom right)
During the Holocaust, Mariya Blyshchik and her family risked their lives to save Jews in Ukraine. Recently, the granddaughter of Fanya Bass, one of the Jews they saved, helped rescue Mariya Blyshchik’s grandchildren, bringing them to safety in Israel.
“We Jews, we say that if you do something good, like their grandparents did, it will come back to you,” explained Sharon Bass, whose grandmother Fanya was sheltered by Mariya Blyshchik’s family. “I feel like it is my obligation to be there for them”.
Sharon, a 46-year-old Israeli living near Tel Aviv, grew up hearing stories about her grandmother Fanya’s wartime experiences and the way Mariya Blyschchik’s family saved her life. She has always kept in touch with the Blyschik family. After Russia invaded Ukraine, bombing cities and sending over two and a half million refugees fleeing, Sharon knew she had to act.
“We talked, they were very stressed and scared and they wanted to come here to be safe,” Sharon told Israeli television. “There were sirens all the time. The electricity was on and off. They heard the bombing in the distance…. I can relate to this situation because of what has happened here in Israel. But it is still very different. So, we said we will do everything to help you.”
Fanya Bass in the 1940’s
Sharon got in touch with Israel’s Interior Ministry to ask for emergency visas for Alona Chugai, 47, and Lasia Orshoko, 36, Mariya Blyshchik’s granddaughters. On Sunday, March 6, Alona and Lasia flew to Israel. Sharon and her relatives greeted them at the airport.
“We were very happy and excited when we finally saw them at the airport,” Sharon described. “We cried, we laughed, but also the tension was there. Our thoughts were with the family that stayed behind. We had mixed emotions… The situation in Ukraine is so difficult right now. This family that we have been in contact with for all these years were so sad and felt that the best thing is to come here to be safe.”
When World War II broke out, the small western Ukrainian town of Rafalowka was home to about 600 Jews, a third of the town’s population. In July 1941, Nazi forces took control of Rafalowka. They set up a Jewish ghetto in the town About 2,500 Jews were interred in the Rafalowka ghetto.
Nazis emptied out the ghetto on August 29, 1942. The Jews were forced to march away from the town and were shot to death, their bodies thrown into mass graves. Only about 30 Jews from Rafalowka survived.
Their fates mirrored that of Jews across the entire country of Ukraine. One and a half million Jews were murdered in Ukraine during the Holocaust.
The Rozenfeld family with Fanya is in the center, 1930’s
One of the survivors of the liquidation of the Rafalowka Ghetto was 20-year-old Jewish women named Fanya Rozenfeld. She was the only member of her entire family to survive. Fanya wandered in the thickly wooded countryside, going from village to village trying to evade detection and forage for food, until she was taken in by Filip and Teklya Konyukh, a deeply religious couple living in the Ukrainian village of Mulczyce, who offered her a place to stay, initially for one night.
The next morning, they took Fanya to their weekly Baptist meeting, where she met Konon Kaluta, a local Baptist preacher. She lived with the Konyukhs for a time, and was soon joined by two other Jews, Shlomo Appleboim and his son Sender, who’d escaped from the Jewish ghetto in the town of Wlodzimierzec. Filip Konyukh told the three Jews he sheltered, “God sent you to me and I consider it an honor to save Jews.”
Within a few months, it became too dangerous to stay with the Konyukhs. The Appleboims moved in with another non-Jewish family, and Fanya moved in with the preacher Konon Kaluta, his wife Anna, their four children, and two of Konon’s daughters from a previous marriage, Anna and Mariya. The Kalutas too saw saving Jews as a moral duty and taught that message to his Baptist flock.
Soon, the Kalutas took in two more Jewish girls. Rivka Bass was 13; her father Yaakov and brother David hid in the thick forest nearby. They also took in 11-year-old Masha Dreizen-Wolfstal, who was also from Rafalowka. Fanya found her lying on the ground in the forest, exhausted and without food or protection. Fanya picked up the exhausted girl and carried her to the Kaluta’s home.
Konon and Anne Kaluta
Fanya moved again in 1943, when gangs of antisemitic Ukrainian partisans entered the area. She was sheltered in the nearby village of Sudcze by another Baptist preacher, Andrey Kuyava, along with his wife Yarina and son Nikolay. She was liberated by the Soviet army in early 1944 and no longer had to live in hiding.
After the Holocaust, Fanya married Yaakov Bass, whose daughter Rivka hid with her in the Kulatas’ home. She became stepmother to Rivka and David, and the entire family moved to Israel.
Through the years they kept in touch with the Kulata family in Ukraine. Kolon Kulata’s daughter Mariya married and became Mariya Blyshchik. Mariya’s granddaughters Alona and Lasia remained in touch with Fanya’s grandchildren.
Alona and Lasia grew up aware of their family’s wartime heroism. In 1995, their grandmother Mariya Blyshchik, her sister Anna Chugay, and her parents Konon and Anna Kaluta, were all named Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem. (Filip and Teklya Konyukh, their sons Aleksander and Andrey Konyukh, and Andrey and Yarina Kuyava and their son Nikolay Kuyava, were also named Righteous Among the Nations. The title denotes a non-Jewish hero who risked his or her life to save Jews during the Holocaust.)
Alona and Lasia even lived in Israel for five years as part of a program that brings the descendants of those who saved Jews to live and work in the Jewish state.
As Russian soldiers encircled cities and towns in Ukraine, Sharon Bass – Fanya Bass’s granddaughter – knew she had to help. Alona and Lasia were terrified of remaining in Ukraine. Their home town of Rovno, in Ukraine’s west, has come under shelling and there were fears that the town could be destroyed.
Sharon started a campaign in Israel to get the women emergency entry permits. “Eventually, we got a permit for them to come,” Sharon explained to Israel’s Channel 13. “Now we are trying to get them permission to stay in Israel because I don’t know if they will have anything to go back to.”
Lasia Orshoko moved in with Sharon and her family near Tel Aviv; Alona Chugai is living with Sharon’s parents in the nearby town of Petah Tikva.
“They let her (Fanya) into the house and treated her like a daughter while the whole family was in danger of death,” Sharon explained. “If the Nazis had found out that they had been giving refuge, they would have killed the whole family…”
“What I am doing now is like giving back, just a little bit, of what the righteous family in Ukraine gave to my grandparents. I feel that because of them, I am here.”
Israeli Bedouin Consul Rescues 150 Non-Israeli and Israeli Arab Students from Ukraine
Israeli Arab students, arriving from Ukraine on a rescue flight, are welcomed by their families at Ben Gurion international airport
For the Twitter: https://twitter.com/i/status/1498646773803405313
Israel’s Deputy Consul in Istanbul, Yara Shibli, 27, who hails from the Bedouin community of Shibli in northern Israel, was instructed to fly to join the Israeli diplomatic team in Levov, on the Polish side of the border. Among other things, she assisted in the rescue of 150 Israeli Arab students who were evacuated when the fighting broke out, including some residents of eastern Jerusalem.
A Lebanese citizen who was in Ukraine with a group of Israeli Arabs told Ha’aretz reporter Fadi Amun that he was not able to get help from his country to escape. Amun then contacted an Israeli official who said in response: “We have no problem helping Lebanese or any other Arab citizens as well. He can join the Israeli bus.”
Hassan Kaabia, a spokesperson for Israel’s foreign ministry, confirmed that “there are Lebanese, Syrian and Egyptian citizens on the Israeli bus, some of them crossed the Ukraine border as refugees, in addition to the about 150 Arab Israeli residents from eastern Jerusalem.” Reminder: Lebanon and Syria are still officially at war with Israel.
Shibli: “We help Israelis as much as we can, trying as much as possible to help. Our people in the field stay out all night, in the cold, to rescue Israelis. We work nights and days and have not slept for almost a week. People can say what they want, but we do our job to the end.”
Regarding the rescue of 150 Arab students, she said, “This is one of the reasons why the foreign ministry sent me here, to have someone on hand who speaks Arabic.” Anyone, which means everyone, who requested assistance from Israeli representatives and volunteers, received assistance, irrespective of nationality, religion or race. Please proceed to the next very short story.
Palestinian seeks help from Israel in escaping Ukraine.
Gaza is at war with Israel. A Gazan student studying in Ukraine crossed the border to Moldova and saw two volunteers with an Israeli flag draped on their car. Seeing the flag, he immediately sought their help and they are getting him home, to Gaza.
Israeli-Ukrainian Rugby player reaches Israel after 3-day ordeal
Vitali Primak, 36, managed to make his way by train to Hungary and then boarded a flight to Tel Aviv after initially being denied exit due to his Ukrainian citizenship.
Israeli rugby player Vitali Primak
ASA Tel Aviv Rugby Club player Vitali Primak has been successfully extracted from Ukraine along with his wife and son. The three landed recently in Israel after a harrowing ordeal extending three days.
Primak, 36, had been trying to leave the Ukrainian capital for several days but only recently was he finally able to make the journey with his family to the Slovak border. Part of the problem was that under the new emergency situation in the country, practically all Ukrainian males are barred from leaving the country
Primak, who has been part of Israel’s national rugby squad since 2013 and has dual Israeli-Ukrainian citizenship, refused to let his wife and son travel on their own. After many hours of waiting at the border crossing, he was let through. After crossing the border and traveling by train to Hungary he managed to board a flight to Israel without any luggage. The three received some support but as they have virtually no possessions in Israel, the Israeli Rugby Union has launched a crowdfunding campaign to help him and his family settle in Israel.
Primak is expected to join the national team’s boot camp shortly, ahead of three major games.
Israel airlifts 10 hospitalized kids from Ukraine for care
Israeli Ambassador to Romania David Saranga carrying a Ukrainian pediatric patient too sick to walk. (Israeli Foreign Ministry)
Ambassador of Israel to Romania David Saranga and his embassy staff helped rescue 10 Ukrainian children with serious illnesses and bring them to Israel for treatment.
Schneider Medical Center of Petah Tikva sent medical personnel and a special plane to safely transport the children to Schneider’s hospital for children.
The special 48-hour rescue operation included entering Ukraine, bringing the young patients out of a hospital in Kyiv and closely accompanying them to the waiting plane.
Several of these children, aged three to 18, were too weak to walk on their own. Some of them have cancer, some need dialysis and others are suffering from complex diseases.
“As diplomats representing the state of the Jewish people, we cannot remain indifferent to the suffering of others. It is our moral duty to do everything in our power to alleviate the suffering of the other,” said Saranga, who has actively been aiding refugees since the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24.
The embassy staff thanked Romanian authorities for helping to smooth the way for this dangerous lifesaving mission.
Postscript
As of 12 April 2022, nearly 4.7 million refugees have left the Ukraine, while an estimated more than 7.1 million people have been displaced within the country. Each and every refugee has a sad story of suffering and loss.
More than 15,200 Ukrainian refugees have arrived in Israel. In addition, another 20,000 Ukrainians who were already inside Israel when the conflict broke out (on tourist visas or working legally or even those illegally in the country) were also regarded as refugees and given permission to stay.
Israel has to date accepted more refugees than any other non-European country and more than many European countries such as the Netherlands, 21,000, the United Kingdom, 12,000, and Belgium, 10,000. (Statistics are from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees).
