Ukrainian Jews: Don’t forget about us, the war is not over

CHELM, Poland – In our fast-paced Internet-addicted media landscape, news stories come and go, but some have staying power and become “the current thing.” It’s not difficult to track the trajectory of such major stories — the 2020 coronavirus pandemic seemed to have melted from headlines when Russia invaded Ukraine, which in turn gave way to the October 7 Gaza massacre and resulting war.

Yet while we may get bored of these stories, even grow sick of hearing about them, the people living them cannot move on as easily.

“The focus is gone, but the war has not,” Chief Rabbi of Odesa and Southern Ukraine Rabbi Avraham Wolff said on Monday.

War is not relegated to the borders of Israel, he reminded, and his community is living it every day. Some of them sought solace in his large central synagogue center that day, praying downstairs before the Torah ark, or eating and laughing while sitting at the tables upstairs. 

In his office, Wolff recalled that the community had once been larger, with 50,000 Jews in Odesa. Since the beginning of the war, the population had dropped to 20,000. In the early days of the war they were in shock and couldn’t believe it, the chief rabbi recalled, and that those who could, fled. Women and children had been sent to Germany, but over time, many had returned to safe areas, he said.

Chaya Mushka, 16, was one of those children. She spent a year in Berlin.

Jews in Ukraine living through the war speak up 

“It was very scary at the beginning of the war; I missed my parents and cried a lot,” she said in Odesa in front of her Chabad school. “When I saw my parents, it was very emotional.”

There are children refugees learning at her school from other countries like Germany and the US. They used to have online lessons, but now it is self-learning.

GABI, 16, is another student at the school, a positive young man wearing a kippah and tzitzit with the ambitions to bridge gaps between his community and Israel.

“I learned Hebrew to explain to Israelis what is happening here,” he said, speaking the language fluently. There were many who supported Ukraine, he said, but then asked him if the war was over.

Gabi had learned Hebrew at the school, which has about a hundred students from grades one to 12, but had also honed his language skills during his summer in Israel, and by watching Knesset members debate on YouTube. He said he wanted to speak without an accent like MKs from the former Soviet Union.

He saw similarities between Israel and Ukraine, saying that they are both facing existential wars, and had not been strong enough in the past.

“All the Ukrainians I know and see believe that Israel supports Ukraine and there is a strong connection,” Gabi said.

The connection was also found in Judaism, in the celebration of holidays, which helped build community spirit.

“Things are good despite everything with the war,” Gabi said of his schooling.

The other students seemed enthusiastic as well. When asked about their favorite subjects to learn, one girl in second grade wouldn’t hear any other option than “mathematics!”, jumping around and repeating herself until she was confident she had adequately made her point.

In a third grade class, they were learning in Ukrainian, in compliance with government mandates. Their teacher said that it they had adapted it was odd for them, since they thought in Russian and speak it at home, but wrote and learned in Ukrainian.

“It’s impossible to say that life here is normal, but we’ve adapted as much as possible to create routine,” said Tatiana, the school’s principal.

Tatiana related that it was difficult to keep the kids focused on lessons when they were often interrupted by sirens. Sometimes the students need to stay after school hours until it is safe to leave. Wolff said that there are sirens every day, with barrages of about 20 suicide drones in each attack. Tatiana said that parents knew that school was the calmest place for the children, where they could have the comfort of being with other kids. 

THE SCHOOL also has two psychologists on staff. There is a generator to heat in the winter, and the school is also safe because it has a large bomb shelter, which has classrooms, a play room, and even a small dining spot. Like in Israel, the walls of the bomb shelter display the artwork of the children. Some of the newer artwork expressed prayers for Israel in the wake of October 7, with big blue stars of David flanked by supportive Ukrainian flags.

Some of the children had come from areas that had fallen under heavy attack or occupation by Russia. Masha, a third grade student, was one of them. We came with her aunt from Kherson at the beginning of the war. She seemed like a sweet child, but shy and closed off.

“These are traumas that stay for life,” said Wolff, whose brother had sent his daughter to Odesa from Kherson.

The chief rabbi said that the girls cry when there are air raid sirens, and when there are attacks on Kherson, where their mother and father remain. They don’t have evening prayers at his brother’s synagogue, because of the sirens and power outages.

“My brother in Kherson has artillery flying over his head constantly,” said Wolff. “They’re drowning Kherson in artillery.”

Many of the cities like Kherson had been ruined, he said. Kyiv, Odesa, and Dniepro continue to thrive, being further from the front and maintaining better air defenses.

RABBI YOSEF SEGAL had seen many internally displaced people come to his city from Kharkiv, Sumy, and Meliotov. He said there were still explosions all the time in Kharkiv, and that a hotel that Chabad used to frequent has been destroyed.

“There’s nothing left,” he said.

There was no Jewish school in Kherson or Kharkiv, and Odesa was also home to the Mishpacha (family) orphanage, turning the city into a refuge for Jews from across the country.

Wolff said that while there were those who had lost their families, or came from abusive homes or have drug addicts as parents, many people were sending their children to the Odesa orphanage for a better life — because they could not support them.

There was a six-month-old from Zhaporozhia recently adopted into the orphanage. A three-year-old was sent by his mother after his father was killed while fighting on the front and she couldn’t support the child on her own.

Wolff is registered as custodian of the orphans and displaced children, and proudly shows pictures and goes on at length about each one, acting like a proud and doting father – even if he doesn’t necessarily agree with their lifestyle. 

He spoke with the same pride about one brother from the orphanage who went to Haifa’s Technion and then went to work at NASA, as he does about the other brother who owns a large night club in Tel Aviv. He shows pictures sent to him about the night club opening, and while he isn’t keen on the profession, says that the owner is helping people in his own way. They discuss how helping people is fundamental in the Torah: Jews and non-Jews alike.

Another of the orphans had moved to Israel, where he served as a reservist in the Gaza war. He lost a leg when his tank was struck by successive anti-tank guided missiles. The rabbi showed videos the man sent of his recovery, exercising and doing push-ups set to rap music. Wolff said that the community had rented for two years a wheelchair accessible apartment where the wounded reservist could live with his sister and her family.

JEWS ARE also continuing to fight in Ukraine. There’s a mandatory enlistment, and the Jewish community is also subject to it unless they have three kids or are sick. Wolff said that his community has good relations with the government, and while they are unable to aid financially, if he has an issue the mayor always comes to consult and help how he can.

The rabbi says that the community is still in touch with all those who fled. It still helps pay and organize bar mitzvahs, brit milahs, and weddings — many don’t know that the community is still looking after them.

“The community does not forget its children,” he said.

This works the other way as well. An Odesan woman working at an Israeli matzah factory was ecstatic and proud when an International Fellowship of Christians and Jews aid representative arrived to purchase packages of the unleavened bread for the community.

Almost all kosher food comes from out of the country, such as meat from France.

“Once we worried that people should have kosher food; now we are just worrying that they are eating,” Wolff said.

For Segal in Poltova, food had also become his chief concern. Some people couldn’t manage with food aid packages, as they were too old or sick to cook them. They needed the community to make hot meals for them.

Wolff said that such senior citizens in Ukraine had already suffered from the trauma of war and were reliving it — Holocaust survivors, World War II veterans, and the Righteous Among the Nations.

ROMAN SHVARTSMAN, chairman of the Odesa regional Association of Jews – Former Prisoners of Ghettos and Concentration Camps, said his generation was previously known as the generation of lost childhoods because of Nazi Germany, but now has become a generation of lost elderhood because of Putin. His organization keeps in touch with 198 survivors, helping them maintain social ties and during emergencies. Shvartsman lost family in the war, and his trauma runs deep – “Every five minutes I call my daughter and son-and-law to check on them,” he said.

The grandmother of Marina Demitrenko, who lives with her in Poltava, was three when her family fled from Kharkiv because of the Germans. They settled in Kazakhstan before returning to Ukraine. Living in an old, featureless Soviet apartment block, she takes care of her grandmother and her mentally handicapped brother. She says the country has not yet mastered how to treat the mentally disabled.

“I want to say to all the Jewish communities that we are in war; we are in a bad situation, we want to know that the Jews of the world are thinking about us and haven’t forgotten us,” said Demitrenko.

She said it had been very difficult recently, with skyrocketing prices – and without the help of the Jewish community and programs like Hesed, getting food and maintaining the apartment would not have been possible.

“The beauty of the Jewish community is that they help one another,” she said.

Yael Eckstein, president of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ), emphasized the importance of continuing to support the Jewish community in Ukraine despite the focus on other events. She said that the organization didn’t start its mission helping Jews in 2024 with the Russian invasion or even in the former Soviet Union in 2014 during the Donbas conflict, but that it has been a core part of their mission for decades.

Eckstein said that while at the beginning of the war there was a huge focus on the humanitarian suffering in Ukraine, including that of Holocaust survivors, they had been involved with the humanitarian issues of people like Demitrenko for 35 years.

At the beginning of the war, they were on the ground providing emergency relief, without any debate on budgets. Although they have sought to help victims of Hamas’s pogrom on October 7 in Gaza and the enduring repercussions of the war, they didn’t forget that there were many Jews that needed help around the world as well. She said that it’s like having more kids — there’s always more room in one’s heart, which grows bigger with the new responsibilities.

“God has granted miracles to be able to help both” Ukrainian and Israeli Jews, said Eckstein. “As Jews, we need to have our hearts in more than one place.”

With the aid of IFCJ and others, the Ukrainian Jews have managed to survive. Shvartsman, Wolff, Segal, and Demitrenko all referred to how they have adapted to the situation by carving out routines – islands of sanity in the turbulent seas of uncertainty. Yet finding routine, and making chaos become the norm, doesn’t mean that all is okay and the problem is solved. Just because the world’s focus has drifted away from them, doesn’t mean that there are those not anchored to the situation.

“Don’t forget that in Ukraine there are still thousands of Jews under artillery and drone attacks and who don’t have food to eat,” Wolff said. “Don’t forget us.”