Escape
from Europe
Fleeing their
country’s civil war, Ukrainian Jews head for Israel
Alexander and Anna
Gayduk, together with 226 other Ukrainians of Jewish heritage, start a new life
in Israel. They flew on a charter flight funded by the International Fellowship
of Christians and Jews, a charity that supports Israel and Jewish projects around
the world. (The Washington Post)
KIEV, Ukraine — Yulia, Kostiantyn
and their daughter, Valerie, don’t look like a typical refugee family. All well
dressed — even the Chihuahua, Micky, wearing a chic dog jacket — they might not
seem out of place mingling with Kiev’s oligarchs.
But the truth is that the family,
Ukrainians of Jewish heritage on one side, has lost almost everything since
clashes between pro-Russian
separatists and Ukrainian nationalists caused it to
flee to Kiev five months ago from the eastern city of Luhansk.
So on Monday, parents, daughter and dog
— with 226 other Ukrainian Jews — left Kiev for Israel on a charter flight funded by a
Christian-Jewish charity. In Israel, a government agency waited to help them
start a new life. The new arrivals joined more than 5,000 Ukrainian Jews who
have moved to Israel in the past year, about 1,300 of them from eastern areas
claimed by separatists.
The number of Ukrainians arriving in
Israel in 2014 is more than double that of the previous year. The Ukrainian
government, which is facing an economic crisis, has little means to
help those internally displaced by the war, now about 500,000, according to the
United Nations.
But groups such as the International
Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ), which has
spent more than $2 million on resettlement flights in the past year, and
the Jewish Agency for Israel, a nonprofit organization that supports Jewish
communities around the world, have stepped in to aid those of Jewish heritage.
The Israeli government also offered the option to resettle in Israel.
New Jewish immigrants from Ukraine walk on the tarmac after landing at Ben Gurion Airport in Lod, Israel. (Gil Cohen-Magen/AFP/Getty Images)
That assistance has meant that 70 years
after the Holocaust wiped out some 900,000 Jews in Ukraine and 20 years after
1 million Jews — forced to suppress their religious identities under Soviet
rule — left the former Soviet Union for Israel, the Jews that remained are
among the luckier Ukrainians.
“Since I was small, my grandmother
always told me to hide the fact I was Jewish,” said Kostiantyn, 33, who asked
that his family name be withheld out of concern for relatives left behind in
the conflict zone. “Now I don’t care what people say about me being Jewish. The
only people who have helped here have been the Jews.”…
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