Displaced Ukrainian Jews struggle to set up new lives

DESPITE SIGNS of an economic recovery and efforts at integration, Jews displaced by the war in Ukraine’s east are finding it difficult to return to a semblance of a normal life.

Rabbi Pinchas Vishedski, the Donetsk community’s exiled Chabad rabbi, told the by phone from Kiev that he provides aid to around 200 of the approximately 250 Jewish families who fled the war-torn city in the east.

In addition, working with authorities, the rabbi has managed to send supplies to the approximately 2,000 Jews still living in occupied Donetsk, he said.

It is likely that the majority of Ukrainian Jews displaced by the conflict have moved to Israel, both according to Rabbi Vishedski — who has been encouraging his congregants to immigrate to the Jewish state — and numbers provided by the Jewish Agency.

There were said to have been 10-11,000 Jews in Donetsk alone prior to the outbreak of hostilities and, according to the Jewish Agency, “the majority of the 7,000 Ukrainian immigrants in 2015 did indeed come from the embattled areas of eastern Ukraine”.

Inflation in Ukraine this year averaged 14.9 per cent, a significant improvement over last year’s figure — 48.5 per cent — which drove up the price of basic commodities.

The number of families receiving support has fallen, said Rabbi Vishedski, adding that despite the drop, it still costs tens of thousands of dollars a month to provide basic necessities.

According to Michael Geller, a spokesman for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, the New York-based aid agency had provided aid to 1,496 displaced people in Kiev and is currently assisting around 2,000 around the country, more than 900 of whom are in the capital.