2 years of saving lives in Ukraine
Iwas born and raised in Kharkiv — a youthful, energetic, treelined university town in northeast Ukraine. Today, two years since the conflict erupted, it remains a shell of its former self, even as it slowly comes back to life.
Many streets of my childhood remain dark and empty, and rubble and burned-out apartments cover the neighborhood where my first child grew up. Despite all of this, many people who fled at the outset of the crisis have returned, ready to begin anew.
Like so many other cities here, returnees find their hometowns battered and people still gripped with fear, beset by widespread trauma. My mother, who remains in her apartment, has trouble sleeping and relies on a neighbor for support when air raid sirens sound.
This situation is dire, with no end to the conflict in sight. Millions have fallen into poverty, many children cannot attend school, and human needs — like access to affordable food, housing, medical care — are all the more painful for the most vulnerable with every passing day.
While these issues don’t make headlines anymore, they are no less powerful and lives are still at stake. Indeed, the UN has noted that 40% of the Ukrainian population will need humanitarian aid in 2024.
I witness this plight during my routine travels across Ukraine, visiting the Jewish communities I grew up in, as part of my work for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, the global humanitarian organization.
Through the social service and Jewish community infrastructure we built over three decades, these communities, revived after the Soviet Union’s fall, have become centers of humanitarian relief.
During the last two years, they’ve engaged in an historic relief effort that’s helped more than 52,000 people in Ukraine, delivered 800 tons of aid, and maintained Jewish life despite the odds. This has been achieved through the generosity of the Jewish federations, including UJA-Federation of New York, Claims Conference, and International Fellowship of Christians and Jews.
At the heart of these efforts are thousands of people, staff and local volunteers, bravely continuing to aid their neighbors under unfathomable circumstances. However broken they are, they draw from a wellspring of strength that should inspire all of us with hope for the future here.
One of them is Nina, a steely 70-year old social worker I met last week at our relief center in
Zaporizhia. Before coming there, she fled from Mariupol in March 2022, one of the more than 3 million Ukrainians internally displaced since the crisis began.
By the time she left her city, there was no electricity or gas. People were draining their radiators or gathering snow to quench their thirst or bathe. So Nina packed up her daughter and granddaughter in a car with shattered windows, and made the journey to safety between mines and under shelling through snowy, bombed-out towns.
When she arrived, she was taken in by the local Jewish community and provided an apartment, basic aid, and mental health support, like thousands of the displaced we care for these days. She soon celebrated Passover, attended programs at the local Jewish community center, and was welcomed, “as if I was family.”
Eager to give back and to help those as vulnerable as she was, she began immediately working for us. Nina’s first job was to track the safety and welfare of needy Jews we care for across the region, including thousands of poor elderly, many of them homebound. It was a hard task in the midst of so much carnage, but it became Nina’s personal mission.
She worked tirelessly, day and night, to find them. She ensured they had the aid they needed, arranged evacuation if they wanted to leave, and comforted the terrified as she dispatched volunteers to visit them. All in all, Nina tracked 700 people, each life precious to her.
A few months later, she learned her son, who stayed behind, had been killed. This tragedy is something she will never truly heal from. But, she told me, it fuels her work aiding hundreds of people every day. It’s a legacy of optimism she builds out of her personal despair, bolstering her desire to do more.
That’s because Nina knows our work is not yet done. We have tens of thousands of people who rely on us for ongoing care. We have an expanded network of trauma centers taking in more clients and have launched initiatives to fill educational gaps for children, and tackle rising unemployment.
As Jews, we often point to the Talmudic dictate, “if you save one life, you save an entire world.” In Ukraine today, this is a literal truth, and an urgent one.