Jews uprooted by Russian attack scoff at Nazi claims
This story was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center.
CHISINAU, Moldova – Olena Khorenjenko rolled her eyes at the idea that Nazis control her homeland, the baseless assertion Russian President Vladimir Putin made to defend his deadly military assault on Ukraine.
An Orthodox Jew born in Kyiv, Kho- renjenko said she has never faced any organized or even casual discrimination. And she has certainly never seen any evidence of Nazi activity.
“There were boys who fought in school, but it was not because they were Jewish. They fought because they are boys,” said Khorenjenko, 33, whose Jewish great-grandmother fled Poland before the German invasion during World War II.
“I’ve never seen anything like that,” she said of Putin’s claims.
In a speech announcing the attack on Ukraine, Putin said he wanted to “de-nazify” the country, a statement that many found baffling and bizarre. Ukraine is a democratic country led by a Jewish president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whose family was almost wiped out in the Holocaust.
Putin’s war has uprooted thousands of Ukrainian Jews, including approximately 5,000 refugees who flooded into neighboring Moldova.
“We had a good life. We had jobs and houses. Nobody wanted to leave,” said Viktoria Fikhman, 37, who escaped shelling in Odesa with her husband and two children, including a young daughter with chickenpox.
They stay at a shelter overseen in part by members of Moldova’s Jewish community. They’re not sure where they’ll go next – apartments in the capital of Chisinau are either unavailable or too expensive.
At another shelter, refugee Tatiana Larina, 73, from Mykolaiv, Ukraine, recalled how she saw antisemitism in her youth but never since the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991. Her father changed his name to be less Jewish, she said, and that helped reduce some of the hateful attention.
Sitting on her narrow bed as an aging television played clips of reality TV shows, Larina said she was thankful to have left safely when the shelling began.
Khorenjenko, Fikhman and Larina are among about 3.7 million Ukrainians who fled their country after Russia’s invasion. Though most left via Poland, a growing number cross into neighboring Moldova, and those of the Jewish faith have found comfort within the open doors – albeit guarded by a metal detector – of the Chabad Synagogue of Chisinau.
There, faith leaders, including Rabbi Mandel Askerold serve hot kosher meals, minister to spiritual needs and arrange housing.
For refugees, it’s not just food that warms them – it’s the friendly faces and smiles, the familiar Hebrew letters on signs, the finger-sized mezuzah cases hung at the entrances to the buildings, which the faithful touch as a form of prayer as they pass.
“In our tradition, all Jewish people around the world are one family. Even if we have never met before, it’s important to show that we are that united family,” Askerold said. “For these people, it means everything. Because this is their time of need.”
Contributing: Will Carless