Charity in the warzone: Chabad heroes run huge operation to help refugees
WITH OUTPOSTS all over Ukraine and across the wider region, the Chabad Lubavitch movement has won widespread admiration for providing desperately-needed help to refugees.
An estimated 15,000 Jewish refugees have fled Ukraine. A further 15,000 are internally displaced. Chabad has worked to provide buses and security for those fleeing over borders, and food and provisions for those who have not left the country.
“The vast majority of Jews are staying put,” explains Rabbi Motti Seligson, a spokesman for Chabad. “They don’t know anything else or they don’t feel safe trying to leave. Supplies are running scarce. But Chabad rabbis in these places are figuring out what they need to do to keep people alive and safe.”
Rabbi Seligson says that each group of people presents unique challenges. “There are people who don’t want to leave their cities, internally displaced people, refugees now in immediate neighbouring countries, and those who have temporarily relocated further away in Europe or Israel,” he says.
At the time of Russia’s invasion, the movement had 192 emissary families in Ukraine, including 380 individuals on the ground. On Sunday, they chartered a flight to Israel to help Jews flee.
Some children had never left Ukraine and didn’t have passports
They also evacuated 120 children to Berlin from their Mishpacha Orphanage in Odessa. The Chabad Chief Rabbi of Berlin, Rabbi Yudi Tiechtel, is now working with local volunteers to house, feed and care for them.
He told the JC: “Some of the children had never left Ukraine, they didn’t even have passports. It was a huge, huge logistical and even political challenge. I went to visit the president of the Federal Police of Germany, and then the German government with security services worked hard, reaching out to other governments to let the convoy through. After 60 hours of travelling, they arrived here on Friday.”
By Monday the President of Germany, Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his wife Elke Büdenbender, requested to visit. “He said, ‘I read about what you’re doing, and I think it’s very important.’”
The President spent over two hours with the entire group, which ranges from a six-week old baby up to 18-yearolds. Chabad is now arranging for a second group of another 120 refugees to arrive in Berlin, this time made up of mothers and children.
Chabad has mobilised Jewish communities around the globe though its international network of Rabbis and community centres, rapidly raising money through its Ukraine Jewish Relief Fund. It provides essential food and shelter for those in need. So far they have distributed $12million, out of an estimated $30million that will be needed by the end of the month.
Rabbi Seligson says “The Chabad rabbis and their families on the ground are real heroes. Even those who evacuated were ultimately just evacuating so they can better serve the communities they’re in from outside.”