Battle-scarred IDF hero on brave mercy mission
VHE WAS SEVERELY injured when he lost 13 of his troops in an infamous ambush during the battle for Jenin in 2002. Now, Pini Schwarzman has been leading a new mission: to help refugees fleeing the conflict in Ukraine.
The former elite IDF soldier travelled to the Ukraine-Moldova border along with six other ex-army men as part of an operation run by Brothers for Life (Achim Le’Chaim), an Israeli charity that helps wounded ex-troops use their knowledge for the benefit of all.
“For me, this is taking my life full circle,” Mr Schwartzman told the JC. “My late father had to flee Ukraine during the Second World War with his mother. They were fleeing from Ukrainian Nazi collaborators. I’m back at the border he crossed, from Ukraine to Moldova.”
Mr Schwartzman explained how he has applied his battlefield experience to several emergencies in the war zone.
One 74-year-old man had dislocated his shoulder when he fell while running for the bus to escape their city.
Mr Schwartzman said: “The man was refusing to go to hospital, still probably traumatised. So I had to strap it myself, even though I had no suitable painrelief stuff with me, just a bandage. I looked up ‘dislocated shoulder’ on YouTube. ” He also identified an old man as a potential heart attack victim. He was rushed to a hospital. It was a heart attack, and the man survived.
Mr Schwartzman says his own experience of suffering from PTSD has been of some help. He said: “I saw a woman, seven months pregnant and with a four-year-old boy, sobbing uncontrollably by the roadside after her 20-hour bus journey had ended. It turned out it was from the release of emotions after all she had been through.
“A Russian-speaking brother is a doctor, and he gave her sedation. She was upset that her husband was still in the war-zone, fighting. They had been bombing her town. And she had to leave behind her very old parents who were too old to travel.”
Mr Schwartzman added: “I know how to approach people. I can identify with them. It makes no difference to us if they are Jewish or not.
“But I was particularly moved when I supported a 94-year-old Jewish lady who had survived the Holocaust in Ukraine.”
In Jenin, Mr Schwartzman had entered the lobby of a house in the refugee camp when he radioed for his group to join him. As they arrived, an IED exploded, blasting him unconscious. He woke up several days later in an Israeli hospital to be told that 13 of his platoon had died. It had been a trap. Gunmen and snipers had fired from rooftops as they backed into the street. Mr Schwartzman survived because he had remained lying inside the house.
“I got PTSD, but not from Jenin. It was one month after I returned from Lebanon in 2006, where our Brigade had been fighting near the Litani River. I was just jogging along the beach in my home-town Haifa when suddenly I burst out crying. For the next few months I was a different person. Gradually, though, I’ve come right.
“I’ve learned to recognise the warning signals ... and I can express my feelings and emotions openly to my wife”.
He said he was unphased at the thought of going back into Ukraine’s most perilous areas.
“I love danger. I know that’s not normal, but that’s just me.”