Mission to rescue Holocaust survivors
UKRAINIAN Holocaust survivors are being helped to flee Vladimir Putin’s army by a US-based charity.
Elderly people whose earliest memories are of Nazi death camps are being rescued in a ‘complex and dangerous mission’ and finding refuge in Israel and Germany.
Galina Ploschenko, 88, who was trapped in a retirement home in the eastern city of Dnipro, was nervous when told she would be taken to Hanover. She said: ‘They told me Germany was my best option. I told them, “I hope you’re right”.’
Ms Ploschenko lost her aunt and two cousins in the gas chambers, and her father, who left to fight with the Soviet army, disappeared.
‘That first time I was a child, with my mother as my protector. Now I’ve felt so alone,’ she added.
Around 100 of Ukraine’s estimated 10,000 Holocaust survivors have so far been taken to safety.
Bryan Stern, from Project Dynamo, says his organisation has rescued around a dozen Jewish survivors and hopes to rescue another group soon. Mr Stern, a US Army and Navy veteran, said: ‘The irony is many of the Holocaust survivors were saved from the Nazis by the Russians. Now Russia is the aggressor. It’s almost unthinkable that these people are having to flee genocide for the second time.’
He added: ‘They don’t want to leave. Many are sick. The rescues are highly complex and dangerous.’
Israel has taken in almost 300 Holocaust survivors from Ukraine. Among them is Valerie Bendersky, 85, who was seven when he fled to Kazakhstan to escape the Nazis. ‘I have lived through two tragedies. I was fleeing from Hitler then, now I have fled from Putin,’ he said from his new home in Tel Aviv.
Another is 100-year-old Dova Govergeviz, now in an Israeli care home. She said: ‘I thought to myself, “Oh my God, what a nightmare! Here we go again”.’
At least two Holocaust survivors have died since the war began in Ukraine. Vanda Obiedkova, 91, died in a cellar in Mariupol, and Boris Romanchenko, 96, who survived four Nazi deaths camps, was killed in a Russian attack on Kharkiv.