Evacuation of a 98-year old mother from Krapivnitsky, Kirovograd region, Ukraine (end of April, 2022)
Int.: When did you decide to go?
Inf.: …by the end of March, when the [Russian] assault was mounting, my daughter-in-law who lived 60 kilometers away from Kyiv, told me: “People tell horrific stories: they [Russian soldiers] rape girls, they rape women – terrible!” She started telling me continuously: “Why are you sitting there, not doing anything? Here, look, I heard of a man from Kharkiv, paralyzed, on the stretchers, bedridden, and a car came for him and took him away – do something! You see what’s happening, we don’t know what’s in store for us!” And I was overcome with fear, and I thought – what if this miserable creature [a Russian soldier] comes and says: “You, Jews, stay put where you are,” like, they won’t let us go anywhere, and I won’t be able to see my girls [daughter and granddaughter in Israel]. I don’t want this! I want to be together with them.
Int.: So, you expected anti-Semitism from the Russian occupational troops?
Inf.: Yes, I think… well, although I never saw them, but in Russia, it seems to me, this [anti-Semitism] is very strong.
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Inf.: And this horror of getting prepared for the trip! My mother hadn’t left her apartment for five years by then… and me, too, my brain lost its edge since we had been leading quiet pensioner life with my mum, everything was settled…now I was in panic. I wrote a letter to Sochnut, saying that my mother is 98, I myself am 75, we are two old women, my mother is a war veteran, my father was Jewish… I wrote everything: we don’t have an opportunity even to get down the stairs, since four our neighbors had left for the war. “I don’t know how you can help me, but if you can…” Two days later I got a response: “Don’t worry, we’ll contact you.” And then everything went into motion.
As much as I can remember, I wrote to Sochnut, but they connected me with the “International Fellowship of Christians and Jews.” And a car came personally for us… There was this person from Netherlands, who had been living in Ukraine for more than ten years… he took us to Vinnytsia, to a posh hotel, where we stayed for night, and then we went by another car to Chișinău, also to a posh hotel, and this document maelstrom started… A doctor came to examine my mother – all services were stunning! <…> From the hotel we and others were taken by five or six ambulances. I think it was a private charter flight… in the airplane there was a special compartment with beds, because we travelled with the wounded, even one person with an intravenous dropper, and doctors were taking care of all. My mother was laying all the time... We left Ukraine on April 25th, and were in Israel in the evening of April 27. And I should say that in general my mother sustained the trip in a stoic way.
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Int.: Did your mother think of her late husband then?
Inf.: Oh, my God! Every day… her favorite phrase is: “Thanks to my husband S., our granddaughters are now in safety, in a different country! If he were alive, we would have come to Israel together!” (UJRI_043_LR)