FRANKFURT, April 4 (Reuters) – Eight a long time after Raisa Valiushkevych fled Ukraine to flee Nazi Germany’s invasion, the 98-year-old Holocaust survivor discovered herself fleeing once more – this time to Germany, to flee Russian shells falling round her dwelling in Kyiv.
Talking at a Jewish care dwelling in Frankfurt, the retired instructor mentioned it felt unusual to have discovered such a refuge within the land of her former persecutors. However instances had modified and he or she felt grateful and welcome.
Valiushkevych is considered one of round 50 Holocaust survivors that Jewish organisations have helped evacuate from Ukraine since Russia’s invasion on Feb. 24.
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Many at the moment are in Germany, which today has one of many largest Jewish populations in Europe and a very welcoming asylum coverage in the direction of Jews – a part of an official coverage to atone for its previous.
“I’ve discovered a second homeland right here, and I really feel good right here,” Valiushkevych mentioned in her native Russian because it snowed exterior. “I am very grateful.”
Valiushkevych recalled how she, her sister and her dad and mom first fled Ukraine in 1941 by foot after which by prepare to Kazahkhastan. They escaped the Nazi Holocaust which nearly worn out Ukraine’s pre-war Jewish inhabitants of about 1.5 million.
When she got here again, she studied biology at college and have become a instructor.
She by no means thought she would turn out to be a refugee once more – this time at an age when her sight is failing and he or she is not nicely sufficient to go away on her personal two ft.
However explosions had been going off throughout her residence in Kyiv and he or she says she was struggling to get to the closest bunker each time the sirens went off.
So she accepted the provide of evacuation by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, or JDC, a humanitarian group which has spent a long time supporting Jews in Ukraine and had been offering her with dwelling care.
An ambulance took her to the Polish border the place she was transferred to a different that took her to Frankfurt, with an in a single day keep at a care dwelling on the best way for her to recuperate energy.
“It was tough,” mentioned her 70-year-old son, Vadym Valiushkevych, who made the three-day journey together with her. “The roads had been bombed. My mom needed to get injections on the best way.”
DEEP DUTY
The JDC mentioned it had been working with the Jewish Claims Convention – a physique which represents Jews in negotiations on compensation for Nazi victims and their descendants – to carry Holocaust survivors to security.
“The Holocaust survivors are reminded of what they went by way of as kids by way of in the present day’s experiences and we really feel deeply the obligation to not allow them to down this time,” mentioned Ruediger Mahlo, head of the German chapter of the Claims Convention.
A few of the aged survivors had spent days within the freezing chilly in Ukraine after their home windows had been shattered throughout latest raids, he mentioned.
“In fact it is an enormous drawback to get ambulances in a struggle zone, an enormous drawback to get petrol. The ambulances are sometimes partly falling aside and we have now to maintain discovering options,” he mentioned. “The (humanitarian) corridors largely do not work.”
Evacuations may contain not less than 15 organisations together with the overseas ministry and greater than 50 officers, he mentioned.
The large operation got here collectively within the days after Russia launched its invasion, an motion that Russian President Vladimir Putin has known as a “particular navy operation” meant to demilitarise and “denazify” Ukraine.
Mahlo mentioned that was an absurd flip of phrase, given the plight of Valiushkevych and different Holocaust survivors.
“In a rustic (Ukraine) in which there’s a flourishing Jewish neighborhood constructed during the last a long time and wherein the president is Jewish, it’s mockery to say that one is invading this nation with the intention to denazify it,” Mahlo mentioned.
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Reporting by Tilman Blasshofer in Frankfurt, Sarah Marsh and Fanny Brodersen in Berlin; Enhancing by Andrew Heavens
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