“My wife, Elena, and I are residents of Kiev. I am a photographer by profession and my wife is a Russian language teacher. We have raised a son and already have a granddaughter. My son and his family live in Israel. He went there to study on a student program and stayed because he liked the country so much. My wife and I had not thought of repatriating to Israel before because we liked living in Kiev. When the coronavirus pandemic started in 2019, we started to feel discomfort for the first time, as our usual way of life was disrupted. And now another calamity has spoiled our lives completely – war, which is still hard to come to terms with! This was the last straw for my decision to repatriate to Israel. As my wife is a teacher of Russian, all her life she loved the culture of these people, but now her world has just turned upside down! Elena is saddened that this has happened and no longer has any desire to teach her children the language of the enemy. Now my wife’s specialty is no longer needed here, there is no longer this subject in schools and it is the right thing to do! We fully support Ukraine and understand the need to get rid of everything connected with the enemy! Elena and I made the decision to go to Israel permanently at the very beginning of the war, but then I could not do it as I was not allowed to go, now I am 60 years old, and we can go to our children and start a new life there! We realized that there was no future for us in Ukraine. We decided to start life with a clean slate in a country that will be our home, even though we are no longer young!”
“Of course, we will miss the very beautiful places, nature, and good people here, many of our friends and there are still relatives here, but we realize that we have to leave everything behind and move on with our lives. Next, we will look for the beauty in Israel! I very much dream of opening a photography studio in Israel. Elena still wants to work with children. We will be there for our son, our grandson. A new life is ahead of us and mentally we are already ready for it!”
“Ezra helped us financially, thanks to which we got our passports, as ours were already out of date. They also helped with advice and took us to Vinnitsa, from where we will travel to Kishinev, Moldova for consular checks. We were surprised that there is an organization that has been helping Jews for so many years. Even in times of peace you helped, and that was so important, but even more so now, when there is war, this help is a real salvation for us! Thank you very much from the bottom of my heart!”