OUR COMMUNITY
Ody Norkin on his journey to Ukraine
Ambulances for Ukraine Okemos man helps deliver ambulances and medical supplies to Jews in the war-torn region. STACY GITTLEMAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER
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ince the beginning of Russia’s war on Ukraine, Oded “Ody” Norkin, 67, of Okemos, has felt the pull of his past. In 1925, his father, Aaron, graduated Odessa Technical School. In 1941, when the Nazis and their allies took siege of Odessa, his father, like many Jews, was deported to work camps in Siberia. His grandparents Sara and Moshe Norkin were murdered in the streets of Odessa. “My grandparents were not evacuated because they were considered too old, and we lost them,” Norkin said. “So now, this current war hit home for me, and I had to do something.” With a newly formed network of people that stretches from Michigan to Romania to Ukraine, Norkin, together with $20,000 in donations collected from a Greater Lansing Jewish Federation emergency campaign, has secured two ambulances plus medical equipment, first aid supplies and vital medication for war-ravaged Ukrainians. Norkin transferred the first ambulance, packed with supplies, to the Jewish community in Odessa in April. As of
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May 11, the second ambulance began its long journey to the Jewish community in Dnipro. Norkin, 67, was born in Israel and served in the Israeli Army during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. For the last 16 years, people know him best as vice president of Michigan Flyer, a multicity transportation service that shuttles travelers to and from the Detroit Metro Airport. In early March, Norkin called Hendel Weingarten, the rabbi at Chabad House in East Lansing, who suggested he contact Rabbi Avraham Wolff of Chabad in Odessa. They began exchanging text messages March 13. “I know a thing or two about transportation, and that’s where I wanted to help, with evacuees fleeing Ukraine over the border to Moldova, Romania or Poland,” Norkin said. “When I signed up to volunteer, the network of Chabad rabbis said transportation they had; where they really needed help was to get more ambulances and medicine.” Though Norkin’s expertise lies in bus shuttle transportation, he had
no knowhow in how to acquire an ambulance. Yet, he promised Rabbi Wolff he would come through. BOUND FOR ROMANIA By March 14, he was on a plane bound for Romania, traveling with $10,000 in cash of his own savings, with few other plans beyond that. He made his way to Bucharest in a rented nine-passenger van, where he connected with Chabad Rabbi Naftalai Deutsch, who introduced him to a man who could get the job done: Marco Katz. A native of Romania who has spent time living in the United States and Israel, where he served in the Israeli Army, Katz is vice president of the Zionist Association of Romania and founding director of Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism in Romania. “Katz wears many hats,” Norkin explained on a spotty phone call with the JN while the two were making a recent three-hour drive between the tiny Romanian border town of Siret, host to many fleeing refugees, back to Bucharest. “He knows everybody and anybody you
