UKRAINE
Stay Alive Karina Filonenko
Karina Filonenko evacuated from Ukraine to Poland with her two children just after the start of the war.
A
challenge for each person who lived in Ukraine after February 24, is to ‘stay alive.’ Could you ever expect that in the 21st century, the word “genocide” will be heard and seen? The Jewish Holocaust and mass shooting of World War II in Kiev’s Babin Yar, and across the entire territory of Ukraine, took away the lives of more than half of Ukrainian Jewry. And now in Ukraine, there is again genocide, but now the Ukrainian people die at the hands of the Russian soldiers. ‘Stay alive’—this is life, when you
Karyna Filomenko and her husband before she left for Poland.
can’t plan, predict, you don’t know— where you will live through the day, will your relatives be alive and will you be deprived of your life? Imagine that you have a house, which was repeatedly paid on credit, nurtured, repaired, and filled with personal items and trinkets, and suddenly you receive the news that your home no longer exists. Or maybe after hiding in a bomb shelter, you realize that your house was hit by a rocket, and there is no longer your favorite sofa, TV, kitchen, or favorite pink rabbit. My daughter and I are currently reading a wonderful work by children’s writer Judith Kerr, How Hitler Stole the Pink Rabbit, about the family of a Jewish girl who had to flee Germany in 1933 when Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany. It resonates with our lives in Poland now. I think that 89 years have passed since Hitler, and there are people in the world who are committing genocide of another nation—for whom neither their life nor another’s is important. But, evil will be defeated, as good people won then, so it will be now. The atrocities committed by the Russian occupiers near Kyiv and other cities, rockets falling on us and our children day and night, forced Ukrainians to go abroad and seek temporary refuge in other countries to preserve the most valuable thing—our future, the future of Ukraine, our children, their health and psyche, and to continue their education. That is why I, with my two daughters ages 7 and 3, together with a relative and her 4-year-old son, after another air alarm, gathered things, children, and thoughts together: one suitcase and a backpack each. We said goodbye to our husbands and parents and boarded a cold evacuation train that took 15 hours to Lviv, passing all the dangerous cities that had already been bombed to pick up future refugees and take them to a safer place. So, we were in Lviv at 6 am, it was still curfew, we couldn’t get out of the station, and there were a lot
of people there. We were lucky that the train went so long and arrived only in the morning. We waited for three days for a bus to Krakow to be with relatives, because it was impossible to buy a ticket every day, and it was impossible to wait for the evacuation train in a live queue several kilometers long with three children in the cold. When we got on the bus, we waited in huge queues at the border, and at 3 am, we crossed to the Polish side. Everything went so quickly and easily that we could not believe our hap- Stella Krenmen prepares for a fundraiser for Ukraine. piness. Polish volunteers greeted us so happily with treats, delicacies, hot of them received some form of assistance drinks, baby diapers—all at 3 am! from Zhegota. The warm welcome in Poland did not Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List is end at the border. Wherever we had to based on real events in Poland, when go—the market square in Krakow, the at the factory in Krakow, the owner hid hotel in Muszyn, or the social welfare more than 1,000 Jews from the Nazis. center in Krynica-Zdroj—everywhere It is symbolic that one of the actresses people helped us with things, food, and in this film, Olivia Dabrowski, joined housing. We feel supported and prothe volunteer movement and is helping tected—we are infinitely appreciative on the Polish-Ukrainian border, sending and we will never forget. humanitarian aid. Apparently, the Jews had the same Support of countries, peoples, mutual feelings when Poles rescued them from assistance and kindness, is what will win German concentration camps and hid the war. Unity is our strength. them, providing all possible assistance. Poland was the only Nazi-occupied Karina Filonenko’s aunt, Stella Krenman country in Europe to host the Zhegota emigrated from Ukraine to Tidewater in organization, aimed solely at helping 1994. Jews. More than 50,000 Jews survived the Nazi occupation of Poland, and half
jewishnewsva.org | May 9, 2022 | JEWISH NEWS | 11
