Tuesday Night: An Update on The Rescue Efforts in Ukraine From Chief Rabbi Yaakov Bleich

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I am currently in a car in Poland on the way to the border to see and visit the refugees as they cross the border from Ukraine into Poland. I just visited a hotel in Warsaw that is full of refugees and now I’m going to see how they come over the border.

In the meantime, we are continuing our hatzolah work in Kyiv and the rest of Ukraine. Today, four busses left from Kyiv. Two left from the shul and two left from our assisted living home.

Today, we made the very big decision to move the elderly people in the assisted living home in Kyiv since it was too much of a danger for us to wait any longer. We decided that we had to get them out now.

Also today, we began renting a camp near Munkatch in western Ukraine, and that is where we took the elderly people from the assisted living home. We also are taking people there from our camps in Premishlan, Belz and Yampoli. These are all refugees who can’t or don’t want to leave the country right now. The new camp has 350 beds. It is a huge undertaking to get everyone there and to run the camp, but we hope it will be a good place for the refugees to continue putting their lives back together as much as possible under the circumstances in which they are living. We want them to feel that they are able to have a semblance of a normal, Jewish life, and not like they are only refugees.

Help Us Continue To Save Lives

All of the people who came to the border today got through, boruch Hashem, and we are currently working on continuing this lifesaving work. I want you to know that I am getting calls every few minutes from people all around the world who are crying that they have relatives in Ukraine that they can’t get out. Tomorrow, two busses will be leaving from Niezhin, in addition to the busses leaving Kyiv, like they have been doing every day. People are also begging us to arrange for busses to get people out of other places like Chernikow, but it is simply too dangerous to do that right now. I feel that now is a time that we can work to save lives. We have an opportunity that may not be available much longer. We have to chap arein to do the best we can to save as many people as possible, as quickly as possible. 

The expenses are building up exorbitantly. We are spending upwards of $200,000 a day to save people and take care of refugees. I ask everyone to please give what they can to help us save lives and make the refugees feel better and more at home until will be able to bring them to a safe place to continue to rebuild lives.

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