“It’s hard to wrap my mind around the fact that I hid in this basement in 1941, and now I’m here again. It feels like I’m dreaming — like I’m having a nightmare.”

Natalia Berezhnaya, 88

JDC client

For refugees in neighboring countries, we are:

• Staffing key border crossings along with European community partners and volunteers to embrace, inform, and assist refugees arriving in Poland, Moldova, Hungary, and Romania, while also working to coordinate shelter and home hospitality.
• Supporting the needs of refugees and European Jewish communities as they absorb refugees in the short and long-term, including food, medicine, accommodation, and workforce opportunities and integration and connection to local Jewish institutions and programs.
• Providing food, medicine, and other urgent support for Jews not in refugee camps or shelters and providing financial assistance to newly vulnerable individuals.
• Partnering with Jewish communities across the region to deliver nonsectarian aid to people impacted by the crisis.

For those looking to evacuate, our efforts include:

• Executing and coordinating evacuations across Ukraine, including arranging transport and safe accommodations inside Ukraine and beyond.
• Arranging special medical transport for those elderly Jews who are unable to make the journey using standard vehicles.

“When you are cowering from the booms and flinching at the sound of breaking glass, you need to focus on something that is so pure and so good that it outshines the darkness of conflict and fear.”

Elena Proskurnja

Director of Hesed Michael
Social welfare center

Zaporizhia, Ukraine

Ukraine’s vibrant Jewish community is one of the largest in the world, home to an estimated 200,000 Jews. Since the collapse of communism, JDC has worked across the former Soviet Union (FSU) to save Jewish lives and build Jewish life. In Ukraine alone, JDC has been serving an estimated 40,000 Jewish elderly and 2,500 poor Jewish children and their families through our network of care services, Jewish community programs, and Jewish leaders.

Right now, you can help us continue to be a lifeline for Ukraine’s most vulnerable Jewish elderly and families with young children caught in the devastating throes of war. Give today.