More than 500 Jewish refugees from Ukraine have found sanctuary in the State of Israel through a series of flights sponsored by members of the Adelson family, children of Dr. Miriam Adelson and the late Sheldon Adelson.
The flights, which were part of United Hatzalah’s Operation Orange Wings, brought the refugees from Kishinev, Moldova, and Iasi, Romania, to Israel over the past two weeks.
One of the people rescued was a woman named Irina, a Ukrainian refugee from Kiev who arrived in Moldova by herself. Irina suffered from a complicated medical condition that required her to receive continuous medical care, which she was unable to receive in Kyiv since the start of the war, and during her travel to the border.
Due to her condition, Irina was taken to a local hospital in Kishinev. She asked the hospital staff for permission to go to Israel to be united with her son who lives in the Meir Shfeya Youth Village, but due to her medical status the staff at the hospital were unwilling to let her leave without supervised medical care — and they certainly weren’t willing to let her travel out of the country.
Recognizing the uniqueness of her request, and having witnessed United Hatzalah’s team in action with Ukrainian refugees in Kishinev, one of the staff members contacted the UH team in Kishinev and asked if there was a way that they could help.
Chief UH Paramedic Avi Marcus, who served as the chief medical officer for the organization’s mission to Moldova and the Ukrainian border, sent one of the volunteer doctors in Kishinev to visit the woman and provide a thorough checkup.
The UH doctor determined that with special medical supervision the woman could make the journey, and signed a document stating so. With this document, the hospital staff agreed to release the woman to the care of United Hatzalah’s medical team, who arranged for her to be one of the people on the flight.
Two days after the hospital visit, the woman was on an Adelson-sponsored flight to Israel. Upon landing in the country she was picked up and taken to Meir Shfeya and reunited with her son. Her son was overjoyed as he had not expected his mother to be able to make it to Israel. He wrote the organization a heartfelt thank you letter expressing his gratitude for all that was done in order to reunite the family together.
“Thanks to the support of Adam, Matan, Sivan, and Patrick, children of Dr. Miriam Adelson and the late Sheldon Adelson, may his memory be a blessing, we were able to bring this woman and 500 other Jewish refugees to safety in Israel,” said President and Founder of United Hatzalah Eli Beer.
“Our teams provided the refugees with humanitarian aid at the Ukrainian border as well as inside Moldova, Romania, and other countries, and then we flew them to Israel onboard our specially chartered flights, while providing medical coverage throughout. Their support enabled us to save these people and bring them to safety and reunite not only Irina with her son but many other families as well.”
