Israelis and other Jews are choosing not to leave Ukraine because “on the street, everything is fine,” 37-year-old Hatzalah Ukraine CEO Shlomo Rosilio told JewishPress.com in a telephone interview Wednesday night.
Rosilio said there are many Jewish families – including Israeli citizens and some from the US – who are living in Ukraine, and especially in Uman, simply because it costs so little, relative to elsewhere — and they are afraid to lose what they have if they go.
In Uman, for example, Rosilio said that one can hire a children’s nanny for $100 a month. “They like the place, it’s cheap,” he explained. “They can live on $1,000 a month in Uman. It’s impossible to do that in Israel, for example.”
Rosilio also contended that it is not so simple for a family of five – or more — to simply pick up and go. “They worry that some Ukrainian guy may come in and take whatever they have if they leave – they won’t have anything to come back to, so no one wants to leave their home,” he said.
There are thousands of such families, not only in Uman but also in Odessa, where there is a huge Jewish community.
At least 8,000 of the estimated 12,000 Israeli citizens living in Ukraine have chosen to stay despite urgent warnings from Israel’s government that they should leave immediately.
But with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin having gained permission from the Duma (Parliament) to authorize military force abroad, it’s a crap shoot as to how long anyone in Ukraine will be safe.
“Nobody knows what’s going to happen,” Rosilio said. “But it’s been already two or three weeks that we are getting the messages that ‘you have 24 hours, you have 48 hours’ and, in the meantime, we are seeing Ukrainians living their lives as usual.
“Add to that the fact that most of the Jews who live here are strictly religious, with no smartphones, no media, no internet, no TV, so they are getting second-hand information at best, from others – and therefore they don’t get an accurate picture of what’s going on. In Uman, they are sitting and learning, and nothing gets to them.
“On the street everything is fine. There are no tourists, which someone found a bit surprising the other day. It doesn’t occur to them that there is a war going on, has been going on for eight years.”
Hatzalah Ukraine Preparing Either Way
Based near Uman, Hatzalah Ukraine is loosely affiliated with Israel’s Magen David Adom emergency medical response organization, Rosilio said: “We get help from them from time to time. We have an ambulance they donated to us; but we don’t have a formal partnership,” he said.
The organization also operates in Odessa: “We have a small clinic there, and we help the orphanage of [the city’s chief rabbi and Chabad-Lubavitch emissary] Rabbi Avraham Wolf, an amazing man.”
Helping Fighters at the Front, Helping Jews at Home
Surprisingly, with the exception of the Jewish High Holy Days, Rosilio said Hatzalah Ukraine carries out humanitarian missions “mostly to the war zone” during the rest of the year.
“We get volunteers, and we take them to the hospitals in the war zone and we help the people there,” he said, noting that because of the good will he has built up with those missions, he has “a lot of connections” with commanders on both sides of the border.
“They get packages from me,” he said. “They get what they need, medical supplies, coats, boots, clothing. I am sending around 500 kilograms of supplies to the front lines each month. Those people appreciate that we are helping them, and they help us back,” he said.
Those connections are important in his calculations on whether and when to evacuate, Rosilio noted.
Exclusive: A Jewish Woman’s Flight from Ukraine to Safety in Israel
“When I get a phone call that says, ‘You need to go,’ I am going to go, and I am going to take everyone with me,” he emphasized. “We are going to help the Jews in Odessa also, we’re in touch with the community there and will do whatever we can to help them out,” he said.
But until then, he is sitting tight, although he already sent his wife and two young daughters to Israel, to be safe.
Haunting Memories of 2014
One of the reasons for that may be connected to his memories of 2014, when Russia invaded Ukraine and seized the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow then annexed. The Luhansk and Donetsk regions that comprise the Donbas area likewise also began to break away. At least 14,000 people have died in clashes there since then.
“I remember that day,” Rosilio said. “It was a hectic day, a lot of chaos, a lot of people moving around. And one of the things that happened involved pro-Russian mercenaries. There were some people at the local stadium at an event, and the mercenaries came in, and locked all the doors to the stadium, trapping the people inside.
“Then they set the stadium afire.
“On that day, all the Jews went into hiding. I remember that day,” he reiterated.
Buses Are Waiting
For the past week and a half, Rosilio has had a dozen or more huge tour buses lined up in a parking lot, waiting. They are waiting for the green light to evacuate the Jews from Uman and Odessa, Rosilio said.
But buses cost money, as do medical supplies and the monthly packages of supplies Hatzalah Ukraine is sending to the front — building the good will it’s hoped will translate into a lifesaving heads-up to warn him when to start evacuating Jews.
Rosilio hasn’t had time to build a real funding infrastructure for the organization he founded less than a decade ago. Up to this point he has been funding everything himself, since he is a “successful businessman,” he said. Asked how he expects to survive under such pressure, he replied, “This is one of my life missions, and I am happy.”
But he’s not stupid, and he is practical. Hatzalah Ukraine recently kicked off a crowdfunding campaign to help support the effort to provide for Jews who need to leave a war zone, and for those who ultimately may need to leave Ukraine.
To learn more about that and about the organization, click here.
