A social media-savvy Chabad centre in Berlin has helped more than 300 Jewish refugees — some as young as eight weeks old — flee the war in Ukraine.
When the conflict reached the city of Odessa, which has a long history of Judaism, the local Chabad centre organised a coach to take 108 children in care from a Jewish orphanage to safety in a hotel in Berlin’s fashionable Charlottenburg district. Other coaches with children and single mothers carrying a further 200 have since arrived from eastern Ukraine.
As soon as the coach journey was announced, Rabbi Yehuda Teichtel of Chabad Lubavitch Berlin used Instagram to appeal for funds, raising €36,000 for accommodation and living expenses.
Rabbi Teichtel is founder of Europe’s largest Jewish education centre, less than a mile from where the children and their carers are staying.
The first coach arrived in Berlin just in time for Purim after a marathon journey through Moldova, Romania, Hungary and Austria. Praising Rabbi Teichtel’s “unbureaucratic” initiative, German Family Minister Anne Spiegel spoke of the “unbearable, unmeasurable suffering” that these children had experienced.
One refugee, Ilyana, came following her son, who arrived on the first coach. “The journey was scary for us, because we didn’t know what to expect, but we came here and people take care of us and help us as much as they can, sometimes giving everything they have,” she said. Her father Sascha praised God for the “amazing opportunity” given by the Chabad centre.
Alexander, 24, who arrived just yesterday, was similarly grateful. “It’s been a beautiful help. When war started in Odessa we really needed it.”
With some reports that more Ukrainian Jews are heading to Germany than to Israel, the country has clearly overcome its infamy among Eastern European Jews, who were by far the biggest victims of the Holocaust.
Minister Spiegel is aware of the weight of this history, acknowledging that the German government “have a historic responsibility, a duty to help people of Jewish beliefs in particular”.
