A Jewish refugee from the Ukrainian city of Mariupol has described how she and her family used Chanukah candles for light while sheltering from Russian bombardment in a basement.
Mother-of-two Alina Teplitskaya told an audience of European Jewish leaders at a conference in Budapest: “Before the war, we had a beautiful community.
“We didn’t have a huge community compared to larger cities, but we had our own synagogue, our own school. Before the war it was really wonderful there.”
Her voice trembling with emotion, she described how her family and community had been plunged into a nightmare after Putin’s invasion.
Life changed rapidly in the southern Ukrainian town, a stubborn holdout to occupation, after the invading Russian army began its bombardment.
As Russian artillery fire destroyed the buildings around her home, Alina and her children huddled together in the basement during the months-long siege.
She recalled: “When we lit the Chanukah candles, they were our only source of light. On one occasion in the cellar we each lit a candle.”
Ms Teplitskaya, the director of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Ukraine, said that Mauripol had become increasingly hellish as the siege intensified.
“There were no medications, all shops had been shoplifted,” she said. As temperatures plunged to minus 15 degrees, some residents had no water or electricity.
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Devastation: Buildings reduced to rubble in Mariupol (Getty Images)
Eventually, after months of suffering, stricken Jewish residents were able to flee Mariupol.
Those who had no cars could not travel, Ms Teplitskaya said, but community members helped rescue those in need.
“We told everyone they had five minutes to get things together, then we can evacuate you,” she said.
“There was not an opportunity to collect everyone in one place; we tried to get to everyone at their homes and leave.
“There were areas with no access: we couldn’t enter with a car anymore because of the destruction.”
After she managed to leave, Ms Teplitskaya travelled first across Europe and then on to Israel, but, she said, others remain trapped.
“At the moment in Mariupol there are still some people remaining, still some Jewish people.
“We tried to stay in contact. They decided to stay because their relatives are buried in their courtyard and they do want to leave Ukraine.”
Now the community’s “beautiful building” lies in ruins, though they were at least able to rescue their Torah.
Ukraine’s Rabbi Raphael Rotman, also speaking in Budapest at the European Jewish Association (EJA) conference, said that what people in Europe hear in the media is “not a fraction” of the horrors he has seen since Russia invaded.
“Millions of people are displaced inside the country, outside of the country, and have no idea what tomorrow holds,” he said, his voice cracking with emotion.
“Thousands have been killed in Ukraine, a country I call home, a country I’ve been living in for 29 years. There are thousands of new orphans. The Jewish communities are living in this nightmare too.”
Leaving his training as a Chabad emissary behind, Rabbi Rotman said he had become a rescue worker, organising the evacuation of those in need.
“On 8 March, we rescued a mother with her seven-year-old daughter and eight-month-old son from Irpin,” he said.
“It took us two days, and on the second attempt we got it right and escaped with only six bullet holes in the car. That’s just one story.
“That family is now living in safety elsewhere in Europe,” he added.
In other cases, potential evacuees were harder to convince of the danger.
“I had to convince a 96-year-old Jew – his name is Pesach – that he needed to evacuate from his apartment in Kyiv. He was living there with his two sons, one of whom has mental challenges…
“He says to me: Rabbi, I already evacuated from Kyiv once, now you want me to do it again.
“That’s not the irony. He evacuated from Kyiv the first time from the Germans to Russia.”
Amidst the darkness, however, the conflict has led to a resurgence of Jewish faith, Rabbi Rotman claimed.
He said: “We had Pesach seder in the middle of Kyiv, with people who’d never been before. It took a war to bring them out. People sat until 5 o’clock in the morning.”
On Shavuot he gave a 77-year-old Jewish man his first Bar Mitzvah, adding again: “It took a war to bring him.”
A Jewish grandmother, meanwhile, was so grateful that he helped her daughter and granddaughter escape Kyiv that for the first time in her life she came to synagogue and heard the ten commandments before taking a Hebrew name, Esther.
“These are some of the joys we try to cling to in this crazy uncertain time,” he added.
Ms Teplitskaya, now living in safety, has not escaped the war mentally.
“Now when we hear the sound of an aeroplane we expect an explosion,” she said, later adding: “Our home is now the whole world, our house is now destroyed. Thank you to everybody who is helping us.”
