🇺🇦 MEETING JEWISH REFUGEES FROM UKRAINE (Short Version) RABBI TO THE RESCUE

we've all seen the devastating effects that the war in ukraine has had on so many thousands of people have been killed and millions have been displaced from their homes amongst those who have been displaced are tens of thousands of jews from ukraine who are taking shelter in many countries throughout europe wanting to get a first-hand understanding of the situation i hopped on a plane to romania to meet some of these jewish refugees and the chabad rabbi who's looking after them at the very last minute i reached out to my friends at mint capital and asked them if they'd be interested in sweetening the lives of these jewish refugees of course they said yes so i ran to my local supermarket and pretty much emptied out their entire chocolate isle now it was time to fly thank you okay yes romania so i've seen a lot of small airports in my day but this one takes the cake you come in from that door there's the bags and then you go right out that door so this one is tiny tiny tiny so i'm here in the car with rabbi shalom gaping from lugansk kiev yasi today so lugansk is in ukraine yeah and the rabbi is here i noticed his license plate is also from ukraine so you drove the car sure yeah from ukraine to here when did you run away from ukraine i gathered two weeks ago we have arrived at this hotel compound what's interesting is that a lot of these cars parked here from ukraine so this one has the ukraine license plate that one is a ukrainian license plate and this one is a ukraine license plate people literally took what they could got into the cars and ran and they made it here the rabbi has a similar story that he's going to tell us later we'll get to that one thing i want to be very clear about is that i don't want to get into the politics of this war and what's going on between russia and ukraine that's not what i'm here to do i want to show you the human side i want to show you the people the regular people who are being affected by what's happening now we're at this place i'm i understand it's a kind of hotel a resort and this is where the refugees some of them are staying the rabbi is putting them up here so how many people are here rabbi 50 60 people 50 or 60 people it doesn't know exactly because every day is changing people are coming and going let's see what's happening here inside the ballroom i met men women and children who were just sitting there bored trying to pass time i also met two romanian non-jewish people who came to help with cooking and preparing food [Music] the rabbi then took me to another ballroom where there was some extra food but the rabbi said they would run out within a few days [Music] our next stop was a makeshift synagogue on the hotel property complete with a torah scroll brought along from ukraine so that the jews can pray [Music] we then met with the jewish couple along with their married daughter and her baby who until a couple weeks ago were living a very elegant life in ukraine but now they were refugees in romania like everyone else they sat down to tell me their story and the amount of hardships they'd gone through in the past few weeks was simply unfathomable [Music] when the war started they ran from their home in kiev to their summer home outside of the city but soon the fighting followed them outside of the city and they were left with no electricity and no running water they were forced to go outside and look for firewood to heat their home and to melt snow for drinking water [Music] okay so a family just showed up new refugees in the house and they brought dogs so um can i ask you what your name is my name is irina rina and this is java and you guys came from where from 800. wow so um was there was there bombing in your city yeah yes so you were there then yes what was it like scary scary yeah i could imagine so you just how did you get to romania we sit in the car how many days have you been traveling uh about a week a week nine march now for the first time in a bunch of days you're going to be relaxing on me yeah settling down that's wonderful and you brought the dogs with you yeah so three dogs so who this is what's her name or his speak is the mother no no no no this is the mother where's the other one oh my goodness that is a cute this is his son adam told me and they're all they all ran away with you yes yes were were the dogs afraid when they heard the bombs yeah okay so please go go inside and make yourself comfortable i then met a young man named mark who told me about his family's escape from the city of sumi in ukraine when i asked him how long he thought his family would be homeless for this is what he said do you think you're ever going to be able to go home yeah yeah when when no not tomorrow but maybe um [Music] till year or two a year or two no how did you find out that you can come here um our our river said that we need to come here to sleep oh cool so so what's up so the rabbi from your city told you that you can come here and there's another rabbi who's going to take care of you uh yeah [Music] the longer i stayed the more people i met who were all stuck in the same situation young and old it didn't matter they had all ran away from the war in ukraine and they were in a strange land not knowing when they could go home [Music] as dinner was being served i took a look around the room and thought about the refugees and their plight how badly they must have wanted to be eating dinner in their own homes i marveled at the fact that many of these people are being taken care of by a rabbi who they didn't even know existed only a few days ago ensuring that every one of these refugees has a warm bed to sleep in and a hot meal every day is no easy task [Music] but the rabbi is doing it all with a smile so we're going to be handing out chocolate thank you mid capital for sending the chocolate [Music] you