Victoria - Mykolaiv
In the lower south side of Krakow, you will find the former Jewish district of Kazimierz. During WWII, when the Germans first occupied the city of Krakow, there were nearly 64,000 Jewish people settled there. By the end of WWII, only 3-4,000 Cracovian Jews survived.
Today, this former Jewish district is undergoing a revival, and the Jewish Community Center (JCC) is playing a role in its rebirth. I will be sharing more about JCC in the near future. but today’s story is about a beneficiary of its recent shift in mission. When Russia invaded Ukraine in February, JCC began to focus on helping the refugees from Ukraine. One of those refugees was Victoria from Mykolaiv.
Victoria fled Mykolaiv around fifty days into the war. She said she decided to wait because, “I knew that there were many refugees with children, so I did not want to take someone’s place. Almost every day there was shelling, but air-raid sirens didn’t sound every time. When they use multiple rocket launchers or cluster bombs, it is impossible to alert citizens with the air-raid siren. People were killed by cluster bombs near the ATMs, near the church, and at the bus stop. There were two attacks on the places that we often visited in our district--a missile hit near our supermarket and rockets hit down the street from our house. Rocket fragments are everywhere. At night, there is a blackout and a curfew, so people are at home. But in the daytime, shelling is even more dangerous because it is complicated to hide in the street. It’s hardly possible to hide. Granite and stones are damaged by these fragments. Trees are literally crying. There are holes in trunks.”
You will find Mykolaiv just west of Kherson on the black sea. A city that once had 500,000 residents now contains only 230,000 people based on current estimates. It’s a strategic city in the war as Putin has often stated he wants Odesa which is 70 miles to the west of Mykolaiv.
Being only 40 miles away from Russian occupied Kherson to the East, the city is on the frontlines of both offensive attacks and defensive attacks. “Our district is close to Kherson (occupied by Russia),” says Victoria, “so it was often attacked by artillery from the Kherson region. One night, they destroyed the grain storage. They aim to destroy our agricultural infrastructure. They bomb ports, so product tankers are stuck. Grain requires special conditions – it should be stirred and dried constantly. That night, all of our city flinched. The glass in the windows was shivering.”
After that attack, on April 12th, Victoria and her husband decided it was time to leave. They went to Odesa before boarding a train to Przemysl, Poland. Her daughter was already volunteering at JCC in Krakow and sent a car to pick up and bring her parents the final two hours.
When we asked her how she felt now being in Poland, she stated, “We can sleep. We sleep. In Mykolaiv, we could not sleep. At night, I had high blood pressure, so I heard a pulse in my ears. We were always on the lookout for the next attack. There were nights with 3 air-raid sirens in a row. So we hid in the corridor and did not sleep. There were nights when I felt so sleep-deprived and exhausted that I heard explosions and did not react to them. I stayed in bed as I could not get up. For one or two nights, it is possible to hide and not go to bed, but after the third and fourth nights, I did not have the energy to do anything.”
After receiving housing and settling in, Victoria got to work volunteering at JCC. “One week after our arrival, we were recovering, and our daughter asked whether we wanted to volunteer at JCC. We were happy to agree. We can’t just lie on the sofa.”
When I met her, she was helping put bags of food together to be distributed to any Ukrainian that came to the center for help. “We feel that we are not alone. There are four of us – me, my husband, my daughter, and my granddaughter. And volunteering gives us an opportunity to meet new people. We started to learn the Polish language. We communicate with each other, and it feels like therapy. It is hard to stay alone and monitor all the news about the war the whole day. Just scrolling through the news and searching for signs of our victory.”
By volunteering at JCC, she has found a way to help others that are going through the war and to keep her mind from constantly thinking about what is happening or what will happen. “It is completely impossible to comprehend what is happening now. The Russians say that we are Nazis. What, Nazis? I can’t understand it. They are bombing multinational and Russian-speaking cities. Mykolaiv is an old city with a rich history. There are representatives of the Bulgarian, Armenian, Polish, German, Korean, and Azerbaijani nations. We speak mainly Russian. My daughter started speaking Ukrainian after the invasion.”
While she understands that, “the Russians want to invade Odesa, and there is only one way to Odesa – through Mykolaiv,” she can’t comprehend how brutal the Russians are. “Russians have been so brainwashed that they have become mindless. Russian soldiers’ wives tell them to ‘Kill Ukrainians! Destroy them!’” Victoria’s mother-in-law lived through WWII as a child. “People who lived during the German occupation during WWII say that it was not as horrific as the Russian occupation. They are more afraid of Russians than of Germans.”
Ukrainian forces are currently holding strong in Mykolaiv, but many fear that this could be one of Russia’s main focal points shortly as they try to cut Ukrainians’ access to the Black Sea and upend their economy by cutting off their ability to export wheat. Meanwhile, Victoria will continue to do her part in Krakow, not knowing what the future holds but grateful to be safe in Poland with her family.
In the next post, I will be sharing the story of another volunteer in Poland seeking to make a difference. Subscribe to get it directly to your inbox.
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