Four years after Russia invaded Ukraine, refugees receiving help from Krakow JCC

A banner over the front gate of a small Jewish building in the heart of Krakow, Poland, four years ago next week, became a symbol of timeless Jewish chesed – and of proactive involvement in a contemporary refugee crisis.

“Early, early” on February 24, 2022, Jonathan Ornstein, executive director of the Polish city’s now-18-year-old Jewish Community Centre, learned on the internet and from friends’ text messages that the Russian Army had invaded neighboring Ukraine, for the second time in eight years. Russian troops poured south over the border, overwhelming Ukrainian troops in the Dombas region. Immediately, fearful Ukrainians headed west, towards safety in many European countries.

Within hours of hearing the news, Ornstein, a native of Queens who has served at the JCC since its founding in 2008, had a hand-painted, blue-and-yellow (the colors of the Ukrainian flag) 15-foot-wide “Welcome” banner posted in Ukrainian — Ласкаво просимо. He foresaw, correctly, that many refugees would reach Krakow.

“We didn’t know what would happen, but I wanted the refugees to feel that the Jewish community in Krakow was welcoming them,” Ornstein remembered in a telephone interview last week. “As they began to come, we began to buy them a toothbrush or a sweater or some food.” The refugees kept showing up. About 13 million of them in Poland since early 2022, of whom an estimated million have remained in Poland with temporary protection status.

“The line in front of the building grew,”........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)