Cousins and Ukrainian refugees Lesia Orshoko and Alona Chugai are among the millions who are running for their lives as Russian forces invade their country. But in a wartime twist of fate, the cousins landed in Israel last week to a friendly face — someone who was repaying a decades-old kindness.
The friendly face was Sharon Bass, whose Jewish grandmother was sheltered and saved by Lesia’s grandmother in Ukraine during the Holocaust.
Sharon said it was her honor to take in the cousins and return the immeasurable kindness from nearly 80 years ago.
It felt like history repeating itself, she said. But in this case, it’s an inversion of the norm. Jews have been persecuted throughout our entire history. We’ve been killed, kicked out or forced to flee from every country we’ve stayed in long enough. But this time we have the privilege and responsibility of being a safe haven for other fleeing refugees.
Sharon, 46, said that when she saw the attacks in Ukraine, her thoughts immediately turned to her grandmother, Fania Rosenfeld Bass, and her remarkable survival as she hid from the Nazis.
Fania was a teenager in the Ukrainian town of Rafalowka when the Germans invaded, forcing Jews into ghettos and slave-labor camps. Most of her family was killed, including her parents and five siblings, whose bodies were dumped into unmarked, open pits in the forest of Rafalowka. Her youngest sister was just 6. But Fania fled and survived, and would return, years later, with other survivors and her daughter Chagit in tow, to create a memorial at the site of the slaughter.
Fania wasn’t spared by accident or coincidence. Her life was very actively saved by a courageous non-Jewish Ukrainian woman named Maria Blyshchik. Maria and her extended family hid Fania during the last two years of the war, until shortly before Rafalowka was liberated by the Red Army in February 1944.
Fania relocated to Israel and started a family, telling the story over and over to her children and grandchildren, letting them know about the good people who held on to their humanity and quietly rebelled against the horrors of the war. Fania and Maria’s family, who stayed in Ukraine, lost touch in the immediate aftermath of liberation and for years following. But then technology made communicating easier, and the families reconnected in the 1990s and have been in regular communication since.
Sharon grew up hearing the story of Maria’s bravery and Fania’s survival. She said she didn’t hesitate for a moment to reach out to Lesia, 36, and Alona, 47, last month to offer help when the war broke out.
I spoke by phone with Sharon to ask her about getting the cousins out of Ukraine and into Israel. She explained that the families were in frequent contact even before the invasion, describing them as “part of the family” and “even closer than a blood connection.”
As soon as the situation turned bleak in Ukraine, Sharon began brainstorming how to get them to safety in Israel. She explained that “neither I nor they could imagine the situation would develop like it did — into war — but when it did and it was time for action, we decided the best thing to do would be to bring them here to a place where they can be safe.”
At first, Sharon encountered a lot of bureaucracy and red tape. Then, Sharon shared the extraordinary story with Roy Rubinstein of Israel’s YNET news. Suddenly, people were captivated and eager to help. Israel is a tiny country, roughly the size of New Jersey, and it often operates like a small village. Public pressure began to mount. The story got an even wider audience when an American Watchdog group, Stop Antisemitism, translated YNet’s reporting.
More here from the Washington Post and Danielle Greenbaum.