December 27, 2014

Ukranian Jews Emigrating To Israel




Alexander and Anna Gayduk, together with 226 other Ukrainians of Jewish heritage, start a new life in Israel. They flew on a charter flight funded by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, a charity that supports Israel and Jewish projects around the world. 
(The Washington Post)

[From article]
In Israel, a government agency waited to help them start a new life. The new arrivals joined more than 5,000 Ukrainian Jews who have moved to Israel in the past year, about 1,300 of them from eastern areas claimed by separatists.
The number of Ukrainians arriving in Israel in 2014 is more than double that of the previous year. The Ukrainian government, which is facing an economic crisis, has little means to help those internally displaced by the war, now about 500,000, according to the United Nations.
[. . .]
70 years after the Holocaust wiped out some 900,000 Jews in Ukraine and 20 years after 1 million Jews — forced to suppress their religious identities under Soviet rule — left the former Soviet Union for Israel, the Jews that remained are among the luckier Ukrainians.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/fleeing-their-countrys-civil-war-ukrainian-jews-head-for-israel/2014/12/24/f79fb866-8619-11e4-b9b7-b8632ae73d25_story.html

Fleeing their country’s civil war, Ukrainian Jews head for Israel
By Ruth Eglash
December 25, 2014

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