What Putin's "Denazification" of Ukraine Really Looks Like

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

Tweet text:

The Atlantic
@TheAtlantic
In his newsletter, Deep Shtetl, @Yair_Rosenberg spoke with a rabbi who led hundreds of Jewish orphans across the Carpathian Mountains to flee Russia’s onslaught:

newsletters.theatlantic.com
What Putin’s “Denazification” of Ukraine Really Looks Like
Fleeing Russia’s onslaught, a rabbi leads children from Odessa’s Jewish community through the Carpathian Mountains
7:49 AM · Mar 2, 2022

https://newsletters.theatlantic.com/deep-shtetl/621eb2869277230021afbdc5/what-putin-denazification-of-ukraine-really-looks-like-odessa/

“I once thought that I was a freak,” says Rabbi Refael Kruskal, the vice president of the Jewish community in Odessa, a port city in Ukraine. While many others in the country doubted the prospect of a Russian invasion, Kruskal—the son of a Holocaust survivor—took his cues not from the headlines but from Jewish history. “I had supplies on trucks. I had generators prepared. I said there’s gonna be a rush on gas stations, so I had gas prepared for the buses on the way.”

He ended up needing every gallon.

Hoping to check in on his journey, I sent Kruskal a message last night, assuming he was asleep and would see it in the morning. Instead, he wrote back immediately. It was 4 a.m., and he was still at work. We spoke by phone this morning.

Kruskal oversees Tikva Odessa, a network of Jewish schools, orphanages, and community-care programs that encompasses some 1,000 people. When Russian bombs began to fall last Thursday night, and one exploded near Tikva’s girls’ home, Kruskal and his team decided it was time to leave. The call was made at 7 a.m. on Friday. By 10:30 a.m., he and his staff were on the road with hundreds of orphans, heading for prearranged shelter beyond the Carpathian Mountains. Others from their community headed for the border and crossed into Moldova.

“There were people in the Second World War who didn’t believe, and they and their communities were wiped out,” he said. “We prefer to be cautious and make sure that our communities are safe.”

*snip*