opinion
This Year, I Am a Refugee.

Next Year in Kharkiv
BY TANYA BORODINA
Aleksandr Mokshyn / iStock / Getty Images Plus
B ERLIN — I want to share my
story: Maybe it will inspire
someone, maybe it will upset
someone. I have an ordinary
family: me, my husband, Andrei
Barkovsky and our child,
Allochka, now 10 years old.

I was born in Ukraine, in the
city of Donetsk, but in 2014 the
war in the Donbas began. On
July 23 we grabbed a package
with documents and our little
Alla (then 2) and we fled from
the war. We arrived in Kharkiv
— a large, beautiful, peaceful
city, the original capital of Soviet Ukraine.

We left everything in Donetsk — an apartment,
our belongings, toys, photographs — and started
our lives from scratch. It was not easy: to find an
apartment, to issue documents for immigrants, to
find a job, a kindergarten, a school. But we coped,
slowly adjusting our lives.

As it turns out later, these were the brightest
eight years of our life in Kharkiv. On Feb. 24, our
peaceful life there ended.

I still remember how a peaceful city woke up
at 4:30 in the morning from explosions and the
roar of shells, tanks passing through the streets.

I had deja vu. My family and I had run away from
the war in 2014, but it turned out that the war was
chasing us.

This is a terrible word: war. It does not even fit
in my head that this is possible in the 21st century.

We tried to survive inhuman conditions: without
water and heating, without vegetables and fruit.

Stores closed, public transport stopped running in
the city, and in a panic people bought all the food
and medicines in pharmacies.

We decided that the safest place in our house is
the hallway, so our whole life was spent there. We
slept there, ate there, Alla played there. In order
not to completely disrupt our child’s psyche, we
put headphones over her ears, so she could not
hear the explosions outside.

Everyone texted each other: How are you? And
we looked forward to an answer, any answer,
because this was a guarantee that the recipient
was alive.

Many people simply lived in the subway. Many
were in cellars. We didn’t go outside for a month.

You didn’t know when the shelling will start. All
you could hear from friends is that their house was
blown up, or the school was hit, and most impor-
tantly, that people were dying, ordinary, peaceful
people who were going to get food or standing in
line for humanitarian aid.

It’s scary, very scary: trembling in the knees,
pain in the stomach and heart. Many people
began to leave. Many others stayed, especially
old people, sick people, those who could not
walk. The other teachers and I organized our own
volunteer headquarters, to help our families who
remained in Kharkiv.

That is how we lived until March 26, when my
husband said: You must leave the war zone; you
have 15 minutes to pack. It was the most difficult
decision of my life, because it is forbidden for men
to leave Ukraine.

Our train from Kharkiv to Lviv, as it turned out
later, was the last evacuation train from our city.

My husband, who is 51, just stood there and
cried. I always thought that he did not know how
to cry at all. The moment when the train started
moving and began to pick up speed especially
hit us all. He was standing there, and I was on the
train with the baby.

It turned out that my whole life could fit in a
backpack. It feels like a dream, that now I will
wake up, and everything will be fine, as before.

After 17 hours on the train, you don’t feel your legs
and arms any more.

And from outside we hear sirens, sirens. Kyiv is
being bombed, Lviv is being bombed. We arrive
in Lviv at midnight to learn that all the free buses
leave at 9 a.m. There is a curfew. We need to
go further. We buy a ticket to Warsaw and wait
12 hours at the border. The phone is constantly
ringing: “How are you?” “When are you coming?”
“Let us know.”
In Warsaw, we were met by
wonderful guys from the Masorti
community. We were fed, given
an overnight stay and tickets
to Berlin. We finally felt a com-
plete sense of security when we
reached Frankfurt on Oder, at
the border with Poland.

On the second day after we
arrived, our children went to
school — the Masorti Jewish
school. It was a real holiday.

In Kharkiv the children did not
even go out into the street;
there was no talk of education.

Here, everyone — absolutely
everyone — tried to help us, in
word, deed, advice, food, toys.

Because we hadn’t taken anything with us. We
even forgot our toothbrushes.

What we dream of — probably like everyone
else — is that the war ends quickly. I want to see
and hug my husband, wipe away his tears and say
everything will be fine: We are all alive. JE
Tanya Borodina is a mother and Hebrew teacher
from Kharkiv, Ukraine.

letters The Left Hijacks the Holocaust
In response to Solomon Stevens’ op-ed (“The
Holocaust Is Not a Metaphor,” April 7), what is
a glaring omission is his outrage at the left for
describing anyone/everyone they disagree with
(on the right) as Nazis, fascists and/or white
supremacists. Isn’t that also a “deplorable use of the
Holocaust” and “an insult to all the Jews slaugh-
tered as well”? As a reference, every Republican
candidate for president has been depicted as a
Nazi/Hitler going back to 1968 (Nixon). There are
pictures to prove it. It’s too late: The left hijacked
the Holocaust for political purposes a long time
ago. JE
Henry Steinberger, Warrington
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