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Area Businessman Aids Extraction
Efforts in Ukraine
SASHA ROGELBERG | STAFF WRITER
T hree weeks ago, Gary
Wasserson wasn’t aware he had
relatives in Ukraine, let alone
that he’d be there when they fled the
country to Poland.

“It seems like a year has passed in a
week,” Wasserson said.

The Montgomery Country busi-
nessman recently returned from an
eight-day trip to Poland and Ukraine,
where he organized an extraction team
to help five of his cousins leave Lviv,
Ukraine, and enter Poland.

“When I looked at their eyes when I
met them at the border ... they had that
same blind stare that you saw in the
concentration camp survivors when
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Gary Wasserson on Zoom with members of his “structured grassroots” network
of individuals helping to extract Ukrainians from their war-torn country
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www.TheHearthAtDrexel.org they were liberated,” Wasserson said.

The family was relocated to Krakow,
Poland, where Wasserson rented them
a home to stay temporarily.

During his brief time in Eastern
Europe, Wasserson, with the help of
his daughter’s partner Kevin Rowell,
a disaster relief specialist, organized a
network of volunteers and nonprofit
leaders to build a “structured grass-
roots efforts” to help extract hun-
dreds more Ukrainians, both Jews and
non-Jews. A WhatsApp group originally with
four members has ballooned to more
than 200 people. Now back home,
Wasserson has been receiving hun-
dreds, if not 1,000, texts a day. He
hasn’t gotten more than four hours
of sleep since the endeavor started.

Wasserson’s wife, Ellen, describes their
home as “Grand Central Station” in all
its busyness.

Wasserson learned of his cousins
in Ukraine from Steven Blotner, a
relative whose father was interested
in family history. Blotner reached
out to Wasserson shortly after Russia
invaded Ukraine.

Blotner and Wasserson’s original
plan was to raise money to send over
to the family members; Wasserson ini-
tially invested $100,000 in the effort.

But after an hour of pondering how
else to help out, Wasserson was struck
by the similarities of the situation to
World War II, when many Ashkenazi
Jews were trying to cross borders to
escape from authoritarian rule.

“This is a ‘never again’ moment,”
Wasserson said. “I can’t leave any-
body behind, whether they’re Jewish,
Muslim, Catholic — I don’t care. We’ve
got to do everything we can to get as
many humans to safety as possible.”
While at the border, Wasserson wit-
nessed families, mostly women and
children, waiting in a five-kilometer
line for three-and-a-half days to cross
the border. What Wasserson didn’t see
was a tremendous effort by organiza-
tions and government bodies to lead
the extraction or evacuation efforts.

“There’s no government showing
up here. There’s no Red Cross; there’s
nothing,” Wasserson said.

Particularly for the women whose
husbands were drafted into the mili-
tary, human trafficking threats loom,
Wasserson said, increasing the urgency
of extraction efforts.

According to Rowell, who helped



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Wasserson helps his cousins from Lviv leave the border to Krakow, Poland.

coordinate efforts back home, efforts
to evacuate in Ukraine have been
tenuous. “​​The situation in Ukraine was, at
the time, devolving quickly,” he said.

“With the randomness of the Russian
assault, it was very hard to understand
what life would be like, especially in
the major cities from day to day.”
Relief efforts in times of war rarely
feel successful, Rowell admitted. For
the dozens of Philadelphia-area friends
or community members reaching out
to the family, finding ways to help can
feel insignificant or futile, he said.

Donations to relief organizations in
Ukraine have gone toward transporta-
tion, housing, medical assistance and
personal protective equipment, as well
as protective flak jackets, according to
Rowell. For those donating money, it
can be difficult to see where their dol-
lars are going.

“I can’t stress it enough. It’s not
about the individuals. It’s not about
us,” Rowell said. “It’s about the fact that
if everyone gets in and pushes, we can
save everyone. We can get everyone out
of there.”
Wasserson has also worked with
U.S. Rep. Susan Wild, a Jewish
Democrat representing Pennsylvania’s
7th District. Wild was in Rzeszow,
Poland, the weekend of March 5 with
members of a bipartisan congressional
delegation. One of Wild’s constituents, Alla
Kligman, reached out to Wild, saying
that she, too, had relatives in Ukraine,
who Wasserson eventually helped
extract. Kligman also has connections to
an orphanage in Ukraine, which was
home to 600 children, which Wild is
taking responsibility for extracting and
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Columnist CIA Director
2013–2017 An extraction site at the Ukraine-
Poland border, where Wasserson aided
extraction efforts over eight days
Photos courtesy of Ellen Wasserson
“My office has been working relent-
lessly with the Department of Defense
and the State Department and DHS
(Department of Homeland Security)
to make sure that we can get these
children here to the United States,”
Wild said.

Wasserson has promised additional
financial help.

However, for a large-scale extraction,
some elements are out of an individu-
al’s control. According to Wild, there
has been extensive contact with the
Ukrainian embassy about extract-
ing the orphans. The Department of
Defense has to work to find temporary,
short-term housing for them, likely on
a military base.

“It’s one thing for a group of private
citizens to want to do good and do the
right thing,” Wild said. “It’s another
thing altogether to try to make it hap-
pen by literally getting all of the pieces
in place.” JE
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