All segments of the community have joined Chabad’s effort
While the conflict, bloodshed and humanitarian crisis continues unabated in Ukraine, those who have been able to escape—many with the help of Chabad-Lubavitch, which has evacuated more than 35,000 refugees—have been absorbed by Jewish communities across Europe and beyond, including 500 in Berlin, several hundred in Warsaw and even 100 in Cyprus, in addition to other communities.
One generous community is Vienna, Austria, home to nearly 15,000 Jews. All segments of the community have joined Chabad’s effort to house refugees, pooling resources from the vast Jewish community network. The umbrella organization of the Jewish community, the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde (IKG), is working closely with Chabad-Lubavitch of Austria to house, feed and care for the 500 refugees the community has absorbed so far, says Rabbi Moshe Kolomoitsev, co-director of Chabad’s Jewish Russian-Speaking Community of Vienna (JRCV), with his wife, Dina. “It was only natural that when we heard of the unfolding catastrophe, we launched an operation to bring as many Jewish people as we could to the safety of Vienna,” Kolomoitsev told Chabad.org.
The absorption effort begins all the way at the Ukrainian border, where Maxim Sluzki—a community member charged with executing much of the operation—runs the logistics of transporting refugees from the Polish and Moldovan borders directly to Vienna, with each trip taking up to 14 hours. Many make their own way to Vienna in private cars, but some of the refugees are elderly and infirm, and need to be met at the border.
Once in Vienna, rooms have been rented and donated in three hotels where the refugees are housed, in addition to about 50 apartments across the city. Rabbi Jacob Biderman, director of Chabad-Lubavitch of Austria, adds that community members are opening their own homes for people as well; the rabbi and his wife, Edla, have two children from Ukraine staying with them.
The Lauder Chabad day schools and preschools have around 100 Ukrainian child refugees studying there free of charge with classes set up in Russian, in many cases taught by their teachers from Ukraine with whom they fled.
The entire community is helping in every way they can, with people donating everything including clothing, toys and diapers. One community member, Israel Abramov, has offered the use of his entire 100-room hotel to house the refugees. The hotel-turned-shelter is now staffed by Jewish volunteers.
Breakfast is served at the hotels each morning, while lunch is served at a nearby Chabad center and dinner at the IKG center. Shabbat meals are catered at both the hotels and the Chabad centers, with each daily communal meal numbering hundreds of guests.
The mammoth operation was conceived by Rabbi Moshe Kolomoitsev, the Dnipro, Ukraine-born rabbi who has been serving Vienna’s large Russian-speaking community for the past five years. When the war broke out, he began receiving calls from friends in Ukraine. “They were calling from everywhere, Kiev, Chernigov, Kharkov … . We started taking people, and I posted on Facebook that we can help resettle people here,” Kolomoitsev explains.
The rabbi didn’t expect to be fielding hundreds of calls, but when that very quickly became the reality, he realized that he couldn’t do it alone. “We needed hundreds of people on board. The entire community united to help,” he says. The city’s Bukharian community secured hotels, the Chabad community took the children into their schools, and the IKG helped fund a large part of the budget.
Biderman explains that the relationship with Ukraine’s community—and specifically, with Dnipro—didn’t begin now. Besides for the JRCV community serving the Russian-speaking population, which was established with assistance from Rabbi Shmuel Kaminezki, chief rabbi of Dnipro and a Chabad emissary in Ukraine since 1990, Chabad of Austria also operates the Lauder Business School, a fully-accredited university in Vienna, catering to students from across Europe that has a significant Ukrainian contingent.
“It’s a very emotional time,” says Biderman. “People’s lives are destroyed; kids are frightened. We’re doing our best to give them a good time.”
He mentions that as he speaks, one teacher has taken his class of refugee children ice-skating. “We’re trying to integrate them into existing classrooms where possible,” alongside the Russian-language classrooms set up just for them.
Biderman notes that the vast majority of the children already attended Chabad’s Jewish schools in Ukraine, which he says is astounding. “It points to the strong communities Chabad has built and sustained for 30 years in Ukraine. They have some connection to almost every Ukrainian Jew.”
“We all pray this war will be over soon, and they return to their homes and beautiful communities—wherever they come from—and continue to flourish and be more successful,” concludes Biderman. “Meanwhile, it’s tragic, but our community is inspired and benefiting from the warmth they bring.”
