22 | MARCH 31 • 2022
OUR COMMUNITY
A
s the war in Ukraine
rages on, Holocaust
survivors are feeling
the impact.
“There is a highly emo-
tional response,” says Yuliya
Gaydayenko, chief program
officer of older
adult services at
Jewish Family
Service of
Metropolitan
Detroit. This
sector of JFS,
which works
with older
populations that include
Holocaust survivors, is active-
ly providing support to those
who are being emotionally
impacted by the Ukraine cri-
sis.
“People sometimes feel like
they’re back in World War II,”
Gaydayenko explains.
For the population served
by JFS, which has a lot of child
survivors in particular, and
many from the former Soviet
Union, seeing the heartbreak
on the news and from
family members still in
Ukraine is stirring up
difficult memories and
feelings, while trigger-
ing past trauma.
For child survivors,
who remember being
cold and hungry as
kids during the WWII,
witnessing the impact
on today’s young gen-
erations of Ukrainians
is heart-wrenching. Survivors
in Metro Detroit come from
a host of places, including
Russia, Moldova and many
from Ukraine itself.
“They’re feeling like they’re
back in this time and it’s
happening to them [again],”
Gaydayenko continues.
Survivors with family in
Ukraine are also feeling like
there’s little they can do,
Gaydayenko adds. “Their fami-
lies are not safe. They feel help-
less because they are here, and
their families are there — that’s
the second big piece of it.”
PREPARING FOR AN
INFLUX OF REFUGEES
Now, JFS is seeing the first
families from Ukraine head
to Metro Detroit to reunite
with their relatives and find
safety. So far, four families
have made the journey to the
area, though JFS expects a
bigger influx in the weeks to
come if the crisis doesn’t end.
The issue, however, is
that Ukrainian refugees are
coming to the U.S. with tem-
porary tourist visas, which
don’t give them a right to
work or go to school. “They
don’t have a right to rent
an apartment,” Gaydayenko
explains, “or the ability to
work. They are fully reliant
on the families [here] that
often have very low or fixed
income themselves.”
Many survivors, specifi-
cally from the former Soviet
Union, arrived here in the
’70s, ’80s and ’90s, shortly
before or just after the fall of
the USSR. Like today’s ref-
ugees, they were helped and
sponsored by relatives living
in Metro Detroit. “Usually, they
came here because they had or
BY MVS.GOV.UA
War in Ukraine stirs up
memories for Holocaust
survivors, while first Ukrainian
refugees reach Metro Detroit.
Feeling the
Impact
ASHLEY ZLATOPOLSKY CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Children in the Warsaw Ghetto during WWII.
Families crossing into Poland from Ukraine in 2022.
Yuliya
Gaydayenko