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

