Please note: The description of the border crossing is loosely based on a first-person experience and narrative by Vladislav Davidzon, “A Ukrainian Refugee’s Journey,” published in Tablet Magazine, March 2022. The rest of the events in this short story are, unfortunately, all too true.
On March 8th, ironically International Women’s Day, and even more ironically, a major Soviet holiday, I approached the Polish border, a Ukrainian, Jewish woman of 35, with my two children, Yana who is nine, truly my gift of God as her name suggests, and seven-year-old Andriy, who now will need the courage of his name to face what lies ahead.
When the Russian missiles finally found Kyiv within their range, the destruction began in earnest. Every night we sheltered in a basement with hundreds of others, cramped and terrified, not knowing what we would find, or not find, when we surfaced in the morning.
Two days ago, my fears were proven true. Our apartment, where Aleksand and I had made our home, was gone. Windows blown out, curtains flapping in the cold, morning light, belongings scattered on the ground at my feet, mixed with those of our neighbours. Aleksand suddenly appeared alongside me, back from night patrol. We hugged, then tried to reassure the children who cried softly, clinging to us. It wasn’t safe to enter the building, and so we added whatever useful possessions we could find on the ground to my buggy. We were now officially homeless.
From his pockets, Aleksand produce three tickets for a bus ride to the Polish border, 750 km away. “It’s leaving in an hour; you need to go now.”
“And you, Alek?” I said, all the while knowing what his answer would be.
“I can’t go, Tamara,” he answered. “Zelenskyy declared martial law for all men up to sixty. Even if I could go, you know I wouldn’t. We will remain here and fight for our homeland, our history, for our future. “
“Look around, Alek,” I said. “Ukraine is being pummeled to rubble. There will be no history left in this destruction. The only good thing is that Putin will inherit dust.”
“It will be our dust, not his, and one day, we will come to retrieve it, and turn it into brick and stone,” he said, always so sure of himself. And with that, he drove us in some half-broken vehicle to the gathering place where the bus was waiting. I kissed Alek, begging him to be careful. “Stay alive, Aleksand,” I begged, “until we can be together again, wherever it will be.”
He hugged the children, got us on the bus, then jumped off, standing on the platform, waving. I watched ‘till he was out of sight.
Seventeen hours later we arrived at the border crossing. The bus joined a long que of cars and buses. Our papers, which I had worn strapped to my body for the last week, were checked and we advanced to a long corridor of chain link fencing. It was cold, the children were hungry, and the snow began to fall. We were not allowed out of the bus, not even to use a washroom. We peed in bottles and threw the contents from the window. The children drifted off, woke for a while, then fell asleep again. In the morning we were allowed out of our bus; volunteers representing all sorts of charity aid groups were handing out food, mostly chocolates and rolls, passing them through the chain link fence. Some threw blankets over, and we grabbed at them. Yana managed to catch one and gave it to Andriy to wrap around his feet, which were half frozen. Sad was the sight of the blankets that didn’t make it over the fence, stuck on the barbed wire, of no help to anyone.
Several hours later we began shuffling forward through the corridor and eventually reached the Polish border. A guard checked our passports, stamped them, and we were led into Red Cross tents, with army type cot-beds, clothes piled on them and toys for the children. Best of all, food and hot beverages. Nothing in my entire life had ever tasted better, as I sat on the floor with Yana and Andriy, filling the pits in our stomachs.
In a few days, once we were processed and recovered from the physical trauma, if not the mental anguish, we would be moved along, some remaining in Poland, others flown to a western country to begin a new life, a foreign, new life. I knew that in the years to come, I would be conflicted by my thoughts of the west. I had to acknowledge its generosity and to be grateful for this life saving emergency operation on such a huge scale for what had become a humanitarian crisis. But I would also forever remember that the American eagle and her aerie flinched in the face of the Bear. The west permitted these atrocities to happen, while falsely speaking their hollow words of piety. They said, “We stand with you.” No, they didn’t. They were safe at home in their beds, not standing outside our blown-out apartments with our innocent children, not standing over the bodies of our loved ones, mourning the dead scattered everywhere, not standing in the rubble of their lives. The words were insulting. Silence would have been better.
A woman sitting on one of the cots, noticing my darkened face and perhaps mistaking my anger for fear, smiled. “This begins our exodus, my dear. We will go on from here.”
I nodded, not wishing to be unkind, but my thoughts had already traveled not to the waiting west, but to my husband, whom I might never again see, and to my homeland, which for sure I would never see again, not even if I were able to return. The Ukraine of my life was already memory, as when one leaves a place, but worse, it no longer existed physically.
Though I kept these thoughts to myself, leaving the old woman with whatever hope she could find to help her in the days to come, I knew she was wrong, that this was not an exodus. An exodus looks forward with the expectation of somewhere it wants to go, a life it wants to live. Although I was secular in my religious practice, I thought of the ancient Hebrews and their exodus from Egypt with the anticipation of a life as free people in a land of their own. But we here in the Red Cross tents, who had forcibly been made to give up our land, our country, our very being as a free people, we had more in keeping with the Hebrews who wept for their home in Zion from the far distance of Babylonia.
No, exodus was the wrong word: Yana, Andriy, me, all of us - we were exiles.
Heartbreaking! This is our new “Tragedy” of this century. Hoping it will be the last. Man’s inhumanity to man. As the song once sang “When will we ever learn”.
yep. thought we did after WWII. Apparently not