Victoria Rozanova was at home with the six-year-old Angelika, when the bombing began. She darted into the nursery. As soon as they jumped out with their daughter, a shell exploded in the courtyard of the house. A huge splinter flew through the window and was stuck in a child's bed. On the same day in early February, the Rozanovs left Donetsk, thinking only of Israel.

Three years have passed since the start of the fighting in the Donbas, but Jews still live in Donetsk, Lugansk and other cities of the province. 29-year-old Stanislav Rozanov and 27-year-old Victoria managed to get to Dnepropetrovsk, unaffected by the war. During the war, they had another child born, and now they have to survive in the war with two babies.

Soon, however, they will reunite with the parents of Victoria who live in Haifa, who repatriated from Donetsk in 2016 and have since ceased to put pressure on children, so that they too moved. Rozanovs are optimistic, are going to learn Hebrew and look for work, the main thing is to start a new life. When Victoria talks about Israel, her eyes flashed with hope, writes vesty. Co. Il. Husband, miner by profession, a little sad: it is not known how it will be with work. "But the children will definitely be better," he said..

Victoria is the granddaughter of a Jew, and the Law of Return is a lifeline that will allow them to flee from the horrors of war. While they live in the Refugee Center set up by the Jewish Agency in a Soviet holiday home on the banks of the Dnieper, half an hour's drive from Dnepropetrovsk, 220 km from the battle area.

The initiative to create the center belongs to the ambassadors of the Jewish Agency in Kharkov and Dnepropetrovsk to Maxim (Max) Lurie and his wife Natalia Navitovskaya, who arrived in Israel in April 2014 with three children. They could not imagine that in two weeks a war would begin and they would have to deal with refugees. Last year, 630 people passed through their center, and once in a holiday home there were 150 refugees at the same time.

Since the beginning of the fighting, two thousand people have come to Israel from the war-torn region. According to the estimates of the Jewish Agency, in the Donbas there are still 5-6 thousand Jews.

"We see that many are afraid to leave their houses, despite the difficulties," Lurie says.. - Because of the war, they can not sell houses and are forced to flee without property. In Israel, they will have to start all over again. Learn the language, look for work ".

Max knows what he is talking about - he came to Israel from Dnepropetrovsk in 2006, Natalia came from Vladivostok. "Their story is our story, and in our they draw inspiration," says Max.

Spouses are especially proud of the salvation of two brothers who lost their parents early. The elder, 23, repatriated in 2014 from Lugansk and now serves in MAGAVE; The youngest, 22-year-old, was in a closed department of a psychiatric hospital. The elder wanted to take him to himself, but the authorities agreed to write it out only if the elder appears in person. He had already planned to return, but the Jewish Agency realized that he was likely to "wander" into the army of Putin's terrorists, and took an operation to release his younger brother. They brought the German Christian Society of Friends of Israel to the rescue and in the end transferred the patient to Dnepropetrovsk, where the road to Israel no longer represented a big problem.

Since the beginning of the war, more than 19,000 Jews have come from Ukraine to Israel - the help of the Jewish Agency with such a flow was necessary. An average of six thousand people a year - compared with two thousand a year before the start of military operations in the Donbass.

Recall, the Ministry of the Interior of Israel said that during the ATU in Israel, the flow of Ukrainians has sharply increased, which upon arrival immediately ask for political asylum.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs clarifies that these citizens of Ukraine are not Jews and do not have the right to claim Israeli citizenship. The main cause of requests for political asylum, the Ukrainians call the compulsory army. It is the Ukrainians who receive today the largest number of refusals to enter Israel. According to the estimates of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Israel, only in 2000, about 2000 citizens of Ukraine requested political asylum in Israel.