Jewish group asks for global help to support refugees they're evacuating from Ukraine
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (WPEC) — Nearly 4 million Ukrainians are out of their homeland and looking for new lives as Russian troops continue to invade.
Last week, CBS12 News shared a website created in Boca Raton that’s helping get these refugees out of Ukraine. The website, YouHelp, is directly funding the group Yad Yisroel; which has evacuated 5,000 people from Ukraine since Russia started invading.
“They are leaving behind their homes, their schools, their friends, their businesses, their money,” says Rabbi Elisha Gottdiener with Yad Yisroel.
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The group has been buying and renting buses, hiring drivers, and finding Ukrainians hiding from Russian troops so they can help them evacuate. They are also having to get ambulances and hire doctors to escort the elderly out of the country. Yad Yisroel also helps pay for food, drinks, and clothing for the refugees as they wait to figure out what their next step is. They even set refugees up with mental health experts to help them grapple with the trauma of seeing their homes destroyed.
"They just, they are really shocked. They kept saying how it is unbelievable to watch people from all over the world, not everybody has the time to do the work, not everybody has time to go onto the ground, not everybody has all the money in the world but for them, the world gather together and simply care for another person for another country they have never met and probably will never meet, they literally broke down crying,” says Schlomo Pilchick, who has been traveling from New York to Eastern Europe to help out.
Last week‘s missions alone cost Yad Yisroel $5 million.
