The Blanket – Update from Ukraine

This day with our three Babushky (grandmothers) visits was already worth the whole trip to Ukraine!

We knocked at Zhenia’s door with two food parcels, fresh bread and warm winter clothes in our hands. When we wrapped Zhenia in a blanket that a lady from Germany had knitted for her, she started crying.

Many of Zhenia’s relatives are lying in Babi Yar (ravine in the capital Kiev where more than 100,000 Jews were killed). She was five years old when the Wehrmacht invaded Ukraine. Her father was drafted into the Red Army and sent to the battle front, her mother tried to hide with her as long as possible.

“Mom told me how they were all driven out of our village, first to Kiev, then to Babi Yar,” Zhenia says.

She found refuge initially with an old man who hid her; then, when her mother died of typhus, she was smuggled to her Ukrainian grandmother on her father’s side, which is where she grew up as her father also died shortly after returning from the war. Of her own family – husband and three children – only herself and a granddaughter are left, who looks after her from time to time.

For next time, Zhenia asks for a photo so she can look at us all the time. Zhenia is being supported with regular food parcels.