(Jewish Group) This year, I am a refugee spending a joyful Passover in Berlin. Next year in Kharkiv.
Until last month, Tanya Borodina, 44, headed every day to the Shaalavim Jewish Lyceum, a school affiliated with the Conservative, or Masorti, movement in Kharkiv, Ukraine. When the city came under Russian shelling, Borodina and her young daughter fled, ending up in Berlin, where the sister Masorti community swung into full gear. This weekend, mother and daughter will be among 40 people attending a Passover seder at Berlin’s Fraenkelufer Synagogue, run by volunteers from Germany’s Limmud.de Jewish learning program. For Borodina, who has been teaching via Zoom, the closing prayer will be: Next year in Kharkiv.
BERLIN (JTA) – I want to share my story: Maybe it will inspire someone, maybe it will upset someone. I have an ordinary family: me, my husband, Andrei Barkovsky and our child, Allochka, now 10 years old.
I was born in Ukraine, in the city of Donetsk, but in 2014 the war in the Donbas began. On July 23 we grabbed a package with documents and our little Alla (then 2 years old) and we fled from the war. We arrived in Kharkiv — a large, beautiful, peaceful city, the original capital of Soviet Ukraine.
We left everything in Donetsk — an apartment, our belongings, toys, photographs — and started our lives from scratch. It was not easy: to find an apartment, to issue documents for immigrants, to find a job, a kindergarten, a school. But we coped, slowly adjusted our lives: My husband immediately found a job in auto repair and I was invited to teach Hebrew and Jewish tradition at the Shaalavim Jewish Lyceum.
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