CHISINAU, Moldova — Even before Russia invaded Ukraine, landlocked Moldova’s economy was never particularly strong. Now, with rising inflation and skyrocketing fuel prices, the country’s native Jewish community and Ukrainian refugees passing through are facing a cold, brutal winter.
“People will freeze to death this winter. The question is how many,” Rabbi Zusha Abelsky, the director of Chabad in Moldova, which provides assistance to some of the community, told The Times of Israel while standing on a chilly street corner in the country’s capital.
Though it is not a party to the war — Chisinau is officially neutral — the former Soviet republic that borders Ukraine to its west has been greatly affected by it. In recent weeks, the country has lost power on at least two occasions because of Russian strikes on Ukrainian electrical facilities connected to Moldova’s grid.
“When electricity is unstable in Ukraine, Moldova’s electrical system shuts down automatically to protect itself,” Moldovan Ambassador to Israel Alexandr Roitman told The Times of Israel over the phone earlier this month.
Roitman also stressed that while the country is officially neutral, it is not blind to what is happening next door.
“Moldova is a neutral country but when we see international law being infringed [upon] or when we can see Odesa being shelled, when we see Russia being aggressive toward Ukraine — we are very vocal that this war has to stop,” he said.
The fighting in Ukraine has also driven up the cost of fuel tremendously in Moldova, increasing by upwards of 500 percent compared to last year in some cases, while salaries have largely remained the same. Roitman said the government was working to address these fuel and electricity issues, but recognized that there were no quick fixes.
Alongside the increase in fuel costs, which makes it far more difficult for people to heat their homes during the frigid winter, Moldova has been hit hard by the ongoing global financial crisis.
“We have a critical economic situation in Moldova. People in Germany have been complaining of inflation rates of 10%. In Moldova, it’s more than 34%,” said Alla Bolboceanu, the Joint Jewish Distribution Committee’s Moldova representative, speaking in Russian as another member of the organization translated.
Sitting in her office in Chisinau’s Jewish community center, the former site of the historic woodcutters’ synagogue, Bolboceanu noted that the community was still reeling from the coronavirus pandemic when the war broke out.
Jewish community center in Chisinau, Moldova, on November 20, 2022. (Judah Ari Gross/Times of Israel)
Most of the Moldova JDC’s budget, upwards of 80%, comes from the German government — as part of Berlin’s reparations to Holocaust survivors — with the rest coming primarily from the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ), as well as American Jewish Federations.
These high fuel costs mean that even when there’s a generator, it can be prohibitively expensive to run it, according to Yael Eckstein, president and CEO of the IFCJ.
“These are the issues I grapple with every day. It costs $50 an hour to run a generator now,” Eckstein said. She added that the IFCJ helps fund JDC care workers who make $300 a month. (Minimum wage in Moldova is approximately $200 a month.)
“This is literally what keeps me up at night.”
A refuge for Ukrainians
In addition to these war-adjacent struggles facing Moldovan citizens, the country has served as a major conduit for refugees due to its position on the border with Ukraine, just across from the cities of Odesa, Mykolaiv and Kherson.
According to Roitman, nearly three-quarters of a million refugees have passed through the country since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24. Most continued on to other countries in Europe — and thousands came to Israel — but roughly 80,000 refugees have remained there, mostly women, children and the elderly.
“From the first day of the war, Moldova opened its borders to refugees and we haven’t closed them,” Roitman said.
Jewish Ukrainian refugees rest at an emergency shelter in Chisinau, Moldova, on March 13, 2022. (Yossi Zeliger/Flash90)
Included in the hundreds of thousands of refugees were an estimated 65,000 Jews, according to the Center for Jewish Impact, which has provided humanitarian aid to Moldova since the outbreak of the war, alongside the Israeli non-profit SASA Setton.
Moldova, which once boasted a large Jewish community of some 100,000, is now home to just a few thousand, many of them elderly and infirm.
Abelsky of Chabad recalled the initial weeks of the war in which masses of Ukrainian refugees were coming across the border and his ordinarily small, sleepy community had to spring into action.
Rabbi Zusha Abelsky, director of Chabad of Moldova, right, speaks to Ukrainian refugees at a Chabad synagogue in the country’s capital Chisinau on March 12, 2022. (Yossi Zeliger/Flash90)
Together with the IFCJ, JDC and other Jewish groups in Moldova, Chabad set up camps for refugees and a makeshift hospital. Abelsky also had the synagogue’s kosher kitchen operating nearly round the clock to provide meals to the refugees passing through Chisinau — most of them Jews, but not all.
“When I ask someone to put on tefillin, I ask if they’re Jewish first. You don’t ask a question like that when you’re handing out soup,” he said, estimating that some 20% of the people helped weren’t Jewish.
Abelsky, who was born in Israel and now splits his time between the US and Moldova, first arrived in Chisinau over 30 years ago as the Iron Curtain fell and his father was sent to the country as its first Chabad emissary.
“Us being here for 30 years was all so we’d be ready for this,” Abelsky said.
Though the vast majority of Jewish refugees who entered Moldova carried on to either Europe or Israel, a few hundred opted to stay in the country, waiting out the worst of the fighting from close by.
Jewish Ukrainian refugees receive their entry papers to Israel, at an emergency shelter in Chisinau, Moldova on March 15, 2022. (Flash90)
The Joint Distribution Committee, which works extensively in the former Soviet Union, including Ukraine and Moldova, said the group initially provided as much aid as possible to the incoming Ukrainian refugees but as the flow has slowed, it has shifted to preparing a number of “crisis centers” that will have generators, food, heat, and internet for people in need in Moldova.
Bolboceanu said those “crisis centers” may become a critical lifeline this winter. “We need to have them just in case,” she said.
The JDC’s main focus, however, is providing assistance to its “clients,” generally the elderly — often Holocaust survivors — and to the disabled, based on strict criteria. According to Bolboceanu, the organization normally has 2,500 of these clients, who receive daily visits from JDC workers as well as aid packages.
“The aid we provide to our clients is hugely critical for them,” she said.
Of the hundreds of Jewish Ukrainian refugees who have settled in Moldova, at least temporarily, some two dozen — “a manageable number” — have become JDC clients, receiving regular direct aid from the organization, Bolboceanu said.
The Karamelevas
One such family of new Ukrainian clients are the Karamelevas: Rufina and Alexander, their daughter Olga, and Olga’s daughter Sophia.
Rufina had lived in the Ukrainian port city of Mykolaiv since she was two years old, when her family was able to move back to the city after being evacuated to Uzbekistan during World War II. Her husband, Alexander, grew up in Chernivtsi, in western Ukraine, before moving to the city after medical school to work in one of Mykolaiv’s hospitals.
To say the Karamelevas love Mykolaiv is an understatement. Olga and Rufina speak of the city in romantic terms. They long for its rose gardens and the zoo they used to take Sophia to before the war started.
Mykolaiv, which contains an active port, was one of the hardest-hit cities in the beginning of the war, but the Karamelevas nevertheless tried to stick it out amid the constant bombings and sirens.
The Karameleva family, from left, Sophia, Olga, Alexander and Rufina, in their apartment in Chisinau on November 30, 2022. (Judah Ari Gross/Times of Israel)
After the first few weeks, however, single mother Olga decided that she had to leave with Sophia, and the pair fled to Moldova, first staying in Chisinau’s Jewish community center and then moving to a refugee camp outside Chisinau.
At the outset of the war, she had originally intended to emigrate to the United Kingdom, but her parents would not have been able to go with them and she didn’t want to move so far away.
Her parents initially stayed behind in Mykolaiv, with Alexander continuing to work as a doctor. But in April, their apartment was hit by shrapnel, which damaged the roof and blew out their windows. At that point, they too decided to flee.
Olga returned to Mykolaiv to help her parents escape. They left almost everything behind, save for the family’s two cats.
From April to June, they stayed in the refugee camp outside Chisinau. Then they moved into the Jumbo Hotel, which has been rented out almost in its entirety by the IFCJ to displaced people since the start of the war.
In August, JDC helped them get into long-term housing, a small apartment in an old Soviet-style block in Chisinau. Though the apartment is rapidly filling up with belongings, including things they’ve since been able to bring over from Ukraine and new additions — the day before this reporter arrived the family received a delivery from JDC of thick blankets for the winter — Olga stressed that they view it as a temporary situation.
“We don’t want to settle. We are still hoping and waiting for when it gets better there so we can go back. But my parents, who are elderly, can’t stay in a house when there’s no power, no water, no heating,” Olga said.
Though the situation in Mykolaiv has improved somewhat since Ukrainian forces retook nearby Kherson, there is still no regular electricity or running water. Their apartment building is still standing, but it has been extensively damaged and all of their windows are shattered. Neighbors who have stayed in the city are keeping an eye on the place for them.
Ukrainian Emergency Service rescuers work at the scene of a building damaged by night shelling in Mykolaiv, Ukraine, on November 11, 2022. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
A massage therapist by training, Olga occasionally finds work in Chisinau and has volunteered with the JDC. Her parents help look after Sophia, who is too young for school, teaching her the alphabet and basic math.
Though they’ve been staying in Moldova for some nine months, even a short conversation with them makes it clear that Mykolaiv unquestionably remains the center of the Karamelevas’ lives. They are constantly tracking conditions in the city, speaking to friends there and reading news about the fighting.
When asked if they’ve considered resigning themselves to settling somewhere else — Moldova or Israel or elsewhere in Europe or North America — simply in order to move on with their lives, Olga made a face as though she’d been asked if she’d considered running full speed into a brick wall.
Her one-word answer could be understood even by this reporter, with his nonexistent knowledge of the Ukrainian language: “Nyet.” (No.)
The reporter’s flight and accommodations were provided by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews.
