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Christian organization evacuates Ukrainian Holocaust survivors to Israel

by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – The International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem (ICEJ) has helped to evacuate more than 620 Jewish people from Ukraine since the ongoing Russian invasion began, including elderly and disabled Holocaust survivors from cities being bombed in airstrikes, the Jerusalem Post reports.

Based in Jerusalem, the ICEJ offers a wide range of humanitarian aid to Jewish people in need, including assisting them to ‘make Aliyah’ and emigrate to Israel.

Thousands of Ukrainian Jews have fled to Israel since the Russian invasion began on February 24, and the ICEJ is doing its part to help bring in the many more that are expected. “We are trying to help at all points in the process – extricating people from war zones, getting them over to Lviv and western Ukraine and across the border,” David Parsons, ICEJ vice president said in an interview with All Israel News.

Parsons goes on to explain the harrowing mission of evacuating Holocaust survivors who are once again facing war and bombs. “Because they are older, in their 80s and 90s, they’re using walkers or wheelchairs, they tend to be reclusive,” he said.

“Most of the time, you have to go with specially equipped vans and ambulances that can handle wheelchairs and disabled people. And you have to have some family members to talk them out of leaving a home that they’ve lived in for 70, 80 years,” Parsons added.

In one mission in the southern port city of Kherson, the ICEJ rescued several Holocaust survivors just three hours before Russian troops took over the bridge they had just crossed, and entered the city. “When an urgent aliyah like this comes up you try and do everything you can,” Parsons said.