During the shelling of Bakhmut, 93-year-old Mr. Andrii used to leave a blanket on the floor near his sick wife’s bed in the evening to pull her outside in case a rocket hit the house.

Mrs. Lidiya has been bedridden for 5 years after suffering three strokes. All this time her husband has been taking care of her despite his advanced age. Mr. Andrii didn’t stop caring for his wife even when Russian shells started falling in their town.

For the Zhenchak family, the war began in 2014. However, the elderly couple had never experienced such a powerful bombardment as in 2022. Mr. Andrii was most concerned about Mariupol. The couple even sheltered for a while a resident of Mariupol who managed to escape from hell. But they weren’t going to leave Bakhmut themselves.

Everything changed when there were almost no people left in their house, and the neighboring houses were destroyed by Russian attacks one by one. During one of these attacks, the windows in the couple’s apartment were blown out, and they finally decided to leave. Even during the evacuation of the elderly, the shelling didn’t stop nearby.

A year after the rescue, Mr. Andrii and Mrs. Lidiya ended up in the Lviv hub of Save Ukraine in Kamianka-Buzka. Here, our volunteers provided the couple with proper assistance and shelter, and later sent them, along with a group of other wards, to Germany.

Now Mr. Andrii and his wife are safe, they can continue their treatment and finally live peacefully in their old age.

We are grateful to our partners World Jewish Relief for their crucial support of our centers for the elderly and people with limited mobility.

Thanks to you, we are able to help the most vulnerable during the war

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