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Jewish orphans evacuated from Odessa to Berlin at Ukraine war’s start are headed home again
ODESSA, Ukraine (JTA) – A year after Rabbi Mendy Wolff spirited 120 children and staff away from the Mishpacha Orphanage in this war-torn country to the safety of Berlin, he is preparing to bring them home.
That’s not because the war is over — far from it. One year after Russian tanks first rolled into Ukraine, fighting grinds on and much of Ukraine has been plunged into austerity conditions.
Instead, the children of Mishpacha are headed back to Odessa because of the high cost of keeping them fed, housed and educated in Germany. Chaya Wolff, Mendy’s mother and the wife of Odessa’s chief rabbi, Avraham Wolff, said the price tag was 750,000 euros — close to $800,000 — a month. They’ll join other Ukrainians who have returned to their homeland as it became clear that the war would not end quickly.
“We could have bought seven buildings for the [Jewish] community in Odessa with that money,” she said from Odessa, where she stayed along with her husband after the Russian invasion to care for remaining Jews in the city, where the Wolff family operates Chabad of Odessa. “But now the money is finished and it’s time to bring our children home.”
Mendy Wolff said that when he first headed to Berlin several days after Russia’s Feb. 24, 2022, invasion, he expected to return home in a matter of days. He had become the orphanage’s director overnight, when his parents tasked him with getting the children out of Ukraine. He and his wife, Mushky, had instructed their charges to pack two of each item of clothing.
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier talks with refugee children from the Jewish community in Odessa at a Chabad center in Berlin two days after their arrival as refugees, March 7, 2022. (Clemens Bilan – Pool/Getty Images)
“As I was packing, I remember spotting my Megillat Esther on the shelf and thinking I won’t be needing that because Purim is two weeks from now and we’ll be back by then,” Wolff told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, referring to the biblical book traditionally read on Purim.
The journey to Berlin took 53 hours and traversed five international borders, but Wolff and his wife tried to make the atmosphere as fun as possible for the children.
“We sang songs all the way and even though most of the children knew what was happening, we made it feel like summer camp — only in the winter,” Wolff said.
Getting the children out of Ukraine meant pulling strings of all kinds, since most did not have passports or even original birth certificates. Most of the children in the orphanage have parents who are unable to care for them; Wolff got the parents’ permission to take the children out of the country, a challenging task in the chaos after the invasion. “That is why we didn’t escape on the first day of the war,” he told JTA from Berlin at the time.
For 40 children for whom no living relatives could be found, Rabbi Avraham Wolff and his wife, Chaya, signed on as legal guardians. The Chabad emissaries in Berlin managed to secure VIP status for the young refugees to bring them across EU borders as personal guests of German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who greeted them on their arrival in the German capital.
The Wolff family operates Chabad of Odessa. Rabbi Avraham and Chaya Wolff are sitting. Rabbi Mendy Wolff, who has overseen the children relocated from the group’s orphange to Berlin, is at the center in the back row. (Courtesy Chabad Odessa)
The children and orphanage staff were joined by other Odessians: university students, single mothers and their own offspring. Their flight and warm welcome in Berlin captured international headlines.
“Everyone knew there was an orphanage coming,” Mendy Wolff told JTA in Berlin shortly after the group’s arrival. “It was an unbelievable hug. It made us feel good in our hearts.”
But even then, the high cost of caring for the children in Berlin was weighing on the volunteers who leapt to help them. “We’ve received an outpouring of support from the community and beyond, lots of clothes and other supplies, but what we really need now are financial donations — only the food for all the children costs about 5,000 euros every day,” one told the Associated Press at the time.
Over the course of the next 11 months, the Hotel Müggelsee, on the banks of Berlin’s largest lake of the same name, would become home to some 300 Jewish refugees. In that time, the group celebrated not just Purim but a full year of Jewish holidays, as well as the gamut of Jewish lifecycle events, from bar mitzvahs to births and brisses. The group recently celebrated the first birthday of the youngest child to make the trek from Odessa, Tuvia, who was just 5 weeks old when he arrived in Berlin.
Jewish children from Odessa in war-torn Ukraine celebrate Purim 2022 with members of the Chabad Berlin Jewish community, March 17, 2022. (Omer Messinger/Getty Images)
For Wolff, the hardest part was grappling with the unknown. “It was very similar to what people experienced at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. You don’t know who it will infect or how many people will die or how long you’ll need to live like this.”
Like many others, Wolff was certain that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s army would crush Ukraine in a matter of days. “With each passing day we saw that the Ukrainians were far more resilient than we had given them credit for and that the Russians weren’t as much as superheroes as we thought.”
The irony that Germany, and not Israel, became the host country for Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe is not lost on the Wolffs. While Mendy is reluctant to express political opinions of any kind, his mother, Chaya, is more forthright, saying that Israel had refused them entry.
Mark Dovev, the regional director of Nativ, the Israeli government office that facilitates immigration to Israel from the former Soviet Union, later told JTA that taking in a minor from another country is “tantamount to kidnapping.” Brushing off Dovev’s objections, Chaya Wolff said, “Just as Germany turned a blind eye, Israel could have also taken them in temporarily as refugees.”
The children and staff of Mishpacha Orphanage in Odessa pose outside the Hotel Mugglesee in Berlin, their home for nearly a year since fleeing war in Ukraine. (Courtesy Chabad Odessa)
Since German law bans homeschooling, the children were required to enroll in a local school as well as to learn German. German authorities allowed the student body to largely adhere to the Ukrainian curriculum, however, and they were taught by a handful of the women refugees who happened to be teachers. The hotel, which functioned as a dormitory, doubled as a branch of the local Chabad school — replete with classrooms and a schoolyard.
But keeping the refugees in Berlin came at a steep price, footed by various donors such as the International Fellowship for Christians and Jews as well as private donations. An online fundraiser netted $685,500 in small gifts from more than 5,000 donors — a significant tally, but far short of its $1 million goal. So it was mostly out of economic considerations, then, that the Wolffs decided to close up shop in Berlin and bring the refugees home later this month.
While some Ukrainians who fled the country say they have no intention of returning while the war rages, the Wolffs and their charges are hardly the first Ukrainians to make their way back home. Many of them have cited the high cost of life abroad, along with separation from family and guilt about abandoning their country, for coming back to a warzone. So many Ukrainians were returning last fall that the country’s leaders urged them to wait until this spring to return, lest they tax fragile infrastructure.
Ukrainians queue at the railway station in Przemysl, Poland, to depart for Ukraine, amid a reversal in migration patterns as the Ukraine war ground on, Dec. 20, 2022. (Dominika Zarzycka/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
According to Mendy Wolff, his group would be staying in Berlin were it not for budgetary concerns. Still, he said, there were many positive aspects about the decision to return home.
“Psychologically, it’s not easy being here. You’re not living like a human. It’s like living on borrowed time and in a refugee camp, albeit a luxury refugee camp,” he said. “I’m very excited to be in my own bed and my own blankets.”
For both mother and son, the responsibility of bringing the refugees back to a country that is still very much at war weighs heavily. Odessa is faring better than many other southern Ukrainian cities like Mykolaiv and Kherson to the east, which have suffered daily shelling. Still, air raid sirens sound multiple times a day and there is no electricity for 20+ hours. But as long as residents have access to bomb shelters and generators — including the kind made from car batteries that Avraham Wolff recently held a fundraiser to buy — Chaya Wolff describes it as “livable.”
“It’s not an easy decision and we hope it’s the right one,” Chaya Wolff said. “At the end of it all, we’re ‘believers, the children of believers,’” she added, quoting the Talmud.
Toby Axelrod contributed reporting from Berlin.
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NAZA exposes Israel’s crisis of credibility over Gaza
More than two decades ago, when I was the The Associated Press bureau chief for Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, the Israeli military called off an attack on a senior Hamas leader after learning at the last moment that family members and children were inside the targeted building.
What stayed with me was what happened next. The military sent a senior officer to my office to explain the decision.
This was during the Second Intifada, the murderous explosion of terrorism launched by armed Palestinians after Israel had offered the Palestinian Authority an independent state in over 90 percent of the territory it sought. Hamas leaders sent suicide bombers into Israel on a daily basis to blow up buses, restaurants, malls, cafes. I checked for explosives whenever I got into my car, perhaps with my little daughters, Maya and Noa.
Yet Israeli officials understood that demonstrating concern for civilian life was part of maintaining the country’s credibility. Maybe they also thought that concern for innocent life, even on the enemy side, was the Jewish thing to do. I want to believe this, as both a Jew and as a manager who had colleagues in Gaza, some of whom were hurt over the years.
That memory returned to me amid the uproar surrounding NAZA, the new documentary by Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, who shared in the 2024 Oscar for No Other Land, a critique of Israel’s practices in the West Bank.
The new film, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival and won the Special Jury Prize, is titled after the Hebrew acronym for “collateral damage” (and is also a play on “Gaza”). It examines Israel’s targeting practices in Gaza through testimony from 24 Israeli soldiers and intelligence personnel who allege the IDF used artificial intelligence.
Some of those soldiers, the filmmakers say, operated or helped design the AI systems at the center of the film. Their identities are concealed in various ways, yet their testimony portrays a disturbing picture about how technology, intelligence and estimates of civilian casualties intersected in decisions to strike.
The reaction in Israel has been ferocious. Culture Minister Miki Zohar – from the governing Likud Party led by Benjamin Netanyahu – has called the filmmakers traitors and raised the prospect of revoking their citizenship.
Former football star and prominent television personality Eyal Berkovic has similarly argued that loss of citizenship should be the best-case scenario for Israelis who harm their country. As the film moves beyond Venice, efforts to prevent its screening in Israel seem likely.
That reaction creates a sad irony. One of the strongest criticisms of NAZA is that its highly combustible testimony comes from anonymous sources – and that is a valid criticism indeed. Yet threats directed at the filmmakers offer a fairly vivid illustration of why soldiers and intelligence officers making explosive allegations about their own military might fear speaking publicly. The filmmakers say anonymity was necessary to protect people who could face serious consequences for revealing classified information. I can credibly assess they’d end up in jail.
Nonetheless, the anonymity remains a serious weakness. Claims that are this grave demand intense scrutiny, and viewers have limited means of establishing whether the witnesses held the positions they claim, possessed the knowledge they describe or represent the targeting system accurately. The IDF has challenged precisely this aspect of the film and rejected its portrayal of Israeli targeting practices.
That said, and not for the first time, the military is more reasonable than the government and the IDF’s spokesman invited the filmmakers to screen it for the military. A detailed military response to the evidence presented in NAZA would provide an essential counterweight.
The central dispute also reaches beyond whether Israel used artificial intelligence. The IDF says decisions to select and approve strikes are made by human personnel. The more consequential question is what information those people received and what weight they gave to civilian lives when making those decisions. If a system identified a Hamas operative inside a residential building, what level of civilian harm was considered acceptable in order to kill him? To what degree was AI part of the decision-making process?
Amid a global uproar over fears of AI, and in particular systems operating independently in ways that harm humans, this film catapults such questions to a very high place in the global discourse.
The AI questions lead to others. Did the permissible number of civilian casualties change according to the importance of the target? How confident did intelligence officers have to be that the intended person was actually present? What happened when information indicated that children or other family members were inside? How frequently did commanders cancel strikes because the expected civilian toll had become too high?
NAZA offers disturbing answers, and its central concern is ultimately a human one: what values and tolerances were built into the targeting process, and how were they applied by the people responsible for approving strikes?
Israel, this time around, has provided only a limited public account of those calculations during the war. Officials have emphasized the extraordinary difficulties of fighting Hamas in densely populated Gaza, the organization’s use of civilian areas for military purposes and Israeli estimates of a civilian-to-combatant casualty ratio that they say compares favorably with other episodes of urban warfare, including Mosul. The precise civilian death toll in Gaza also remains contested, particularly the division between civilians and combatants.
There is no doubt in my mind – none whatsoever – that Hamas is the embodiment of evil. It is obvious to anyone paying attention that the jihadist group engineered the entire war to maximize casualties on its own side in order to make Israel an international pariah. But it is also rather obvious by Israel’s conduct in the war and the tens of thousands of civilians who have died, that Israel to walked into the trap laid by Hamas.
Aggregate ratios tell only part of the story. They reveal little about why a particular building was struck, how many civilians were expected to be inside, what military advantage commanders anticipated or how that anticipated advantage was weighed against the likely human cost. Repeated incidents involving substantial civilian casualties have often been followed by broad explanations rather than detailed accounts of the decision-making that produced them. Foreign journalists, of course, have not been freely allowed in.
That is where my memory from more than 20 years ago feels especially relevant. The military that sent an officer to my office understood the value of a transparent process. It understood that credibility depended partly on demonstrating, in specific cases, that civilian lives carried meaningful weight in operational decisions. During the Gaza war, amid extraordinary civilian loss of life, that instinct has been far less visible, to say the least.
Why did Israel act this way? Part of it has to do with the unspeakable trauma of the Oct. 7 Hamas invasion and massacre, which left Israelis in no mood for explanations, and placed its government in a defensive posture. Part of it is the nature of that government – an ultranationalist assemblage of highly illiberal and astoundingly cynical politicians. And part of it is the global demonization targeting Israel – so thorough and unfair that it almost explains the surrender of any serious effort at PR.
None of this was smart. The resulting information vacuum has given NAZA much of its power. A documentary built substantially around anonymous testimony carries an obvious credibility burden, particularly when its allegations concern classified practices that outsiders have little ability to examine independently. Yet Israel’s sparse public accounting of its targeting decisions has left relatively little detailed evidence against which those accounts can be measured. The filmmakers have supplied one version of what happened inside the targeting system; a detailed Israeli account could provide another.
Demonizing a couple of filmmakers based on the idea that they meant to do Israel harm will not convince intelligent people and will deepen Israel’s isolation. Israel needs to explain to its own people how it failed so utterly to protect the massacre of Jews. It needs to explain to the world what went on in Gaza. In fact, it needs to explain that to its own people as well.
All of that will await another government. This will not come from Netanyahu.
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Police investigating threats against prominent Munich Holocaust survivor and AfD opponent
(JTA) — Police said they are investigating death threats made against a senior Jewish leader in Germany, after she criticized the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
A witness found graffiti scrawled in white ink on a park bench and a trash bin in Munich’s English Garden park, threatening the life of 93-year-old Holocaust survivor Charlotte Knobloch, , the Munich Police Department said in a statement.
Citing police sources, The Abendzeitung on Sept. 11 reported the threat contained the phrase “Die AfD hat gewonnen, morgen hängen wir die Knobloch,” which translates to, “The AfD has won, tomorrow we’ll hang Knobloch.” A police spokesperson had not responded to JTA’s request for confirmation of the threat content by press time.
The witness reported the graffiti to police and an investigation was launched on Wednesday, Sept. 9, police said.
Knobloch, chair of the Jewish Community of Munich and Upper Bavaria, canceled plans to attend a public event as an audience member right after learning of the threat, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency has confirmed with the Jewish Community in Munich.
The Munich Criminal Investigation Department has categorized the incident as a case of incitement to hatred, threats, and property damage, and has asked witnesses to contact police.
The AfD won 43.8% of the votes in the state of Saxony-Anhalt on Sept. 6. The election set the stage for a right-wing party to control a German state government for the first time since the Nazi era. But the AfD fell three seats short of a majority and has yet to secure enough support to form a government, Reuters reported Sept. 11.
Knobloch, an ardent critic of the AfD, had said the party’s record of success “frightens me.” In a statement released Sept. 6 by her office, she said that she “couldn’t have imagined even in my worst nightmares that right-wing extremists could win elections in Germany again in this way.” She has long called for the party to be banned.
The Department for Research and Information on Antisemitism (RIAS) has a reporting mechanism for witnesses or victims, and provides statistics to federal and local authorities. Antisemitic crimes may be motivated by left, right or Islamic extremism, but the specific reference to the AfD and a specific target made this case unusual, spokesperson Felix Balandat said. “We have not recorded anything like that before,” he told JTA.
Munich Mayor Dominik Krause (Greens) asked in a public address, “How many more death threats, how much Nazi rhetoric, how many more deportation announcements do we actually need” before the federal government initiates steps towards banning the AfD.
Meanwhile, in Berlin, a woman was injured in a suspected antisemitic attack, according to city police.
Early on Sept. 11, two men attacked a 43-year-old woman in the Mitte section of Berlin. The attackers, who fled the scene, commented on her wearing a Star of David and shouted antisemitic insults at her, Berlin police said.
One of the men allegedly attacked her with a broken glass bottle, police said. While defending herself, she suffered several cuts to her hand. Paramedics transported her to a hospital for treatment. The State Security Unit of the State Criminal Police Office has taken over the investigation.
According to RIAS, more than 2,000 antisemitic and anti-Israel insults, threats, acts of vandalism and attacks were registered in Berlin in 2025, slightly down from 2024 but still more than twice as many as before the attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Jake Lang led a protest against Mamdani and Muslims. Then the Nazis showed up to protest him.
Far-right activist Jake Lang led a march last week protesting Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s presence at the 9/11 25th anniversary memorial ceremony. The protest attracted swastika-sporting men describing themselves as Nazis; they were there to counterprotest Lang, whose mother is Jewish.
Around 100 demonstrators attended Lang’s march, which happened blocks away from the ceremony held at Ground Zero. Lang described the march on X as a “Great CRUSADE on Muslim SCUM Zohran Mamdani.”
The “crusade” was laden with anti-Muslim messaging, including a poster reading “Deport All Muslims.” About 40 counter-protesters arrived to oppose Lang. While most were antiracist protesters, seven were neo-Nazis. One counter-protester got into a physical altercation with someone from Lang’s march.
Lang is best known for his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection. He spent four years in prison, facing assault charges for attacking a police officer with a baseball bat, before being pardoned by President Donald Trump. In August, Lang lost a campaign to secure a Republican congressional nomination in Florida.
Though Lang’s mother is Jewish, he identifies as Christian, and has brandished wooden crosses at his marches, some of which he called “Christian Crusades.” Lang has publicly renounced his Judaism and the state of Israel, burning a copy of the Talmud and performing a Heil Hitler salute outside the AIPAC headquarters in D.C.
Nevertheless, seven men wearing swastika armbands — and one clad in an Elmo suit draped with a Palestinian flag as a cape — stood near Lang’s march holding a sign reading, “Jake Lang is a Jew.”
The men performed Sieg Heil salutes and, in an unusual move for self-identifying Nazis, chanted “Free, free Palestine,” alongside the declaration, “We are the real racists.” They passed out flyers reading “no more wars for Jews” and ranted about American soldiers lost in battles they said were directed by Israel.
“I want them out of our government,” said one of the men, Gregory Conte, a former schoolteacher who was fired for his white-nationalist ties. “And not just Zionists — Jews.”
The swastika-clad men drew a bevy of critics, including one man who told them, “I agree Israel did 9/11, but you guys are Nazis, man, you guys brought them to Palestine.”
One person filming the protest asked Conte, “Do you hate Jewish people?” He replied: “I’ve never had one do a good thing for me.” Conte then asked whether the man behind the camera was Jewish and he said he was; Conte refused to speak to him further, stating that he does not talk to Jews.
Footage showed Conte on the subway, this time without his armband, talking about how “Jake Lang is trying to start a war.” Independent journalist Talia Jane asked him, “Want to show them your armband?” Conte declined to take it out.
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