An Emory Eye Center staffer shares her experience helping her aunt escape the chaos in their homeland
Editor's note: The Emory Eye Center staffer in this story was happy to share her experience, but asked us to omit her last name for privacy reasons.
Screaming sirens. Smoldering buildings. Soot-covered children.
Nightly images of Ukraine's destruction have stunned many Americans into an awestruck silence. Yulia hasn't had that luxury. When the airspace over her native country was shutdown on February 23, her life went into overdrive.
Brokering the journey to freedom
My aunt already had a visa and a green card, and she was ready to fly to the United States when they shut down the airspace,
said Yulia, in the flawless English she has learned since emigrating to the United States at the age of 9.
Of course, I was crying at first because it made me so mad that I'd waited all of my life to have her in this country. But I couldn't let that stop me.
What did she know about ferreting refugees out of harm's way? Nothing. But what makes Yulia a great employee at Emory is also what made her Natalia's best source for practical and emotional support. She doesn't give up.
If I have a goal in mind, I make a plan and I work hard. I am very persistent,
she says. I just started calling everyone, anyone in Atlanta that had any connection to the Ukranian community. I reached out to the U.S. Embassy, the Ukraine-Poland border control.
The responses from the Atlanta Ukrainian community were swift and many. Every day, she received multiple emails from strangers - Ukrainian emigres - who offered advice, referrals, and encouragement. One even offered to give Natalia English lessons when she finally made it stateside. The Polish Border advised her to direct her aunt to the nearest border, where, they assured her, Natalia would be allowed to cross.
Yulia quickly created an impromptu central command post
from her personal smartphone. Going forward, all her family's communications to Natalia ran through that phone -to keep the message clear, and to save valuable battery life on her aunt's end.
I have an app that tells me if someone is online. I checked that app a lot, just to see if my aunt was online. Because if she was online, I knew she was probably okay,
Yulia said.
And when I spoke with her, I tried to give her words of encouragement because I knew what she was seeing. No food, very little water, and so many people trying to leave.
Day after day, Yulia forged solutions to problems that defied her own lived experience as an American citizen. She told her aunt to take pictures of all her important documents and text them to Yulia's phone for safekeeping.
In case they took her phone and told her she did not have documents to proceed. I could produce them for her,
she said.
And in case they took her phone, I told her to write down all of our cellphone numbers on separate strips of paper and to put them in her bra for safekeeping.
Yulia's advice was well-warranted. What should have been a six-hour car ride to the Polish border turned into a three-day odyssey. All of the trains were quickly canceled, so Natalia's journey started outside a bus station, where she waited six hours in the bitter cold before being told that there were no more buses going to Poland.
So I told her to go to another station near there, and she was able to get the last ticket to Poland. The very last ticket. I was happy, but I told her You are not out of the woods, yet. You still need to get there, and it is dangerous. Drivers are risking their lives because, if they are young enough, they are expected to fight. Find a driver who is over 60.
A war without guns
Natalia Lendel worked for 21 years as a schoolteacher before the Russian invasion of 2022. The roots she had in her hometown of Ivano-Frankivsk were deeply woven into a fabric of friends and colleagues that made life in post-Soviet Ukraine relatively peaceful. She had always wanted to come to the United State, but not under these circumstances.
One day, I was living my life, happy, with friends that I see every day. And the next, it is all gone,
she said during a recent video call, using her niece as a translator
And every day, now, I am calling friends who are still there, from morning til night, and there are so many tears, such sadness. They are constantly running to the basement because the sirens, the bombs.
Natalia's eyes well-up with pent-up fear and exhaustion when she talks about the three days she spent trying to get to Poland. Though she traveled alone, the others on the bus became like family to her - bolstering each other's spirits as the roads became gridlocked and the threat of being apprehended was only too real.
Some were just too tired, too frightened, so they decided to leave the bus, to go back on foot. It was too dangerous to travel on the roads, so they went through the woods, alone, with nothing, in the cold. It was so sad,
she said.
There were also moments that gave her hope.
They told us there was a lady by the border who was giving out food, for free. These are rural people who took it upon themselves to help us. We were the happiest people in the world, the happiest, because she gave us hot soup and potatoes. Soup and potatoes! And when she gave us tea, there were tears because we were so grateful.
But the panic-ridden crowds left her with many more images that will haunt her forever: an exhausted mother collapsing to her death in front of her daughter; an infant being passed through a hole in the border fence ahead of its mother; and, everywhere, frantic screams and wailing from children who just wanted to lay their heads down and rest.
People had walked so far, so long. And by the time they reached the border, there were so many. People who had nothing. Pushing. Shoving. It was a war without guns, without fighting,
she said.
When we passed through to the Polish side, it was like a fairy tale. The babies got diapers. They gave us all sandwiches. The Polish people were so very kind.
From Poland, Natalia caught a commercial flight to the United States. Arranged, of course, by Yulia.
The Ukrainian people do not hate the Russian people
When Natalia Lendel stepped off the plane in Atlanta a little over a week ago, she brought a huge smile for her adopted homeland - and a fistful of necessary documents. That was it. There was no carry-on luggage. Not even a change of clothes.
Yulia recalls their first conversation on American soil.
She wanted to know when she could get a job, when she could work,
she says.
She wanted to make herself useful.
It's a trait Natalia shares with her niece.
Throughout all of this, I have made sure that I have been on time and completely ready for work,
says Yulia. I have not missed work, not even once. I am grateful for the opportunity to build my career at Emory.
And while the world watches the political conflict unfold, both women want you to know their story is not a political one. It is their lives.
The Ukrainian people do not harbor ill will toward the Russian people. This war wants to divide us - to pit brother against brother - but the Ukrainian people and the Russian people are more alike than not,
Yulia explains.
It's a mistake to blame the Russian grandmother who owns the corner store in your neighborhood. She is not to blame. I have friends who are Russian. I have cousins, who are half-Russian, half-Ukrainian. Some of them, now, are being asked which side they are on. That is wrong. The Ukrainian people do not hate the Russian people.
-Kathleen E. Moore