On the 24th we were awakened at 5 am because the house was shaking. I was really scared and started crying so hard that I woke up my child. That was the first time something like that happened to me. We were not prepared for war, so we had not made not make special purchases of any kind.

The shelling continued for 28 days straight

We live in a suburb, and when we went to the store and saw the columns of tanks, it was very scary… although the hope remained that it would all be done within a week or two.
And then the shellings started. They continued nonstop for 28 days straight: day and night they hit us with all kinds of shells and rockets. At first I went down with my daughter to the basement. We slept fully clothed, but it was still so cold that it was easy to get sick.

So we moved to the hallway and sat there for days. Our building more or less unscathed. Of course, the windows were blownout, and the ceiling crumbled, but compared to other buildings that were razed to the ground, it‘s okay; it can all be repaired.

The neighboring villages, Kyenka, Zarechnaya, the closest of Chernihiv suburbs, were burned to the ground. Gradually, we started to be able to tell what was coming and from where. When the electricity and water got cut, we managed, but once the gas was cut as well we moved to the city to stay with friends. It was easier in Chernihiv, but we still had to deal with the air raids at night. It was definitely better than our suburb, with shells flying overhead and neighboring houses burning down with the people inside.

We had to stand in line for four hours at a time to get groceries. One would stand in line for bread, while someone else would try to get meat etc. Volunteers helped us get some blood pressure medication for my mom. Neighbors put together some makeshift ovens and used them to cook food.

There was no phone connection, no Internet—we were totally isolated. One day my husband went to get in line to buy bread at 9 am, and I heard on the radio that a bomb hit one of the bread lines killing 13 people. But it was unclear where exactly that happened! My hair turned gray before he came back at 1 pm. That happened in the neighborhood where I grew up, where my parents’ apartment was located.

An acquaintance lived a few blocks away from us. After a direct hit his house burned down, and he burned up with it. The next house over was hit as well, tearing off a man’s fingers. My husband had a friend through his soccer club. He moved to a village outside of town with his wife and 7-year-old son. They were captured, and then their dead bullet-ridden bodies were recovered.

I want to switch to Ukrainian

Our hotel was bombed out, so was the candy factory. We were hanging out in the kitchen at the time and could see the double-glazed windows bend from the shock wave. My sister made food for the soldiers in a school building. It was hit by a bomb as well.

My husband’s relatives lived in Ivanivka (it’s a village along the highway to Kyiv), so they ended up under occupation. The Russians just kicked them out of the house and made them stay in the basement with their child. When the soldiers left, it turned out that they took everything, from forks to underpants and the last sock. And they were lucky; the locals said that the Russians shot women and children who tried to escape.

My grandmother and my great-grandmother spoke Russian, but today there is so much hate in my soul that I want to switch to Ukrainian. One of my friends from Moscow called at the beginning of the war. She was in tears: “if you want to, you can come stay with us.” I just laughed. I would rather shoot myself than go to Russia.

We left Chernihiv on April 4th. We wanted to leave sooner, but the car broke down and when our friends gave us another one, on that very day the car bridge was blown up. We had to come back and wait for the old road to Kyiv to be opened. We managed to drive over metal sheets replacing the broken bridges.

Instead of a post scriptum. 10 months later

At the end of April I evacuated with my daughter first to Romania and then to Israel. We were greeted really warmly in the town of Nof ha-Galil, and we quickly found new friends. Ironically, most of them were from Russia. When I saw immigrants from Russia in our hotel, I was on edge, but it turned out that they were afraid of me as well (some of them were ashamed and were scared to admit that they were from Russia). But it’s all in the past! Now we are all Israelis!

I graduated from ulpan Alef and am looking for a job. My daughter was met very warmly in school. When they found out that she plays the guitar, they gifted her one. In June the Jewish Agency helped to evacuate my mom who has mobility issues. She is very happy as well, even though she sometimes cries thinking about the shellings and the horror she had to live through.