Former Israeli handball player Vladi Kaufman, who retired due to injury and currently serves as the coach of the handball team in the national league of Hapoel Ashdod, came to the rescue of his family from the heart of the inferno and the difficult war in Ukraine that tried to escape Russian fire.
Kaufman has left Israel in recent days to reach the Ukraine-Poland border in order to safely bring his loved ones here.
Some of the family members managed to escape between the bombings, but the men were left behind and so was his older grandmother, who was moving in a wheelchair.
Currently, Kaufman and his brother who came from Israel are in Krakow, there with his cousin's wife and three daughters, trying to board them on the flight to Israel, but he is currently unable to get the permits that will allow him to support them until the end of the fighting.
"The cousin is left behind, he protects the city and also the 89-year-old grandmother," Kaufman tells Israel Today.
"I need all the help I can. Because they are not Jewish, there is a problem with permits to enter the country. I met the family only two hours ago and I hope to bring them to Israel."
When you met what stories did you hear from them?
"They live in Jaffroza near the occupied reactor and had to reach 40 kilometers to Lvov, but the train dropped them off in the middle and at the same place they got off, heavy shelling started that night. It was a tedious road of tens of hours. .
"I but must be optimistic about the war, because it's crazy all that's going on there. It's just unbelievable that something like this could happen in 2022 and this killing must stop and I'm very optimistic that common sense will win and our journey will end well."
How will the family journey end?
"We left the country with the sole purpose of bringing them to the country and that is what was done, there is no other way for us. They do not want to live in the country. They want to return home to Ukraine that it will all end.
Do you have a message for Prime Minister Naftali Bennett or Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked?
"Let him do everything. All he can do is stop this madness, press the right buttons on the right people, so that this suffering stops, this is when everyone mobilizes and goes under the stretcher and the interior minister, just asking that these people who were 75 hours on the road, some walked and if the State of Israel can "Helping them get through this period is a human act that needs to show solidarity and help everyone."
Hapoel Ashdod said:
"We signed Vladi as a player three years ago, he is part of the family, as soon as I received the message from him we played everything necessary, now that he is stuck in Poland and he managed to rescue his uncles and little nephews, it was important for us as a club to take care of him like any family. ".
Vladi Kaufman with the State Cup in the Hapoel Ashdod uniform,
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