With kosher food, Torah debates and a women’s section on the beach for swimming, Ukrainian Rina Jalilova finally feels safe again in a Jewish refugee camp on the shores of Lake Balaton in Hungary.
“I feel great here. It’s very important for us that there is kosher food and that I can swim… it’s nice and quiet here,” says the 18-year-old, who helps out in the camp’s children’s playroom by playing with about a dozen children.
Many Jews have fled Ukraine since February’s Russian invasion, the latest ordeal for a once-large community that has survived a painful history of pogroms, the Holocaust and Communist-era purges.
The camp, set up specifically for devout Ukrainian Jews on the shore of Hungary’s largest lake, is “unique,” said one of its organizers, Rabbi Slomo Koves.
“It’s the only way for people who want to stick to their religious customs, to the dietary laws of Jewish tradition, to be together in a community,” said Koves, who heads the Union of Hungarian Jewish Communities (EMIH).
– ‘resting place’ –
“This is a calming place for traumatized people to think about (their) next steps… They can recharge their soul here,” Yaakov Goldstein, a 33-year-old rabbi and father of three, told AFP as swans swam by the calm green waters of the lake.
Goldstein helped evacuate thousands of Jews from across Ukraine, the cradle of orthodox Hasidic Judaism, many of whom passed through the camp after it opened in April in the seaside resort of Balatonoszod, 130 kilometers (80 miles) southwest of Budapest.
Koves heeded a Ukrainian rabbi’s plea for help in finding a place of refuge for Jews in time for the feast of Passover (Pesach) in mid-April, and persuaded the Hungarian government to let them use the vast complex, which was formerly a vacation spot for government officials. that had been unused for a decade.
EMIH, a group affiliated with the Hasidic Chabad-Lubavitch movement – founded by a Ukrainian-born rabbi – has close ties to nationalist Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, known for his anti-refugee and anti-immigration stance.
Orban unleashed a storm of criticism last month, including from Jewish groups, after he warned against mixing with “non-Europeans” and creating “mixed-race peoples”.
Orban defended his comments as a “cultural point of view” and insisted he had zero tolerance for anti-Semitism. After the Russian invasion, Hungary kept its border with Ukraine open and helped house tens of thousands of Ukrainians.
– uncertain future –
About 2,000 people have passed through Machne Chabad camp since it was established, some for just a few days before continuing on to the United States or Israel. Others have stayed longer, others eager to return to Ukraine.
Funded primarily by US and Western European private donors, the camp can accommodate up to 700 people through a new row of mobile container homes.
“Now we’re full. About 500 people are waiting to come, but we don’t have enough space for everyone,” said Alina Teplitskaya, director of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Ukraine, which manages daily life in the camp.
While fish is being prepared for lunch in the kitchen according to strict kosher rules, bearded men are praying in the dining room. Below, teenagers do handicrafts and dance while a group of women with shawls in long skirts discuss the Torah near the lake shore.
Margarita Yakovleva, a 40-year-old filmmaker, told AFP she fled with her dog Yena after a Russian airstrike in March near the Babi Yar Holocaust memorial in Kyiv – the site of a Nazi massacre that killed over 33,000 in 1941 people were killed. most of them Jews.
“I was in my apartment near Babi Yar when the bombs fell. It was terrible, like an earthquake,” she said while queuing to register for a visit to the Hungarian immigration service.
The Drobytskiy Yar Holocaust memorial in Kharkiv, Ukraine, was also damaged by Russian shelling in March.
Many in the camp do not know what the future will bring.
“We don’t have any plans, so we’ll see,” said Jalilova from Odessa, who arrived at the camp with her family in May after three months in Berlin.
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