By Etgar Lefkovits
WARSAW — It was a surprise reunion.
For the last nine years, Moshe Galinkin had been unable to see his younger brother Daniel, first because of travel restrictions imposed during COVID and then because of the war in Ukraine.
But last month, a summer camp organized by Chabad for a group of war-weary Ukrainians brought the two siblings together for the first time in nearly a decade.
“It was something I didn’t even dream of,” said Moshe Galinkin, 45, of Bet Shemesh, Israel, his eyes welling with tears of joy.
Moshe Galinkin moved to Israel from Ukraine a quarter-century ago, but his family stayed behind.
He would periodically visit them, most recently in 2017.
When he heard earlier this summer that Chabad was planning its third annual summer retreat for some 200 Ukrainians, he thought he would get a chance to see his mother again, whom he had last seen at the same camp the previous year.
Meanwhile, in Ukraine, Daniel Galinkin, 40, and his 70-year-old mother, Yenta, were praying that Moshe would be allowed to join the Ukrainians registered for the event. As a man of draft age, it is difficult for him to leave the country.
When Moshe arrived at the Ukrainian border, he was allowed to cross within seven minutes, an uncertain process that could have taken hours or even a day.
“It was only then that I knew I made it,” he said. “I felt it was a miracle.”
Meanwhile, after a 24-hour journey by train and bus, Daniel and his mother arrived in Warsaw, where they were reunited with Moshe.
Moshe had walked into the Warsaw hotel convinced that he was only going to meet his mother.
After the two embraced, his brother, who had hidden himself behind a column in the lobby, suddenly appeared.
After a moment of shock, the two brothers embraced and broke into song and dance as their mother looked on, overwhelmed with joy.
“It is hard to express in words how I felt,” Yenta Galinkin said, sitting with her sons and grandchildren.
The camp is an island of comfort and paradise, offering a period of relaxation from the tension and bombing of the war,” said Rabbi Levi Stambler, the Chabad-Lubavitch emissary of Kamianske, Ukraine. He runs the camp with his brother, Rabbi Shalom Stambler, who heads up Chabad of Warsaw.
“Our job is to make sure that they are happy just like normal hotel guests,” Levi Stambler said as he ran the camp’s operations with his wife, Dina, and their teenage daughters. “Seeing them happy makes everything worth it.”
While about 100 Jewish families from Kamianske have moved to Israel and 50 families have relocated to Europe since the Russian invasion of Ukraine four years ago, hundreds of additional families, mainly pensioners, remain behind.
As for the Galinkins, they know their time together is short-lived, as Daniel and his mother are set to return to Ukraine this week.
“It is very hard to return to the terrible winter and the unknown after being here in this paradise together,” Daniel said. “But for now this is our life.”
