What Can I Say to Console Refugees? This Is War 

War.

As someone born in 1996 in the United States but who grew up in Israel, I never really understood what war meant. In our country, the surrounding regions are not usually at peace with us, so we unfortunately have a lot of experience fighting. However, it is always one operation after another. It’s not wars of one nation against another nation but a terrorist organization against a nation. There are missiles here, attacks there, and some operations, but it’s not really a war.

When we reached the border in Moldova, we found people who left everything behind, children and their mothers without their husbands and fathers, and older parents without their sons, because men between the ages of 18-60 were recruited for the war. We saw mothers holding their babies with freezing hands, without strollers, without enough food and diapers and other necessities for more than a day or two, if any. Their main concern was just running far away and escaping the war—keeping the members of their families safe, however they could. 

They would turn around a moment after crossing the border out of Ukraine and start to cry. They cried for those they had to leave behind. They cried because they had to leave everything to survive and journey into the unknown. They didn’t know where to go, where they would sleep, what they would eat, and who would take care of them. But in their hearts, they wanted to be happy. 

When we would enter the picture, we would engulf the refugees in warm, comforting hugs and give toys to the children—children who didn’t understand why they ran away from their homes, why their mothers were crying, and why their fathers did not come with them.

We would provide psychotrauma support and emotional stabilization. We would provide medical treatment to those who needed it. Some of them had been walking for days on end and waiting for hours in the freezing cold at the border.

The story that was most difficult for me was of a family we met at the border who told us that when they had started to run, the mother's parents were a bit delayed and told them to hurry on ahead. After half an hour, a missile hit the area where they lived, and they did not know if her parents survived or not.

And in my head echoes the voice of a little boy asking, "Where's daddy? Where’s mommy?"

The boy is asking for just a little consolation. And what should we tell him? 

War.

Netanel Nissim Nagar is a United Hatzalah volunteer who was deployed to Moldova in late February to assist refugees from Ukraine.