Several hours after Odessa awoke to explosions Thursday morning, Avraham Wolff, the city's chief rabbi, got a call from a nearly 90-year-old Holocaust survivor. The man was so distressed he could barely speak.
"He cried and cried, and I just listened to him," Wolff said. "I told him that everything is OK, the Russians are not coming to kill us, these are not Nazis."
For weeks, the rabbi had prepared for the possibility that Russia could invade Ukraine. He bought several tons of sugar, macaroni, rice, flour and water, hired 20 security guards and reserved buses to evacuate thousands of Jews to neighboring Moldova.
