They stayed as long as they could. Until the days came when the air-raid siren sounded five times a day and Sergei Yefimov (47) had to flee his room five times a day, through the corridor via the stairs to the air-raid shelter. ‘That is difficult for a healthy person. But all for me, in my wheelchair.’ He and his wife Natalya had to flee.
On April 14 they left for Poland; from Dnipro with a refugee train, in which three carriages were reserved for people in wheelchairs. There they met the couple Leonid and Nina Dolmatov. At 93 years old, it was ‘not easy for Leonid to go, but it had to be’, his wife says, while he is sleeping on the bed. Their house in Severodonetsk (eastern Ukraine) burned down a few days earlier. Now that the fighting is at its worst in their hometown, it is no longer possible to contact the home front.
crisis recording
The couples eventually ended up in a nursing home in the Amsterdam neighborhood of Buitenveldert, where they occupy three rooms on the fourth floor. The fact that they did not end up in regular care is thanks to the Soft Tulip foundation, a foundation of Dutch care organizations in mental health care, care for the elderly and care for the disabled.
They have been supporting healthcare organizations in Eastern European countries for twenty years, says Hanneke Vrielink, who sits on the board on behalf of the Amsterdam healthcare institution Cordaan. So when the war broke out, Vrielink got a call from her contacts in Ukraine. “We have families here in shelters with mentally handicapped children, severely disabled, deaf and blind children,” they said. If we could help.’ Vrielink started calling and within three days she had networked two hundred shelters together.
The reception takes place in locations that are temporarily empty, are being renovated or are not officially open yet. Vrielink: ‘Healthcare organizations are used to crisis admissions, in every nursing home it happens every week that people have to be placed urgently. Suppliers provided free beds, cleaning, food.’
Extra attention
Quite a contrast to the municipalities and other government agencies that she had to rely on. ‘Healthcare has always worked 24 hours a day, municipalities are open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and are often bureaucratic. If you called for extra places, the answer was: we already meet the number of refugees that we have to take in. You are then dependent on a civil servant who wants to do something extra for these people. Fortunately, we often meet them too.’ The care organizations together now receive approximately five hundred people. New reception places are hard to find, there is almost no money for the organization and the arrangements.
It is a complicated group, says Vrielink, which requires a lot of extra attention. Going to a district office or a GP is a temptation, so they are always dependent on a municipal official or doctor who is willing to come to a location to arrange living money or medical care. “These are the most vulnerable people. They were in the care system in Ukraine because of their disability, and now they are also suffering from war trauma.’ As a result, they can hardly go to regular shelters. ‘A child with autism needs an overview, but how can you offer that as a mother, while the father is at the front. These children can disrupt everything at a larger reception location. The stress level is high.’
Soup and sandwiches
Still, say Nina Dolmatov and Sergei Yefimov through an interpreter, they consider their place in Buitenveldert to be paradise. Yes, they would like to go to sea someday. And yes, Yefimov, who suffered a spinal cord injury in an accident in Portugal at 23 and has since worked his way up to Paralympic Swimming Champion of Ukraine, is dying to visit the pool. “It’s been promised to me three times, but it hasn’t happened yet.” But still: they can walk in the Amstelpark and ‘here the air-raid siren only rings once a month.’
That does not alter the fact that they want to return, but how and when? And how livable is a destroyed city for someone in a wheelchair? Nobody knows.
Vrielink is happy that she can offer the help. ‘The first group to arrive was a group of 45 people, many of whom were severely physically or mentally handicapped. In Huizen we had worked with all our might to get a location in order. On Saturday evening we were ready with soup and sandwiches. The refugees had been on the bus from Poland for two days. At each restroom stop, it took two hours for everyone to get off the bus, and another two hours for everyone to get back on. The diapers were gone, it was a mess in the bus. One of the bus drivers was a striking German man with a huge beard. He had also been bombarded and exhausted into one of the escorts.
‘We had also set up a play area for the children. A five-year-old boy saw this, ran off the bus and immediately started playing sweetly. The driver sat nearby, puffing, still full of emotion from what he’d been through. When he saw the little boy, he turned and said to me, ‘This is what I’m going to try to remember from the war. Whatever happens, a child wants to play.’