Holocaust survivor, 90, who fled war in Ukraine, arrives safely in the UK
Kateryna Razumenko, and her daughter Larysa, 62, arrived at Heathrow Airport on Saturday, and will now join family in Mill Hill, North London.
Lee Harpin is the Jewish News's political editor
The 90-year-old Ukrainian Holocaust survivor who fled from Russian bombing in Ukraine has arrived safely in the UK to join family in Mill Hill, north London.
Kateryna Razumenko left her home in Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine, with her daughter Larysa, 62, who is registered disabled, to escape shelling in the city – which earlier this week killed four people, two of them children.
Zac Newman – who is married to Kateryna’s granddaughter Katya – had flown to Poland last weekend to attempt to speed up the process of getting visas to bring the pair to the UK, as reported by Jewish News.
The mother and daughter landed at Heathrow airport on Saturday, along with Newman, to begin a new life in the UK.
Newman and his wife live in a two bedroom flat in Mill Hill East, with their two children, but will find room at the property for the two Ukrainian family members.
ITV News reported on the dramatic escape from war-ravaged Ukraine.
Razumenko, who has dementia, was filmed arriving at Heathrow, where she was welcomed by her loved ones and was seen clutching a bouquet of yellow flowers.
She told ITV she did not blame the Russian people for war on her country, that had cost thousands of innocent lives.
“Putin is to blame,” she said .
Newman said it has been “really difficult” for his two family members, as they travelled across Ukraine to flee the war.
He had earlier told Jewish News of the family’s anguish as they recalled how Razumenko had once been forced to flee the German Nazis as a child, and was now fleeing the Russians as a 90 year-old.
Razumenko was born in Kharkiv in 1931 and has never previously left her home country.
Her granddaughter, now living in Mill Hill East, had used the contacts she still had in Ukraine, having lived there until 2015, to secure train tickets to take them out of the war zone.
Crossing the Polish border the pair spent a week in a Jewish community centre outside Warsaw while Newman attempted to secure visas for them to come to the UK.
But they were initially told they would have to wait one week just to get an appointment to begin the process of getting visas.
The Board of Deputies President Marie van der Zyl wrote a letter to Home Secretary Priti Patel to express concern over the situation.
Newman added:”The government has finally realised it is doing the wrong thing, but it has taken them too long to do so The fact that a 90 year old Holocaust survivor has been stuck here.”
Razumenko had survived the ‘Holodomor’, which was a famine that hit Soviet Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 as a result of Stalin’s forced collectivisation policy and killed millions.
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