PEPPER PIKE, Ohio — As we continue to see the destruction across Ukraine, Northeast Ohioans who left as refugees or immigrants years ago are remembering their similar experiences.
Yelena Kopisarova left Kharkiv in 1996 and obtained refugee status in the United States.
Rosa Grinberg left Mariupol in 1994 and obtained refugee status in the United States.
Nata Mendlovic left Chernivtsi in 1973 and immigrated to the United States at 14.
"Every family deserves to provide for their little children, for their adult children for their elderly neighbors, friends, that is being taken away from the Ukrainian people," Mendlovic said.
Ukrainians who escaped Soviet or early post-Soviet Russia had to leave behind families, friends, careers, and towns they still hold dear.
Now they recognize the streets they walked on, parks and schools they went to, destroyed as Russia continues its attacks.
"I'm in pain, I'm in excruciating pain every single day. I cannot even believe how those people who are still there, how they survive right now," Kopisarova said.
Singed rubble and a teetering building is all that's left from the bombing at the Mariupol maternity and children's hospital.
The blast killed at least three, and it happened in Grinburg's hometown.
It's a town where she served as a doctor and head of a large hospital union before having to give up practicing when she moved to the United States.
"I don't know how many people are alive or not. It's so painful for me, my heart is breaking," Grinburg said.
As people of Jewish faith who lived in Ukraine, they don't understand Putin's argument that he's invaded to denazify a nation led by a Jewish president with grandparents who survived the Holocaust.
"Putin, in his government, represents the Ukranian people like fascists... but it's not true," Grinburg said.
Yelena, Rosa and Nata all say Jewish Family Services was a major part of them feeling welcome when first arriving in Cleveland.
Now all three women work for the organization and they hope to help today's refugees in the same ways they themselves were helped when they came here.
"It is a necessity, it is our obligation to do that," Mendlovic said.
The majority of their family members have also made their way to the United States over the years, but Yelena still has relatives in their 80s who are in the process of fleeing right now.
She said she has had trouble reaching them and hopes they make it safely over the border.
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