With No Water and Little Food, Nikolayev Evacuations Continue

The strategically located city of Nikolayev (Mykolaiv) in Ukraine was hit hard at the start of the war, and those remaining in the beleaguered city are facing an increasingly dire humanitarian crisis.

Rabbi Shalom Gottlieb, the city’s rabbi since 1996 and director of Chabad-Lubavitch of Nikolayev, is orchestrating relief efforts from Israel. He says that even as bombing continues, he and his staff have been sending in shipments of food, and now, truckloads of fresh water as well. The city’s running water has been cut off since April 12 due to damage inflicted on the pipelines.

Prior to Pesach, the Jewish community distributed thousands of food packages, which included canned goods, fresh vegetables, matzah and other staples. The shul continues to distribute groceries and serve hot meals for those able to venture out, while deliveries are made to homes and shelters for the homebound and others who were unable to make the trip safely. The rabbi and his staff have been sending in shipments of food, and now, truckloads of fresh water as well.

Attempts to capture Nikolayev began just two days after the war commenced in late February, when Russian tanks rumbled into the city. Nikolayev was battered by rockets in March, and tens of thousands were evacuated. By early April most of the surrounding area was back under Ukrainian control.

As the war in Ukraine’s south and east intensifies, Nikolayev, a strategic area which controls the pathway to Odessa, has seen intense assaults in recent weeks. Observers fear that it might go the way of Mariupol, which has been turned to rubble and where tens of thousands of civilians have perished.

While Rabbi Gottlieb has been evacuating residents from the start of the war, he says many civilians, including thousands of Jewish people, are either unable or unwilling to leave the city.

Two months into the ongoing evacuation effort, he says that it has become increasingly challenging. “There are many people scattered in villages around Nikolayev, who are very hard for our rescue teams to reach. Just locating each person and arranging transportation is tremendously difficult,” he reports. “But we will not give up on a single precious life.”

Nikolayev has a long and rich Jewish history and was once home to a thriving kehillah. The Lubavitcher Rebbe, Harav Menachem Mendel Schneerson, was born there in 1902; his grandfather Harav Meir Shlomo Yanovsky and great-grandfather Harav Avraham David Lavut (author of the sefer Kav Naki), were chief Rabbis of Nikolayev. The Lubavitcher Rebbe’s early years were spent there, where he and his family survived the deadly pogrom of 1905.

In February of 2016 the city renamed the central Karl Liebknecht street after the Lubavitcher Rebbe, and in 2019 two Ukrainian historians co-authored the book “Our Fellow Countryman Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson: The History of the Lavut-Yanovsky-Schneerson Families in Mykolaiv“, a study that was geared at a general audience and was published by the State Archive of the Mykolaiv Region.