-Today we are moving.
The synagogue has been helping us.
The rabbi and the synagogue community rented this house,
where we will be for several months.
Anna is supposed to give birth in a month.
-For my entire life, I've heard the words reverberated --
"Never again. Never again! Never again."
And meanwhile, it's happened
over and over and over in my lifetime,
from Rwanda to Serbia to now.
And we can't say "Never again" and say "I'm very busy"
or "I don't have enough space."
-I have mixed feelings.
I still cannot believe that I am in America.
I used to dream about it.
And then I got over it.
I got married, got pregnant, I wasn't thinking about America.
I wasn't planning on giving birth here.
I had my own doctor.
I already registered there.
I had my own gynecologist there.
I had picked a doctor to oversee the labor.
And here I am, with a different doctor, at a different hospital,
a different language.
-I got introduced to the idea of taking care of Anna
through a colleague of mine,
who's involved with her local rabbi.
And for me, I was pretty much motivated to do that
because of our family history.
My wife's grandfather was killed in Auschwitz.
And I felt a connection to the Ukrainian cause
and I thought that this would be one role that I could play
to help Ukrainians survive.
Looks good.
-I really miss my husband.
We are texting every day, talking,
and sometimes I imagine seeing him again.
I'm keeping all the 3D pictures of my second child.
I'm looking at them often,
and I really think that my second child
will indeed look like their dad.
-Looks like he's smiling.
Happy. The baby's happy.
One picture. -Thank you so much.
-I'll give you a color picture of that.
-We weren't prepared for the war.
We were hearing the news
about different Ukrainian cities being bombed,
and we realized it could be dangerous anywhere,
so we would have to leave Ukraine.
-At that moment, I was seven months pregnant.
When we reached the border of Ukraine,
we realized that not everyone was allowed to pass,
so my husband and my elder brother couldn't
cross the border
because they were eligible for the military draft.
-My brother-in-law and I were leaving the car,
and I looked at my wife, we said goodbye and hugged.
I kissed my son, told them everything would be fine,
that she should stay with her family.
But we looked at each other and realized we didn't know
when we would see each other again.
I was feeling that it had to be done,
there was no other choice.
I wanted my wife to be safe,
and I knew it was safer outside of Ukraine.
-I was allowed to go abroad
because, according to the current rules,
during the war in Ukraine,
fathers of families with three and more children
could take their kids
and leave the country together with them.
I heard the news that the US
could accept refugees from Ukraine.
-Almost 8 million Ukrainians are internally displaced,
and then another 6 million left Ukraine,
so they're outside the Ukraine.
It's together almost 14 million people --
a third of the country.
Most people in Ukraine traveled to the neighboring countries
and that was very good for them
because it's not far from Ukraine.
Many people still have to return one day,
but some don't have relatives in Poland or Hungary,
so people are trying to make it to the United States.
-The family made their way to Brussels
and when they were in Brussels,
they came across a woman whose husband works for NATO.
This woman happens to be best friends
with my sister-in-law, my wife's sister.
She cobbled money together
to get them to America through Mexico.
They had already been to about eight countries.
What we did here in this home was the amazing work
of a village -- a village of our synagogue.
There's about 10 different people who stood up and said,
"I'll take one month's rent."
And then we had a whole other group of about 45 families
that said, "Let us show them our country.
Let us show them New York."
So one family took them to the Empire State Building.
One family took them to the Statue of Liberty.
All of these things because they all said,
"'Never again' means something," and we all did it together.
-I send many pictures to my husband.
Pictures and videos
and he...really loved all of them.
He's so happy about newborn child, newborn daughter.
-When I was looking at those pictures,
I would imagine holding her in my arms.
I'd imagine her size, the warmth of her body,
I was thinking about all that.
Happiness, joy, and, of course, some regret
that I'm not next to them,
that I can't support and help them physically.
I hope to see them, my main hope
is to see them and for the war to end.
I also surely hope for the victory,
for all of this to end soon.
They would come back
and we would start rebuilding our country.
Rebuild it, rearrange it, renew everything.
-For those people who cross the border from Mexico to the US,
they were given up to a year of stay.
We don't know what will happen in a year.
Will there be some program
that would allow people to stay permanently?
Will the US government decide that people should return
back to Ukraine if it's safe?
We don't know.
Unfortunately it's a challenge, but at least we are trying
to help families to ease in into this American way of life
with very limited protections in place that they have.
-We enjoy America and our being here.
But I wish it had happened under different circumstances.