When war broke out in Ukraine, Rabbi Shlomo Wilhelm, the shliach in Zhitomir, Ukraine, urged me to prepare at least 200 hotel beds for incoming refugees.
“Of course! Be’ezras Hashem, it will be done,” I answered.
“No!” he told me. “I mean tomorrow!”
I immediately started looking for places. I called an Israeli businessman in Cluj and asked him to help me find a hotel that could house 200 refugees. He suggested a very fancy, expensive hotel downtown.
“They’re not going to be able to afford it!” I argued. “Isn’t there anything else?”
“No, Rabbi,” he said. “This is the only hotel big enough for that many people.”
Left without much of a choice, I booked the hotel and hoped for the best. We were expecting 200 refugees, but over the next few days, Cluj was inundated with over 600 Ukrainians fleeing for their lives. Rabbi Wilhelm brought all the orphans and staff from his evacuated orphanage in Zhitomir, and Rabbi Axelrod led another group of refugees from Cherkassy.
My Israeli contact connected me with the owner of a bus company. I called him so often, we became good friends! Buses were extremely hard to come by, but when I called him at 2 in the morning and asked for a bus to meet a group of refugees at the border, there he was. A few hours later, his bus was saving another group at another part of the border.
Buses pulled up one after the other from the Ukrainian border, discharging group after group of frightened, homeless refugees. The hotel was a bracha! We kashered the kitchen, hired a chef, and gave the refugees some respite and relaxation from their dangerous flight.
