Ukrainian family embraces Thanksgiving, grateful for safe passage from war

GOSHEN — Take just one suitcase per person. Bid the rest goodbye.

The start of the bloody war in Ukraine abruptly rushed the young family — mom, dad, a 2-month-old baby boy and a 2-year-old son — from home just two months after it started. They first landed in the country’s western part, then quickly in the unknowns of Indiana.

Daniela Shobei cried for months. She missed her family’s home that she’d lovingly cared for in a newer apartment building, with floor-to-ceiling windows in Donetsk, at the far eastern end of Ukraine. Her young son missed his pile of stuffed “teddies,” which the parents had collected through shopping points at a store just a five-minute walk away. He kept asking, “Where’s my giraffe?”

Most of all, Daniela missed their family, including her sister and her husband’s brother, saying, “We were best friends.”

A year ago at this time, her tears dried as the family entered their first-ever American Thanksgiving. They were caught in the new world’s embrace.

The friendly landlord of their current home — a ranch house on a rural county road surrounded by open fields, farms and passing Amish buggies — taught her to make a classic green bean casserole and turkey. Daniela also learned to craft the other traditional recipes, even the corn casserole, thanks to the people and groups that had welcomed them through the United Religious Community of St. Joseph County’s refugee program.

The family ate these new dishes and loved them. Gratitude was pouring out like gravy. It still is.

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“We are so grateful for everything,” Daniela said as the warm aroma of pie recently filled their home for Tribune visitors — a Ukrainian recipe with apples, coconut and peanuts — an example of Ukrainians’ trademark generosity toward visitors. “When we came to the U.S., we thought we’d live in a basement. … But we found people who were willing to help us for nothing. We don’t know these people. These people don’t know us.”

Fleeing their home

Daniela’s husband, Vitalii Shobei, was in the western part of Ukraine when the Russian army invaded in February 2022 and war began. His parents advised him to stay in the west for a while. They could see what was happening because they were so close to the eastern border with Russia.

In those early days, his parents had to shelter in the basement of the house where he’d grown up, in Shakhtarsk, a part of Ukraine that was claimed by Russian-backed paramilitaries in 2014. They waited. Then, finally, they heard the all-clear sign to come out. They had six hours to make it to the city’s border so they could flee. They ran, her father coping with an injured knee, as they made it to a bus headed for Odessa. They reached western Ukraine, where they lived with different families, often a couple of months at a time.

Vitalii and Daniela made the hard decision to leave — because of their kids — even as their extended family stayed put.

“When you have kids, it’s very hard to be safe,” Daniela explained.

“If you see the news,” Vitalii added about the war today, “the rockets reach a lot of the inside territory.”

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Taking just three days to pack what they’d need into suitcases, they left their apartment and possessions to Daniela’s sister.

They arrived in America in April 2022, first in California for a few days and then to Goshen, where Vitalii’s family had friends.

Now, Vitalii’s childhood home is unlivable because its roof was damaged in the fighting. That region has since been annexed into Russia.

Two of Vitalii’s cousins were forced into combat in the war. One died. The other was injured.

Church and community welcome them

The couple, both 30, originally envisioned a lack of work in America to support themselves and their sons, Lucas, who turns 2 in December, and Martin, age 3. But Vitalii, who’d worked as an electrician back home, now uses those skills as an assistant for a construction company and takes afternoon classes at Ivy Tech Community College to get certified as an electrician here.

Daniela's mom arrived here from Ukraine on Oct. 11, two years since she last saw her. Her mom, Tamara Holod, said she’s happy for freedom and for a safe place, away from the stress that’s hard on her blood pressure — though phone calls back to Ukraine can still be stressful.

Vitalii’s parents arrived Nov. 8, four years since he last saw them. And his brother will come in December with his wife and two daughters.

Daniela had earned a law diploma after five years of college in Ukraine, where she also learned English, then earned a master’s degree in business administration in Prague. She’d worked as an assistant for a judge and later drafted sales agreements for a manufacturing company. Sometime after New Year’s, she plans to start doing similar work at a large local company that’s already offered her a job. For now, she stays at home to tend to her family.

In their Donetsk home, Daniela and Vitalii had often hosted church folks for food, song and even pandemic church services because Vitalii was a youth leader. Still, as Slavic Baptists, Daniela said, they’d felt isolated as a religious minority. She recalls the oddness of being the only Slavic Baptist kid in her class, in a country where almost 80% of adults have identified as Orthodox Christians.

But here, where they attend the large Elkhart Slavic Baptist Church, they feel they’re part of a larger and supportive religious community where they take part in Bible study.

Daniela’s mom is already teaching Ukrainian to U.S.-born Ukrainian kids, then attending English classes for herself, both at the church. It’s a blessing to go to church here regularly, her mom said, a luxury that the dangers of war don’t always allow back home.

Here ‘for some time’

A couple of weeks ago, the family received temporary protected status that will allow them to remain in the U.S. until April 2025. Technically and in the terminology of the federal government, Ukrainians who fled the war aren’t “refugees”; they are “humanitarian parolees.” By itself, the status allows them to stay, and it can be renewed. But, as with temporary protected status, it doesn’t provide an avenue towards becoming a legal permanent resident or towards citizenship.

Today, going back isn’t an option. The future for them is hard to imagine, just as it is for Ukraine.

All Daniela had originally expected of the U.S. was from what she’d seen in American movies. She soon found they weren’t realistic.

“The people are very open, very kind,” she said gratefully.

The Slavic Baptist Church in Ukraine celebrates its own day of thanksgiving in late October, typically marked by family gatherings.

And families decorate Christmas trees when that season arrives. They look for their generous version of Santa Claus, known as Ded Moroz, or Grandfather Frost, who’s generally taller and thinner, sometimes clad in blue and white, with his granddaughter as his sidekick.

When the New Year’s holiday started 2023, Daniela finally said to herself about Goshen, “I feel good. I can stay for some time.”

South Bend Tribune reporter Joseph Dits can be reached at 574-235-6158 or jdits@sbtinfo.com.

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Ukrainian refugee family grateful for Goshen home at Thanksgiving