As we were standing in the freezing cold among the tens of thousands of refugees that filled the halls of the central railway station at Lviv (as kids, we heard similar stories from our grandparents, who called the Ukrainian city "Lvov"), commotion was all over.
We were afraid. Afraid to lose the moment, and each other. , so we kept documenting what we were witnessing, invoking memories of the past – the past of the Jewish people.
In the ice-cold central Lviv railroad station, mingling with the tens of thousands of refugees trying to escape the horrors of Putin’s war, we were afraid that in the commotion we would miss even one of the scenes of human despair and human hope surrounding us.
To remove a glove and scribble a note, or for Ziv to press his camera button, meant a loss of feeling in our fingers, at 8 degrees Celsius (17.6 degrees Fahrenheit) Ziv managed to write, on his hand: "Kharkiv -- 100 kids" and a Ukrainian word that turned out to mean "Green Forest.”
The children were orphans and Green Forest was the name of their orphanage in the war-torn city that was under Russian bombardment.
Fate had been cruel to these children, some of them newborn infants, and the war had come as yet another threat to their tenuous existence. One little boy had lost consciousness during the tumultuous journey, his eyes were half-open, his face expressionless.
The woman carrying his limp body in her arms was screaming for a doctor. The memory of this image remained with me.
Then, each time we spoke with other refugees, I tried to hide the tears in my eyes from Ziv and our interpreter Oleg.
I have witnessed many disasters, but this time, it was different. Perhaps because I was seeing it all through the eyes of my wife Yana. She was born in Ukraine and had left it all behind, all the memories and the friends.
We were on a video call, and she suddenly recognized the central railway station from where she had traveled many times to visit her grandmother. She told me she remembered every platform and every corridor. The magnificent marble-paved entrance, the tall ceiling looming over it.
And somehow, I began to see among the crowds of refugees what looked like familiar faces from the streets in Israel everywhere. I could swear that I was seeing my grandmother's face on one of the elderly women.
There were tears in my eyes of empathy and identification with the plight of these innocent folks. But those tears that well up in me are mostly tears of anger and frustration over the way that the State of Israel is standing aside, doing far too little to help, even less than others.
Our help wouldn't change the situation perceptibly, and we could have done nothing to prevent this murderous war.
Nevertheless, I wonder how could it be that Israelis whose grandparents fled the Nazis through these same Ukrainian forests have not done more to help these orphans from the "Green Forest" orphanage in Kharkiv, and the millions of Ukrainians lives threatened by the devastating Russian invasion.
This is the first mass migration in which floods of refugees are taking their household pets along with them in their flight. Only people who own a cat can imagine how hard it is to keep a cat in a cage and travel thousands of miles with it, taking care of its needs without it trying to escape, or go completely wild. But the cats accompanying the fleeing Ukrainians, it seems, are quiet.
"But people and cats need to eat," said one of Lviv's chief volunteer center managers, and his organization helps take care of this, among the multiple items it distributes..
Lviv is the main point of departure for refugees heading for Poland and beyond.
Most of the close to three million who have already left went through Lviv and its railway station. But Lviv is also the main gateway for the delivery of military and civilian aid.
It is a large and well organized and equipped, far away from the ongoing ground battles, although a large military training center was hit by a barrage of Russian cruise missiles earlier this week.
One reason that has made the Russians think twice before attacking Lviv is the fact that many foreign diplomatic missions and media crews have been based here since the invasion.
It is also close to the border with Poland, a NATO member and a country that has helped Ukraine more than any other, by taking in refugees and serving as the conduit for aid shipments into Ukraine.
"The Humanitarian Aid Center was established on the move," said a local official working for the U.S. embassy in Kyiv who volunteered to join the aid center.
Its some 100 employees work from a large building in the center of Lviv, dispatching the aid shipments along the various supply lines in the country – clothing, food, medicines, toys personal protective equipment, and even large amounts of pet food.
There is a huge international effort.
"We weren't just surprised by the amount of aid, we were overwhelmed," said Andrew Solim, head of the Lviv district local administration. "We were sure that Poland and the rest of the European Union would simply close their borders, but the exact opposite has happened."
Outside the central railway station stood , a long row of giant cooking pots full with hot tea and fruit soup.
The elderly woman, who earlier in a moment of fatigue and sadness I had confused with my grandmother, takes a sip from the compote.”
A little too spicy," she says, exactly what my grandmother would say