Ilana + Briana

Ilana Pavlotsky (center, standing), with Daniel Pavlotsky (left), and Briana Tautiva

FOR ILLANA PAVLOTSKY AND BRIANA TAUTIVA, THIS WAR IN UKRAINE IS A PERSONAL NIGHTMARE. BEING A BYSTANDER IS NOT AN OPTION. DOING SOMETHING ABOUT IT IS IN THEIR BLOOD AND THEIR FAMILY HISTORY.

Our conversation starts here:

I want to get right into talking about what you’re doing for the Ukraine, but let’s talk about your ties, your history.

Illana: My mom grew up in a village right outside of Kyiv. We call it a little Anatevka, if you could imagine. After she was born, she and my grandmother moved to the city of Kyiv, where my grandfather was from on my mom’s side. My mom lived in Kyiv until she was 27. She studied and became a nurse at 18 years old.

A bit more backstory, they immigrated in 1988. They were supposed to leave in 1979. It was a long process—you had to renounce your citizenship as a Soviet. You had to become ex communist, you basically had to leave all your ties and you were “crossed out” from their society in order to be able to provide documentation to even leave the country, leave the Soviet Union. You have to leave your job, leave university. That all takes time. And in that time, the border shut down.

From 1978 to 1989 the border shut and they got stuck there. Right after my mom got out of high school, my grandmother—who was already a nurse, very well respected in Kyiv—she told my mom, “You have to go back to university. You have to get your degree and get to go work. We can’t go anywhere.” And at that point they were already considered ex communists, so it was very—I don’t even know what word to use. My mom keeps saying it was “very embarrassing” to have to go back. People didn’t want to accept her because in addition to being Jewish, which was like having an “X” on her, she’s now an ex-Communist as well.

But she did it, she went to school. She was a nurse when Chernobyl happened. She would tell you the story much better than I. She saw the scariest things. And we’ve spoken a bit about the propaganda behind Chernobyl. My mother found out about [the nuclear plant] from her family members who were being sponsored in America, in New Jersey at the time. They called Mom and asked if everything was okay. My mom was like “What are you guys talking about? It’s American propaganda! There’s nothing going on, everything is fine.” Meanwhile, she’s treating these firefighters not knowing why they were coming to the hospital covered in burns.

That’s her experience. I mean, there’s tons of stories that I could tell you. But they immigrated from Kyiv and the immigration process was a very long process. They had to travel through Austria and, theoretically, you had to leave the Soviet Union and tell them that you’re “going to Israel.” That was the only way out, to say that. And once you left the border, then you have no documentation, you’re a free person. At that point once you hit Austria on the train, you’re either really going to Israel or you now have “changed your mind” and you’re going to America. Through that process from Austria was a huge immigration if you look at the history of the ex-Soviet immigration process, it was from Austria to Italy. And in Italy there were large communities of Soviet refugees that would stay there for 6 to 9 months. My mom was there for about 8 months and was supported by organizations like Combined Jewish Philanthropies (CJP) while they were waiting for the documents to come to the States. And of course you had to be sponsored, have some sort of family relationship here. So she came with her mother, her father, and her little sister when she was 27. They came to Boston. And that’s where she met my father, who had come here when he was 21.

He grew up in a small village right outside of Odessa. Where he is from often makes me question my identity [laughing] because I’m Ukrainian/Romanian, Ukrainian/Moldovian. Listen, depending on the year you’re looking at a map, that’s where I’m from! [laughing] My grandfather was born in the same hospital my father was born in. When my grandfather was born, it was Romania. When my father was born, it was Moldavia. It is now Ukraine, so what am I?! The point is, borders move around all the time but we’re all brothers and sisters. He immigrated when he was 21 in 1979 again through Austria to Italy. Same whole process 10 years later,
same thing.

There was a large, black market in Italy which is where everybody had to sell whatever goods they had. There is a joke in our family that the only word in Italian my dad knows is “condom.” What are you bringing with you to trade on the black market? Caviar, of course, Russian vodka, and condoms. That was the thing! He tells me stories about hiding in dumpsters from the police in Italy. It’s insane the things that they went through to survive. He came to Providence, Rhode Island in 1979 and then to Boston where he met my mom.

1991 Ukraine became independent. When was the last time that you visited Ukraine before the war?

Before this war? We were actually back there in 2019, that was my third time being there. I have older brothers, Daniel and Eddie. We surprised our parents in Ukraine. The 2 of them were there on a trip while I was in Israel—I was on a birth right trip as a staff leader—but my brothers from Boston and me from Israel met and surprised my father in Odessa. This was his city, the city that he grew up in. It’s where my grandmother was from. My grandmother’s brother was the head engineer for the port of Odessa. Odessa is on the Black Sea. He constructed that port, so Odessa is our home. It’s everything that we know. So, we surprised in him 2019. But I was also there in 2014 when Crimea broke out. I was on one of the last flights in February when everything started there.

That was my first kind of go-around. It helped a lot with what we did this time because I had the experience of getting shipments to Ukraine and what the process was. So I was a sophomore in high school then, and came home and said, “We have to do something, the stores are empty, there’s nothing.” I was in Dnepropetrovsk which is a pretty well-to-do city. They didn’t get hurt at all, they’re still doing fine in this war as well. But supermarkets were just completely empty, there was nothing to eat. So when I got back, I sent 16 boxes of aid and raised the funds to ship it and that was my mini drive.

Your mother left as a Jewish woman and ex-Soviet in 1989. It’s a very different Ukraine now. What were their reactions when they visited in 2019.

A lot of people refer to it as “The Ukraine” because that’s what it was when it was part of the Soviet Union. Now it’s Ukraine. It’s a country, not associated with them any longer. The first time we went back I think my parents were actually more shocked then we were. What they had remembered—their apartment, their schools—were different in their minds. When they went back, they saw that the little shed they lived in and the rundown school was the same one they went to, nothing had changed. They saw [as adults] what they grew up in. I mean, the Soviet Union is not the Soviet Union anymore, but nothing has changed.

Does Ukraine recognize dual citizenship?

Yeah. I mean, it’s tough because in Russian if you say “Ukrainian,” that word signifies Russian Orthodox religion. So it’s very weird for me when I say I’m Ukrainian, I am a Ukrainian Jew. Growing up, my parents passports said their nationality was Jewish. Ukrainians were Orthodox. So it’s hard for them to want to have the citizenship of Ukraine when, as Jews, they were not treated well. It’s still their home country and they’re going to fight for it but it’s kind of a sticky situation.

So here you are, getting phone calls from Ukraine, from your friends and they told you they’re not sure what’s going on?

A couple of weeks before the war started, we were talking about it all the time. Like, “something is brewing” but we all kept saying “there can’t be a war. There couldn’t be a war.” But the tanks were lining up. So we would call our friends to find out what’s going on, and they were all like, “Everything’s fine! You guys are just making this up.”

B: Yeah, they said it’s all “over-played in the media,” and “don’t listen to the media,” “We’re not buying it, we’re okay.”

I: When the bombing started… it’s all a blur for me.

B: It was the first few days I remember watching both you and Daniel glued to your phones.

I: My brother and I were just zombies the first couple of days.

I can’t even imagine. Were you having flashbacks of 2014?

I: I am not having flashbacks, I am seeing my biggest fear in life. Everything that my grandparents survived and my parents survived—it’s too much. I can’t even sleep at night if I watch “Schindler’s List.” I can’t because I would always have a fear that this is going to happen again. It’s been a fear my whole life. And I’m watching this happening in front of me

B: I remember watching both of you glued to your phones every single second, looking at updates. The first week was helplessness. It was “Can we do anything?” We’re watching it happen before our eyes. We’re watching history repeat itself. There was a march in that first week and [that event] was the first time we felt like we were doing something. Roza came as well. We all walked miles, but afterward, we sat there like, “OK, that was something, but it wasn’t enough. It’s not enough just to speak up or march. It didn’t bring about any actual change.”

So, we decided to do what Ilana did back in 2014. Ilana started reaching out to DHL to figure out how we can navigate a shipment. Daniel started posting a GoFundMe with an initial goal of $2,500. We started small and kind of taking on what we could. It blew up much faster than we anticipated. We woke up the next morning with $10,000 in that GoFundMe. Within, I would say, 24 hours, we were on Channel 5 News and people were coming by every 20 minutes. People would pull up [to Roza’s house] in cars and unload their cars with stuff. I think I started bawling just in disbelief that people cared this much and wanted to help. We thought, if people are going to help us, then we’re going to continue to do everything that we can. And that’s how it all started. My business mind started going and we became a nonprofit; we started getting organized.

You turned a small ask into a huge act of humanitarianism. The way I look at it is like this: the younger me organized the marches and demanded change. Once I got a bit older, I started to get more organized and called for change in policies, laws, and learning the way the world really works. Now I’m even older and now maybe my brand of activism becomes more philanthropic and, well, “here’s
my donation.”

I: Also very helpful! I mean, everybody plays a role. You’re absolutely right. For example, when Briana and I started posting [on social media] we also saw the people in our community trying to do the same thing and the reason I’m saying trying is because I would see the way that they’re approaching it, and I’m like “This is great but do you have a process? How will you ship this? Do you have a contact [in Ukraine]? Do you have the funds to ship this because that one box is gonna cost you $400.”

B: “Do you know how you’re going to get through customs?” So, a lot of people trying to do little projects and it’s amazing, everybody wanted to help, but again, we didn’t accept a single donation until we had DHL lined up. We didn’t launch a GoFundMe until we knew exactly how the stuff was going to get there.

I: And that was where our experience came from— my shipment in 2014. I knew that this is something you just can’t go to FedEx and drop it off and it gets shipped. This is a long process. We reached out to DHL, for example, and it is phenomenal. They have been extremely supportive! We have an account rep who has me on speed dial. We’re talking back-and-forth all the time.

What are you feeling? Are you overwhelmed?

B: We were overwhelmed with the amount of supplies but that’s a good problem to have. I think my emotion, why I was crying, was just thinking [about our families]. Ilana’s family escaped persecution, my great grandmother also escaped the Russian Cossacks and Jewish persecution. So, looking back to so many times people did nothing, just sat there and they didn’t act. They were bystanders. Compared to now seeing regular people—not governments, not organizations, but just regular everyday people—come and drop off the clothes and want to help as much as they can.

People are calling us and reaching out over social media asking “Can I come help you pack? Can I come help you load boxes? What can I do?” I get messages every single day from people who just want to help and want to make a difference. This is what motivates us. You don’t have to be an organization or a multimillionaire to make an impact. You can just be an everyday person who wants to make a difference.

It’s a relief to hear that there was this outpouring of support. So, how much to today, the beginning of April, have you raised?

B: We are close to $65,000. We were on the news every day at the beginning, so we captured as much as we could at the beginning. Now we’re filing for 501(c)(3) status and we will then be able to go to businesses for support and that will help.

I know you’ve been asked, “How can people know that you’re legit?”

I: We honestly in a way, we appreciate it. And that’s what I want to say to you, that this organization is people, it’s not businesses. It’s people. We have people on our side and people on that side. It is not an organization. It is the person at the border, the person seeing the refugees come in, the person in Poland, a person in Romania.

One connection we have, in a long loop, somebody that I met on my birthright trip who does a lot of YouTube work on a channel called “Yes Theory,” they have a big following. I saw on a recent post that he was on a flight to Poland, so I messaged him, asked, “Do you need help?” and told him we’re looking to ship things over and do you have a place. He said, “Absolutely, here’s my contact, lets start working.” With that “Yes Theory” connection, they created a sub group called Team Ukraine Love. They’re based out of Warsaw. It is all volunteers just like us. They have used their social media following and have raised $650,000. They’re doing the same work as us, so we’re supporting them through different avenues. We’ve sent them direct packages and they have also bought things on the ground here in the US—things that haven’t been donated to them like tourniquets, chest seals, field stretchers. They utilize our DHL account to be able to ship things. So our turnaround rate is typically, send out on Tuesday, by Friday it’s on the ground in Poland or Romania. Shipping by sea is cheaper, absolutely, but that’s going to take six weeks. I hope in six weeks this war is done. So that’s not a fast enough turn around.

B: Especially now that we’re delivering chest seal wound kits and high-grade medical supplies. We’re going away from general donations. We’re now pivoting towards what’s needed right now and what they can’t get there. And it’s life saving stuff, so the faster we get it there, the faster we know it can be driven into Ukraine.

Where are you getting supplies?

I: Team Ukraine Love is sourcing it. They have our address as a contact for these shipments and donations. We put our labels on it with DHL, and it gets shipped through us. So we not only will be raising money and sending our own supplies, we’re also acting as liaisons.

I’ll give another example. Team Ukraine Love shared our post on social media and Briana called me and said, “We just connected with a girl on Instagram, and says she’s at the border in Poland and she desperately needs help from ‘Yes Theory.’” At that point “Yes Theory” had posted that they had procured 100 generators from Berlin and someone on the team brought those generators to Poland. This girl’s name is Lilia, and she is a volunteer at the Medyka, Poland border. This is one of the most popular borders from Poland and Lviv—you’ve heard Lviv is one of the cities that a lot of people are going to, people are walking or driving and it’s 20 miles between Poland and that side of Ukraine. There’s nothing. It’s literally just farmland there. They need everything.

B: This was a random girl who reached out on Instagram. I’m like, “Is she real? I don’t know her. I didn’t know anything about her. Her Instagram is private.” Well, we wound up on FaceTime that day and she’s literally on the verge of tears. She’s an everyday person, volunteering at the border at Medyka and she said “I’m watching kids die of hypothermia because they’re freezing. I can’t watch this, I’m desperate. I’m calling everyone for help. Can you help us?” Long story short, she connected with some of our medical teams from Boston that happened to be at the same border (Medyka) whom we sent supplies. We wanted to make sure she’s real, she took a selfie with them and showed us she’s with the people that we know—they happened to be there that day, which was just serendipitous for us.

I: A medical team of people that we know in Boston were at the same border in Poland and by chance posted a picture on Facebook. I said, “You’re in Medyka?” And she said,“I’m where?” I said, “That location, I see it on Facebook. You’re in Medyka.” She said, “ Yeah, I’m here there’s only one medical tent. They really need help here, it’s really bad.” I said to Bri, this is a legit place.

B: We now talk to her several times a week. She connected with the “Yes Theory” team, they brought her truckloads of supplies. She had a pass—you need a pass, a card to get in and out of Ukraine easily—so she was helping the “Yes Theory” team get in and out of Ukraine. They send selfies of them going under cover of night to bring supplies in, and we see our boxes being unloaded in the truck.

She texted and said, “One day I’m going to meet you and give you such a big hug.” I can’t… everyday people. We’re seeing people care and want to make a difference. We’re seeing her photos of our stuff get there. It’s just… We did that. We did something. We made a difference.

If this doesn’t tell you how small the world is now.

I: I’ve said since the beginning that social media was missing in World War II. That’s just one story. There is another girl that reached out to us on Instagram from South Boston. She’s Romanian. She’s an accountant and she messaged us. She said that she’s leaving for Romania and wanted to know if we have any connections to people where she can go volunteer. She had already had a connection to a monastery in Siret, Romania …  They are housing pregnant women and women with young children …  She came to our home and I stocked her up with 2 suitcases filled with new clothes for kids, babies, diapers, wipes, pads, tampons, baby formula, a bunch of things.

I talk to her about every other day. She calls me to translate. She speaks Romanian and I speak Russian. So what happens is she puts me on the phone, I speak to the refugee, I translate to English, she translates from English to Romanian. At the monastery, sister Andreana is a nurse there, I don’t even know her, but I know her name and I know that she doesn’t speak Russian.

So there’s been a couple times where they call me and a mom is telling me, in Russian, that her child is having stomach issues and I, from my medical background, know Russian medicine so sometimes I’m triaging them and explaining to them what they need to give the child.

For example, yesterday was a really hard situation. She (Emma) calls me and it was 4:30 p.m. our time which is probably 10:30 p.m. their time. She said that she got called to the train station for an elderly lady who was claiming that she wants to go back to Kyiv where she’s from. When Emma got there, she called me and I was talking to the grandmother. She told me, “Call me “babushka,” which is in Russian ‘grandma.’ I’m trying to explain to her that they were going to give her a place to stay for the night, and then they can help her in the morning.

Emma takes the phone and she starts texting me that a strange man just approached her, and is claiming that he’s going to help her (the babushka) and has a train ticket for her, but he needs her passport and Emma freaked out. She’s on the phone with me and I said put me back on the phone with the grandmother. I’ll talk to her; I already have a rapport with her she’ll listen to me.

Long story short, the grandmother went with Emma, she didn’t end up going with that guy. Emma kept me on the phone until they got back to the monastery because she said the guy started following her. I FaceTimed with the grandmother when they were back in the monastery and she was very confused. She was probably cold and hadn’t slept for a while. She said she had been in Romania for 40 days and she just wanted to go back to Kyiv. She said she was ready to die and just wanted to be buried with her husband. She said, “I’m done. I’m ready to go back.”

I convinced her to just sleep on it and that we would talk in the morning. In the morning, I woke up to a text from Emma saying that the grandmother decided that she was going to stay there and that she felt safe there.

This is what your day is like?

I: Briana is a full-time student; I’m a full-time nurse. Daniel is working full-time as well. We’re juggling this between all of that, yeah.

B: We definitely get overwhelmed. A couple of weeks ago the three of us said we need a break. We’re taking a Sunday off from shipping and boxing. We do get overwhelmed, but I don’t think of it—and I think Ilana would probably agree with me—I feel like it’s just what you’re supposed to do.

I think it would be harder to sit by and watch this happen and not do anything. I think it would be harder to sit by and watch it and be like how can the world just sit there and not do something? For me, whatever little pressure we have on us every day I find it insignificant relative to the things that they’re facing every day. They had to flee their home. They don’t know if they get to ever go home. We’re doing a few phone calls and dealing with shipping logistics and trying to run an organization. It’s nothing compared to what they’re dealing with, and so I think for me, it’s just the bare minimum that we as human beings should be doing to help other human beings in need. And I would hope, I would pray that, God forbid if I were ever in their shoes, that someone would repay that.

I: I think that she captured it all. Yes, this is the land that I come from, but at the end of the day, we’re humans. We as people owe it to innocent lives to help them in their time of need and I’ll repeat that for the rest of my life.

That right there is a really hard thing to teach, and I do think teaching by example is probably the only way.

I: I will say, a lot of what I carry is for when I have children, for them to know my story and our history, where they came from. I think that’s a big thing that’s missing in our society. There is so much rich history in the grandparents that established these areas, and I would say 99% of them were immigrants that came to this country with nothing and established the huge businesses that exist in these communities. But their grandchildren oftentimes don’t know their history.

I know struggles that my parents went through and my grandparents went through and what they survived. I’m obligated to make up for 2 generations worth of life. It is my duty to make up for everything that they sacrificed so that I’m not in Ukraine right now. So that I’m not living in an ex-Soviet society. So I’m not suffering with antisemitism. So that I can wear my name in Hebrew into a corporate event and not worry that someone’s going to target me. Because I couldn’t do that if I lived there.

B: I think what we’re doing is the bare minimum to lay our head down at night and not feel helpless.

Marci: You said something interesting about being a bystander. During high school I did the Walk of the Living. There is a walkway that goes from Birkenau to Auschwitz. When you were done in the labor camps and couldn’t work anymore, your last bit of energy in life was used to walk you to Auschwitz. There was an apartment building on the side of the road that had been there since before World War II and where people lived throughout the war …  people who lived in that apartment building [were] watching, they saw the smoke come out of the stacks, but never did anything.

I: It’s something that I can’t even explain, but it’s the same fear probably—and I’m not giving them any excuses—but that fear that a lot of civilians have in Russia right now. That “If I speak out, it’s me that’s going to have a bullet in my head.” That’s an awful, awful thing to have to live with. We watched it the first couple weeks. They put children into jail in Russia for speaking out and protesting. We have that freedom here in America to say whatever you want and know that you’re safe to say it.

B: What this has shown me is as much as there are people coming and dropping off supplies and helping, there are groups of people that don’t care if it doesn’t affect them. I have 10,000 followers on Instagram and I ask people to share what I posted, and I would say maybe 50 do. People look at my Instagram and look at my stories and don’t react, don’t engage, and don’t even so much as just hit the share button. That takes no effort, it takes no effort to do so little. There are people who stand by every day when injustice happens. Kids being bullied, women assaulted, it happens now in this war. But we have to focus on the positive, on the people who do, and work extra hard.

I: But at the end of the day, it’s people that are doing this work. It is people doing this. It’s the power of people and it’s insane to watch.