War Stories: Venetsia Ogly from Kharkiv

This is the story of a Roma woman Venetsia from Kharkiv. Her story about how she, along with her husband and four small children, had to leave a dangerous city...:

Ogly Venetsia Sergiivna, twenty-four years old, lives in the city of Kharkiv with her husband, whose name is Chervonia. They are raising four small children: three sons – the eldest Alan (six years old), the middle Achilles (four years old) and the youngest David (two years old) and one daughter Emilia, who is three years old. 

Before the war, the Ogly couple officially worked – Venetsia worked at a factory of semi-finished products, and her husband was a private entrepreneur. Currently, Venetsia and her family are abroad in Germany, in the city of Munich.

This is what Venetsia says about the beginning of the war:

“On February 24, at five in the morning, I opened my eyes to the fact that there was some kind of chaos, noise, and commotion at home. I look out the window, and from the third floor I can clearly see how a lot of thick smoke is moving around the city, I can hear explosions, I can see how everything is burning and burning. The children all woke up, started crying, everyone started hysterics, we immediately went down to the basement. And so we understood that a real war had begun.

We are in Germany thanks to my aunt Aurica, who helped us leave Kharkiv. We spent every day in the cellars, we managed to stock up on food, but it was not enough for long. Products were running out, in local stores as well. People from the city already started looting, stealing and looking for food, it was already very dangerous in the city, even just leaving the house was dangerous. Russian tanks were driving everywhere, you could even see it from the home intercom. We were very scared, I was especially scared for the children, because we didn’t even know what to expect. At first, my aunt tried very hard for us with money, and then she spread information on all social networks that we could not leave. This is how someone responded. People who were also leaving our city, seeing these posts about us, took us away. They had a small bus, they drove right to our house and picked us up. That's how we managed to leave together. We came to Odesa, to Aurika, “came to ourselves a little” after that horror, and from there she sent us to Germany.

But all those fifteen days that we were there – it was a real hell. We saw with our own eyes how the fighters flew directly over the house. We heard this terrible hum, which seemed to be approaching us, this sound was getting louder and louder every minute. And you realize that something exploded somewhere very close, and immediately all the windows on the first floor of the house were broken. In the afternoon, for an hour or two, it was almost quiet, and we were able to go out into the yard and bathe the children at home, collect food, all supplies, warm blankets and pillows, and ran back to the basement. That's how it got worse and worse every day. We almost lived in the basement. Even from there, we could clearly hear this terrible sound from the “hail”, as it flew.

Now we have more or less settled in a new place. The children went to kindergarten. Volunteers are very successful with housing and help to find a job. Volunteers also helped us issue state payments. I can’t say that I feel comfortable here, because the most comfortable place is always at home, but I feel safe here, and for me, as a mother of four children, this is very important. Children are also getting used to their new life, at first they cried a lot and begged to go home, but after kindergarten they started to get used to it. It has already warmed up here, so we started to go outside more often. The local residents saw that we were from Ukraine, understood everything and gave the children gifts at almost every step, which made the children very happy. We went to the store to buy products, turned on translators and explained to people, and they took us by the hand and took us to the cash register, told us to choose everything we needed and they themselves would pay for everything. Help for Ukrainians is everywhere, and not only from volunteers. There are very kind and understanding people here”. 

When I asked how Venetsia explained the situation to her young children, who clearly heard all the explosions, she began to tell me with tears in her eyes:

“We decided to play the game “Warrior” with the children, they understood that this is such a game and we need to hide” (crying). Every time we ran to the basement, I didn't know if we would get out or not. I saved food to feed them. And all this was repeated day after day, for fifteen days we lived in the cellar. We could not leave on our own, because we had to go to the station, and our station was across the city. We will have to walk with the children through the whole city and it was very risky, we did not know if we would survive, we could not even predict what would happen to us. People spent the night at the station so as not to miss something that could be used to leave, there were no tickets, even taking the train was scary. You know, I’m telling you all this now and I feel sick (cries again, cries and apologizes for his emotions).

These emotions that were then, memories, these terrible explosions that sounded every second nearby. This is all the horror that we experienced. This damn war only made our family stronger. In times of need, we have learned to support each other, appreciate and respect each other even more simply because we have each other.

I really want it all to end as soon as possible. But, unfortunately, we understand that this is for a long time, so we pull ourselves together and start working here, in a new place, and adjust our lives for the sake of our children. I don’t even know if we will return home, except when our victory is final and we can live a calm and safe life at home. Finally, I want our army to have no casualties and for brave and courageous guys to take care of themselves. I wish them a lot of patience. Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the heroes!” 

Author: Zina Prokopenko, EqualNet network

Translation: Anastasiia Tambovtseva, EqualNet network