A Ukrainian mum experienced a "miracle" after arriving in Liverpool.
Elena Malenko spent her 37th birthday in Liverpool Women's Hospital with newborn twins, Marta and Maya. She was alone when they were born. Her husband Grygorii, a Kyiv city councillor, is still in Ukraine, which Elena fled with their sons Platon, seven, and Lev, five, when the routine of running to bomb shelters became too much to bear last June.
The former diplomat and language teacher told the ECHO: "These newborn twins are an absolute miracle that happened to us. Before I crossed the border, fleeing war in Ukraine, was my passionate goodbye to Grygorii, and then when I arrived, I found out I was pregnant. It was the only value I could take with me from Ukraine."
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While many Ukrainian refugees in the UK have been housed with strangers, Elena had family in Liverpool, lost for a century until a DNA test three years ago. Her Scouse family descends from two brothers, the sons of a rabbi, who left Ukraine for a new life in England 100 years ago.
Here those two dentists, their kids and their grandkids maintained their Jewish culture, something lost to Elena's family through the antisemitic violence of pogroms in the Russian Empire, Nazi murders of Jewish people during World War II, and the suppression of religion in the Soviet Union.
Elena has had the chance to reconnect with this culture while in Liverpool, home to what was once the UK's largest Jewish community outside London. While living with relatives in Mossley Hill when she first arrived, Elena joined their Friday night dinners and found Jewish food far more familiar than she'd imagined.
The distinctive red borscht, a chicken soup called 'Jewish penicillin', stuffed cabbage called huluptzes, and dumplings known as kneydl are all dishes Elena grew up with. They're foods popular with Ashkenazi Jews around the world, and in the Eastern European countries they came from.
It's the type of food Elena's nan cooked, and it makes her feel at home. She's also taken to visiting The Deli, Liverpool's last kosher shop, for freshly baked challah, a braided bread eaten on shabbat and Jewish holidays, with the exception of Passover celebrated last week.
She said: "I've realised that all the Jewish holidays are about the value of the family, the value of the community, and this is actually what I managed to take with me fleeing war from Ukraine. Here I have doubled my family and made new relationships with my long lost family."
Elena's mum joined them in Liverpool soon before she gave birth to the twins in February, offering much needed support raising what's now a family of four kids. Elena remembers the moment she brought Marta and Maya home to meet Platon and Lev.
She said: "They were sad because they wanted to have brothers, they wanted to have a football team. They said, 'No, it's not going to work, we need more babies, we need brothers'. But when the day came and I brought the girls from the hospital, the minute they saw each other and the boys held the girls, it was such a moment of tenderness and love. It was so cute."
The boys are settling into school, studying English and Spanish, as well as making friends and building their confidence. Elena plans to launch a UK version of a media monitoring app she and Grygorii developed in Ukraine, when she's got energy to spare once more.
Grygorii got to meet his new kids during a visit as part of a Ukrainian delegation to the UK earlier this year. Elena said: "We cried and laughed and hugged a lot. It was absolutely fantastic. Despite all the distance and despite all the challenges, we are on the right track.
"The value of the family is the greatest thing we have between us. We do really love each other. We are very happy to be the lucky parents of these four children. These newborn twins are an absolute miracle."
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