Israel’s Foreign Minister and Alternate Prime Minister Yair Lapid visited The Jewish Agency for Israel’s Aliyah (immigration to Israel) processing center in Bucharest, Romania today and met with Jewish Ukrainian refugees set to make Aliyah this evening, March 13, as part of an expedited Aliyah process recently approved by the Israeli government.

At The Jewish Agency’s center, Lapid received a briefing from The Jewish Agency’s Chief Operating Officer Yehuda Setton. Setton summarized the organization’s efforts in deploying staff and volunteers in Romania and other countries along the Ukrainian border in order to help thousands of Jewish Ukrainian refugees receive assistance and make Aliyah. As such, the Foreign Minister also heard from olim (immigrants) set to move to Israel who shared their touching personal stories of fleeing Ukraine.

The Aliyah center in Bucharest is one of many facilities established by The Jewish Agency and the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ) immediately after the war broke out in Ukraine last month. The centers provide humanitarian aid and assist the influx of Jewish Ukrainian refugees escaping the country and hoping to immigrate to Israel.

In Bucharest alone, there are four Jewish Agency Aliyah processing centers that currently house some 1,000 Jewish refugees who fled Ukraine, in addition to other centers in Poland, Moldova and Hungary, where The Jewish Agency and IFCJ have taken in a total of 6,000 Ukrainian Jewish refugees.