18 Kids From a Kharkhiv Circus School Fled to a Budapest Nursing Home

• More than a dozen children from Kharkiv, Ukraine fled without their parents when Russia dropped bombs.
• The kids, students in a circus school, traveled three days to Budapest.
• Now a local woman looks after them while they live in three donated units at a nursing home.

BUDAPEST, Hungary — On the fifth floor of a nursing home in Budapest, 18 residents decades younger than the average live together in three units.

The children, who range in age from 7 to 16, were students at a circus school in Kharkiv, Ukraine, which has since been turned to rubble in the war.

On March 5, when little was left in the city, they had to flee their homes together. The trip to Hungary was three days long, and only two mothers and a teacher accompanied them on the journey.

“When they realized they have to run, teachers started to call around to see how they could get the children out,” Irena Aizelman, a Budapest woman looking after the group, told Insider. “A lot of them came without parents. Some don’t have them. Some can’t leave the country because they work in the government —they’re doctors or in the fire department.”

In Hungary, there’s been no assistance from the government during the refugee crisis. The country is historically anti-migrant, but the government made an exception for Ukrainians fleeing the war.

When they arrived in Budapest with nowhere to go, and nobody to look after them, Aizelman, a volunteer, stepped in.

She enrolled them in a local circus academy so they could immediately resume their studies. She also sees to it that they are getting medical and dental treatment.

Now she’s trying to find a child psychologist who can help assess their trauma.

“They’re wonderful. They’re all in good spirits,” Aizelman said, as the teens laughed and joked, and and did handstands in the tiny room. “Right now it’s like a trip and we’re trying to make it is fun as possible.”

—Haven Orecchio (@InsiderHaven) March 16, 2022

Soon, though, the reality of the situation will set in, she said.

 

AP Photo/Pavel Dorogoy

They carry hope to go home, but it’s unlikely

Kira, 16, sat on the floor of one of the nursing home units Wednesday. Unprovoked, she began to tell her story.

When she was five years old, she said, her father died. A year later, her mother died and she became an orphan.

Her best friend’s mom became her guardian, and that’s who she’s lived with until last week, she said.

“There were bombing airplanes flying above our building,” Kira told Insider of the day she fled. “There was no cellar, so we went down to the first floor.”

She and her best friend didn’t know where to go. They were scared, she said, and then a bomb dropped nearby.

“The windows started to shake but didn’t break, so we ran to the neighbor’s on the third floor. He wasn’t home,” she said. “We went up to my apartment, and took our things, our papers, and ran to a different neighbor.”

That family let the girls in to spend the night. They prayed before bed that they would be spared, but then there was another round of explosions.

The adults told them to go to the hallway.

“As soon as I sat down, there was a blast, an explosion. Debris started to fall on me and the doors flew out,” Kira said. “I was bare feet and running outside, but turned back to put my clothes on.”

Kira and her friend then went on the run again, looking for another building they could take shelter in. She said that there were Russian military “bombing planes” flying low overhead as they ran.

They found another building, but then a missile fell very closely “and the windows and doors fell out,” she said.

“Then we waited for those neighbors so we didn’t go alone and ran again,” she said. “We didn’t know what direction to run.”

Kira started to tell Insider that at that point she and her friend laid belly down on the ground and Army crawled looking for another building, and found a home with a cellar, but then she started sobbing.

The other kids in the room embraced her, and then Aizelman cut her story short.

“We want them to talk about the happy things now,” she said.

 

Haven Oreccchio-Egresitz

It takes a village

Since the children arrived, a few other adults have joined them.

The first week, Aizelman prepared all the meals for the children and the adults in the group, but it became too overwhelming. She reached out to a restaurant owned by an active member of the city’s Jewish community, and he now does the cooking.

The primary goal, she said, is keeping them safe and positive in the first few weeks in Budapest. There’s no long term plan for their future yet.

Aside from being refugees, they’re also regular teenagers, so Aizelman is trying to accommodate those needs as well.

For example, many of the donated clothes were large and outdated, so Aizelman is trying to organize and swap donations with other groups to get the most modern outfits for her group. She’s also taken them shopping for small treats, like perfume.

The group has received some donations, but not enough to stretch out much longer.

“Unfortunately, we didn’t have any kind of help from the government. That’s how it works,” she told Insider. “For now, we still don’t know what we’re doing.”

Marina Shafit provided translation services in Budapest.