PAGE A10, KEIZERTIMES, MARCH 04, 2022
Salem family in Ukraine en route to
Germany as civilian attacks soar
BY ARDESHIR TABRIZIAN
Of the Salem Reporter
Seven and a half hours after an explosion set
off the Johnsons’ car alarms and left their kids
screaming and crying, they posted one last video
before hitting the road.
“Hey everybody, it’s six in the morning here
in Ukraine on Saturday. We have to go,” said Kim
Johnson, wiping away tears, in the video sent to
their newsletter subscribers. “I never thought I
would say those words, but it’s just escalating so
fast.”
Since Kim and her husband Jed Johnson
left Salem in 2013, their home has been Ukraine.
There they operate homes for children and
adults with disabilities through their nonprofit
Wide Awake International.
They stayed in their house in a village two
hours west of the capital Kyiv for 12 days after
Russian troops invaded Ukraine, taking in as
many as 60 people who needed a safer place
to stay. The Johnsons were determined to stay
there until it became too unsafe.
The turning point for them came Saturday
morning, Mar. 5, when Kim announced in the
video that they would be leaving Ukraine.
“It just seems like we have to get our boys
and our kids to safety,” she said. “The boys can’t
choose it for themselves. But they’re increasingly
afraid, they feel our tension.”
The Johnsons are now en route to Germany
by way of Romania, driving a car with their six
kids and with a caravan taking another 38 peo-
ple. A few of their team are going by car through
Poland to save time and avoid legal hassles with
Ukrainian documents.
“It’s going to be brutal, but the risks of staying
outweigh the risk of going,” Jed Johnson wrote
in an email Friday.
More than 1.5 million people have fled
Ukraine for neighboring countries since Russia’s
invasion, as more than 300 civilians were
killed, the Office of the United Nations High
Commissioner For Human Rights said in a state-
ment Sunday, Mar. 6.
An adviser to Ukrainian president Volodymyr
Zelensky, said Monday that 202, schools, 34 hos-
pitals and more than 1,500 residential buildings
had been destroyed, with nearly 1,000 towns and
villages rid of electricity, water and heat, accord-
ing to reporting from the New York Times.
The family left Saturday and plans on all
meeting Tuesday in Kaufbeuren, a town of about
44,000 in Bavaria.
A few on of their staff will stay at the
“Homestead,” the land the Johnsons bought
to operate three homes, with the families who
wouldn’t leave Ukraine. Some told them they
were born in Ukraine, and they were going to die
in Ukraine.
The staff who stay will continue providing
humanitarian aid to people who can’t or won’t go.
“A lot of people don’t have the option, so
I’m not taking it for granted but I’m just so sad.
(We) just worked so hard to make this a place of
peace,” Kim Johnson said in the video, holding
back tears.
After they decided to leave, one of their
daughters told her she was just realizing their
lives were never going to be the same.
“This is the best place in the world. If you’ve
been here, you know it,” Johnson said. I hear
that around me, I see that around me. My poor
Ukraine.”
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