Quebec hockey player escapes Ukraine, back home safe
Posted March 9, 2022 1:21 pm.
Last Updated March 9, 2022 11:05 pm.
Quebecer Eliezer Sherbatov describes the moment he reunited with his wife and two children as unforgettable and powerful – as he returned home to Laval from Ukraine, where he played professional hockey until the Russian invasion.
“I hugged my family and cried over my kids sleeping.”
It’s something the 30-year-old told himself might never again be possible when the war broke out.
But he managed to escape the country and meet his three-month-old son for the first time, and reunite with his wife Somaly and two-year-old daughter.
(Credit: Eliezer Sherbatov / handout)
Awoken by the sounds of bombs at 5 a.m. on Feb. 24, he was in Druzhkivka for a game with his team, HC Mariupol of the Ukrainian Hockey League.
“The feeling when the coach says in the morning, ‘the war has started,’ and you have nowhere to go and you feel that you’ve been, you’re getting dragged to the floor.”
His first thought was getting back home to his family, but the four days leading up to his return were filled with stress.
He initially turned to Canada for help, but after receiving an automated response from Global Affairs Canada telling him to get to the nearest bomb shelter, he contacted the Israeli embassy – for which he also holds a passport – and they told him to get to Lviv.
Sherbatov got the last ticket of the day on a train headed to the town 70 kilometres from Ukraine’s border with Poland.
“You cannot sleep, you’re fatigued. … I couldn’t stand still,” he said.
He and eight others squeezed into a train cabin built for four people.
“We’re shaking, we’re not talking,” he described the moment.
He says he breathed a slight sigh of relief when the train passed Kyiv.
Sherbatov says the train ride felt like waiting for death and not having any control.
Once in Lviv, he was helped by a team of Israeli volunteers who put him in charge of a bus of 17 people, mostly children and the elderly, also leaving for Poland.
Sherbatov recognizes how lucky he is to have escaped Ukraine, but he worries about the teammates he left behind and the millions who remain stranded in the country amid the ongoing war. He’s staying in touch with his friends and praying for them.
