Rabbi Pinchas Vishedski and Garik Zylberbord had been close for years. Zylberbord was one of Vishedski’s earliest friends and supporters when the rabbi first arrived in Donetsk, Ukraine, in 1993. The two remained in close contact as the conflict in the eastern part of the country, which began back in February, burned into war and forced the rabbi to flee to Kiev just two weeks ago.

Ukrainian supreme court forbade the municipality of Lviv from going ahead with controversial plans for commemorating Jewish heritage sites. The Supreme Economic Court of Ukraine issued its ruling Wednesday against the city’s plans to design and build projects that would commemorate three Jewish sites instead of restoring them.

No longer just a World War II scenario, in the past weeks several hundred Jews from pro-Russian rebel Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine have fled their war-torn cities with little other than the clothing on their backs. Their unlikely “displaced persons camp”? A Chabad facility for children in western Ukraine’s Zhitomir, a two-hour drive west of Kiev.