By the time the Russians dropped a bomb on the maternity hospital in Mariupol on March 9, 2022, the Husak family already felt that life in the besieged Ukrainian city was hell. They'd lost their jobs at the port, their home, and relatives. Oleh and Olha Husak had both been injured.
But the attack on the hospital -- which came just 15 days after Russia launched its unprovoked, full-scale invasion of Ukraine -- turned a living hell into a nightmare scape peopled by the dead. According to official data, more than 25,000 died in Mariupol in the first days of the war. Human rights defenders, however, maintain that this number could be as high as 100,000. Russian forces are accused of numerous war crimes perpetrated in the port city, as well as in many other locations across Ukraine.
Olha and Oleh Husak
At the time, the couple was outside, near the hospital, cooking food over an open fire as many residents were forced to do with the electricity cut and their kitchens turned to rubble. Anastasia, their eldest daughter, was in one of the city's maternity hospitals and heavily pregnant, alongside her husband and brother, Vladyslav, 10.
"Suddenly I heard a terrible roar and shouted, 'Plane! Plane!'" recalls Oleh. "We ran toward the bomb shelter, but once you hear the plane it means the bomb has already been dropped, so you really only have three or four seconds to make it to safety somewhere."
He described the crater from the bomb as 7 meters deep and 50 meters across.
The massive crater left by the air strike at the hospital
Part of a wall and debris fell on Olha. "She was lying with her eyes closed, and I thought she was dead. But she opened her eyes, and we began to crawl," he says.
The pair, distraught over whether their children were safe, were taken by police to another hospital where they were stitched up "without anesthesia," says Oleh, because of shortages of medicines.
"I have a contusion. I cannot hear in my left ear, and my right hand doesn't work properly. Olha suffered injuries to her face, head, and thigh," says Oleh, almost two years after the attack.
No Room For The Bodies
The family was separated in the air strike. Olha and Oleh were taken to one hospital, while the children were taken to another. Mobile communication was down, so they couldn't reach each other by phone.
Olha and Oleh both sustained injuries in the March 2022 attack.
"People asked me how I didn't go crazy, not knowing what had become of the children. But I had one thought: 'I will find them.' And that's what got me through," Olha says.
Oleh and Olha had to stay at the hospital under Russian occupiers for more than a month. The hospital ran out of food, and there were no longer enough supplies for even the sickest of patients. But the most difficult thing, Olha says, was seeing the bodies pile up.
"We were in the neurosurgery department from March 9 to 13, lying in the corridor, and saw hundreds of black bags dragged past us. You lie there and listen to people dying, and they can no longer be helped," she says. "When we left the hospital, we walked past dumpsters and saw bodies lying there -- there was no room in the morgue. We saw dogs dragging human body parts."
A medical worker walks inside the damaged hospital on March 9, 2022.
On March 12, Olha recalls, militants of the Donetsk People's Republic--– a Russian-backed separatist group -- broke into the hospital.
"At the entrance to the hospital, they laid the body of a Ukrainian soldier. Every time we had to go out, we had to go around the dead man, and it was such psychological pressure. 'The same thing could happen to you,' the soldiers would say."
Oleh reflects that the Russian forces were propelled by a fundamentally flawed mentality.
"This whole war and what happened to Ukraine -- and not only Ukraine, but also Georgia, and then Moldova -- are all the consequences of Russian propaganda," Oleh says. "When we talked with those 'liberators,' they really believed that they had come to liberate us from fascism. Thus, all Ukrainians and people of the Western world who seek freedom and independence, justice, and goodness are enemies for them."
SEE ALSO: Birth Under Fire: Mariupol Midwife Recalls Daily Horrors Of Working Under SiegeThe couple's youngest son, Vladyslav, is reluctant to talk about what happened after the air strike on the maternity ward. He recalls the moment of the strike, when he and his sister and brother-in-law were in the delivery room.
"People were screaming. There was a lot of shrapnel. Everyone was very scared," he says. "My parents were somewhere else, and I didn't know whether they were all right. The first thing I asked after the explosion, when we were taken outside, was, 'What happened to my mom? Where is she?'"
Reunion In Rotterdam
It took more than a month for the family to be reunited.
"We didn't leave Mariupol sooner because we could not find the children," says Olha. "We later learned that [Anastasia] had given birth to a boy on March 22 in the basement of the hospital. Her childbirth lasted 20 hours, during which time there was a direct hit. On April 11, they were taken away by French journalists."
Oleh and Olha managed to escape days later, on April 14.
"It was lucky that volunteers came that day, in two minibuses, and we drove 12 hours to Zaporizhzhya, which usually only takes two to three hours. There were no 'green corridors.' It was terrifying because we passed 25 Russian checkpoints, and there were many Chechens. When we finally got to Zaporizhzhya, I couldn't quite believe that we had actually left that hell."
Police from the Donetsk People's Republic man a checkpoint in Russian-occupied territory of Ukraine on March 27, 2022.
At each checkpoint, the men on the minibus were taken out and forced to stand in a line, strip to the waist, and show their documents. The Russian soldiers were looking for patriotic tattoos, Oleh says, and checking the men's fingers to see if there were signs of pulling the trigger on a machine gun or pistol. They checked everyone's phones.
With the help of volunteers, the Husaks made it to Germany and were reunited with their children. As the minibus was approaching Rotterdam, Olha saw them standing on the other side of the road. She yelled at the driver to stop.
"It was a highway. You can't just stop like that, but the driver stopped. I knew I could be hit. Many cars stopped, but I ran to the children. I hugged them, kissed them, and met my grandson for the first time. He was given the name Damyr, which means 'the one who gives peace,'" Olha recalls with tears in her eyes.
In Rotterdam, the family is together. Olha and Oleh work at the port, packing fruit in the warehouse. They say they work alongside many other Ukrainians and Poles.
Waiting For Liberation
The Husaks regularly talk to people they know who are still in Mariupol, and they hear terrible things.
"It's impossible to leave there if you have a Ukrainian passport. Medical assistance is not given to Ukrainian citizens. The situation is very difficult -- there is no city left," says Olha. "People came from Russia, many Chechens, Buryats, and other nationalities. The locals who remained there live mainly in those bombed-out houses, while the new residents are given new housing that was built for propaganda, so they can say, 'Look, the city has been liberated. We are rebuilding it.'"
According to UN estimates, about 90 percent of the city's high-rise residential buildings and about 60 percent of houses were damaged or destroyed in the siege of Mariupol.
The Husaks' house is gone, too.
"My older brother died there," says Olha. "He was killed on March 3-5 [2022], and we could only take him out to bury him on March 26."
Olha, Vladymyr, and Oleh Husak attend a screening of the documentary 20 Days In Mariupol, in Warsaw on December 10.
The family starred in the documentary film 20 Days In Mariupol by the Associated Press. The camera crew arrived in Mariupol an hour before the invasion began and were the only journalists working in the city at the time. For almost three weeks, they documented the crimes committed by Russian forces, as well as their harrowing escape.
The film has garnered a host of awards, including at the international Sundance Film Festival.
For Oleh and Olha, long-term plans are on hold as they await the liberation of their hometown.
"We really want Mariupol to be liberated. I want to go there, visit the graves of my parents and brother. I really miss Ukraine," says Olha.
Oleh adds: "We will not go to Mariupol as long as it is occupied. When the city is liberated and there is victory, if the port needs us, we will go there."