Ilan Cohn, at The Blogs

Jun 20, 2023, 2:41 PM

On World Refugee Day, Jews must stand in solidarity with refugees

Refugees, mostly women and children, wait in a crowd for transportation after fleeing from the Ukraine and arriving at the border crossing in Medyka, Poland, March 7, 2022. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

In the name of the European Jewish community., HIAS helped 280,000 Ukrainians and 1.35 million people worldwide last year

Jun 18, 2021, 6:58 PM

World Refugee Day: A case for Jewish engagement

A cultural orientation class for newly arrived refugees at CRRA's office. (courtesy)

For millennia of Jewish history, there were very few constants. But one such constant for Jews around the world was being seen as strangers wherever they were. Being strangers often implied persecution, expulsion, being killed. Today, while there is a...

Aug 17, 2020, 1:08 PM

From refugee to humanitarian

Chad/ Darfuri Refugees / A HIAS community mobilizer meets with Amneh Yakum Abbakah, 40, who learned to make baskets through HIAS activities and now runs her own shop with the income she generated from selling them. / November 6, 2013 / Photo by Glenna Gordon

Igor Chubaryov’s grandparents fled from pogroms. His parents left Ukraine with other Jews after the Nazis attacked. When he was 24 years old, he escaped Russian persecution and resettled in New York. Now Chubaryov helps fellow refugees as a...

Apr 3, 2020, 11:37 AM

Refugees, Jews, and HIAS in Europe

Chad/ Darfuri Refugees / Mariam Khamis Hawid, an elderly woman, receives psychosocial support from HIAS at Djabal refugee camp in Goz Beida, eastern Chad. HIAS provides psycho social support and other services for the elderly at refugee camps throughout Chad, November 6, 2013.(Glenna Gordon)

When I opened the new European office of HIAS, the international Jewish refugee agency, in Belgium’s capital late last year, I thought I knew the challenges ahead of me: reaching out to the formal EU institutions and giving European...

About Me

Ilan Cohn is based in Brussels and is the Director of HIAS Europe. For the past two decades he worked on migration at the international level through a number of intergovernmental organizations, as well as through JDC and the Center for International Migration and Integration in Israel.

Contact Me