A Fairlawn native teaching English in Ukraine left the country and moved back to the United States, returning to the Akron area where he grew up.

Mark Merzweiler, a Walsh-educated Jesuit who found himself in the middle of a war zone while teaching at Dnipro, had planned to stay as the war progressed.

But Merzweiler decided to leave after a Ukrainian friend was convinced she should flee to Poland. More than 3.5 million refugees left the country as the Russian invasion progressed.

For a time at the start of the war, the city had been a refuge while other population centers were attacked.

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But the Russians turned their attention to Dnipro, and the townspeople who had taken in refugees became refugees themselves.

Merzweiler said in an interview with Akron on Wednesday that he had planned to stay in Dnipro, but when his friend Arina told him she was leaving, he decided to escort her and her friend, Sasha, out of the country. .

He almost didn’t make it.

Leaving Dnipro

In the interview and an email account of the Dnipro flight, Merzweiler detailed the events of March 12-14 as he and his two friends left the city he had come to love.

Merzweiler said her friend Arina, who also planned to stay, told her she was leaving after another friend’s mother, Sasha, told the women to leave. Russian attacks and shelling had become increasingly aggressive in areas across Ukraine, and Dnipro was surrounded by military action.

“She said she and her friend Sasha… were leaving the country [and] at that moment I knew it was time to go,” Merzweiler said. “I asked Arina if I could accompany them. She said yes, and be ready to leave for the train station at 4 am the next morning.

The rushed schedule moved ahead faster than expected, and Merzweiler had 2.5 hours to gather his things and get to the station at 9 p.m. Arina had called a taxi to wait for her outside the building, and Merzweiler joined her friend at the station. , waiting with hundreds of others for a way out.

“Finally the train arrived at 10 a.m. and we ran to the platform, which was four stories high,” he said.

During the commotion he injured his hip, but the three were able to sit together for the 16-hour journey to Lvov, a city in western Ukraine near the Polish border.

Tense moments in Lvov

When the three arrived in Lvov, they received food from a Red Cross worker and took a taxi to one of Arina’s online students. They spent the night there, preparing to take a train from Lvov to the Polish border.

“During the night I heard the air raid sirens again,” Merzweiler said. “Even Lvov was not safe.”

The station was packed, he said, and he didn’t think they could catch the 12:30 p.m. train. But Arina said she was ready for a standing room and he agreed.

A Ukrainian soldier checked their travel documents. Arina and Sasha were fine, but Merzweiler was several months over a tourist visa.

“There was a Ukrainian soldier, a woman in her thirties with an AK-47 checking our travel documents,” he said.

Merzweiler, who had taught in South Korea, China and the United Arab Emirates, had encountered the problem before, but never in a country at war. In other circumstances, he had had to pay a fine without further incident. In Ukraine, before the war, he was told the fine was about $200.

The soldier checking the passports looked him up and down, asking him why he had been working illegally in the country for eight months.

“I said my school needed a good teacher,” he said. “Not really knowing what to do and since it was an emergency, she let me on board.”

Merzweiler said on Wednesday it was the tensest moment as the three men fled Ukraine and he counted himself lucky to have been allowed to leave.

He and his friends stood in a wagon just outside the driver’s cab for the 2.5-hour journey to the Polish border. When they got into the train car, the three had to wait four hours before being allowed in.

“Then the train started rolling again. . . then in two hours the train stopped again,” he said. “We were in Poland but the Polish authorities had to check our passports. Another three hours.

Around midnight, the three men went through customs and asked a random policeman where they could find a taxi. Merzweiler paid $450 for the two-hour drive to Krakow and they spent three nights in a hotel where refugees could stay for two nights free.

At 3 a.m. on March 14, the three took a taxi to the airport. His friends flew to Dijon, France, and Merzweiler returned to his adopted home of Albuquerque.

Uncertain future

Merzweiler arrived in Akron earlier this week to visit friends and plan his future route. After Walsh Jesuit, he earned his bachelor’s degree at Bowling Green State University, then served three years in the United States Army. After that, he earned a master’s degree in political science at The Ohio State University

Marzweiler said he plans to work and write science fiction in Akron. In addition to teaching, he is an author who has published an online novel on Amazon called “New Ionia”.

Merzweiler said the invasion of Ukraine was brutal. He called Russian leader Vladimir Putin as evil as the worst dictators of the 20th century.

“Putin would be as bad as Hitler or Stalin if he needed to,” he said.

Merzweiler said he would like to return to Ukraine, but will not be able to do so for at least six months due to his visa expiring, even though a teaching position is available and the war is over. .

Dnipro was hit by at least three bombs the day after Merzweiler and his friends left.

Merzweiler began posting about the invasion on Facebook shortly after it began, describing life in Ukraine’s fourth-largest city after Russia invaded.

He said all but a few businesses in town have been closed, with a grocery store and cafe among the last stores still open.

On Tuesday, a Russian missile strike destroyed the railway station in Pavlohrad, a town 37 miles east of Dnipro.

Leave a message for Alan Ashworth at 330-996-3859 or email him at [email protected] Follow him on Twitter at @newsalanbeaconj.