FRACKVILLE, Pa. — A college professor from Schuylkill County was in Ukraine a little more than a month ago, right before Russian troops crossed the border.
Even though he's now half a world away, his heart is still there.
Matthew Kenenitz lived in Ukraine for the last three years, teaching English at A Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv.
When Russian Troops approached the Ukrainian border in January, his relatives and friends from his hometown of Frackville begged him to come back.
"Dozens of phone calls a day, text messages saying 'you need to come home, you need to come home,'" Kenenitz said.
Kenenitz had just taken a vacation to Eastern Ukraine, and his friends in the country were not convinced Putin would attack.
Still, he listened to his family and came back to the states.
"I planned to go right back two or three weeks later, and then the war started," he said.
Despite the war, he's meeting with his students in Ukraine for virtual classes again.
More than just a professor, he's now providing mental and emotional support.
"One of my students was with her father at the military base, there were no military people there, and missiles were fired," he said. "She's OK, but the one missile went into where her father was staying, and after 15 hours, they found his body. Then we had class that Tuesday, and during class, she sent me a text message apologizing that she wasn't in class because it was the day of the funeral. She was helping her mother cope."
Kenenitz considers Ukraine his home and says he feels guilty being in America.
"I feel a strong sense of guilt that I am in America and that I can live my life here, I can do what I do, and people that I know and care about and love are running to bomb shelters five or six times a day because of air raid sirens, they're worried about whether they will see their family members again," the professor said.
Kenenitz helped raise several thousand dollars through charity drives with the help of St. Michael's Ukrainian Catholic Church in Frackville, and he still wants to do more.
"I would like to go back to Poland just to work on the efforts over there," he said. "My life is over there; all my stuff is there. I came back home with a suitcase and a backpack thinking I was going back and I definitely want to go back."
Kenenitz hopes to return to Poland this summer.
He said he'll keep teaching and helping his students there as long as he's able to.
See more videos on our area’s connection to the Crisis in Ukraine.