For Galina Ploschenko, 90, it was not a decision made without trepidation.

“They told me Germany was my best option. I told them, ‘I hope you’re right,’” she said.

Ms. Ploschenko is the beneficiary of a rescue mission organized by Jewish groups, trying to get Holocaust survivors out of the war wrought by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Bringing these nonagenarians out of a war zone by ambulance is dangerous work, infused with a historical irony: Not only are the Holocaust survivors being brought to Germany, the attack is now coming from Russia — a country they saw as their liberators from the Nazis.