Poland holds out helping hand to Ukraine

Ukrain­ian refugees are flock­ing into Poland to seek shel­ter from the war. In inter­views with my Pol­ish rel­a­tives I learned that the Pol­ish pop­u­la­tion is extreme­ly wel­com­ing, even though there are some dif­fi­cul­ties. What do Poles do to help Ukraini­ans and how do they feel about the whole situation?

Many peo­ple in Poland are dev­as­tat­ed by the sit­u­a­tion across the bor­der. I spoke to my grand­moth­er in Poland, who told me: “I feel pity for the Ukrain­ian peo­ple. And I feel resent­ment and con­tempt for Putin as the leader of the Rus­sians who so aggres­sive­ly attacked the sov­er­eign, inde­pen­dent state of Ukraine.”

Poles are wel­com­ing the refugees flee­ing Ukraine. Mem­bers of my fam­i­ly in Poland are  mak­ing dona­tions to help Ukraini­ans and some even wel­come them into their homes.

Poland’s own his­to­ry may explain the sym­pa­thet­ic reac­tion of its peo­ple. Poland knows how it feels to be sit­u­at­ed between two great pow­ers with aggres­sive ten­den­cies. The Ger­mans in WWII and the Rus­sians in the Sovi­et Union both were able to take con­trol of Poland in the past. But over the years, Poland has received help from oth­er nations, and now they seem to be keen to do the same. More­over, my rel­a­tive told me: “I fear Putin might try to do the same to us as he is doing to the Ukrainians.”

The men­tal state of many peo­ple has changed dras­ti­cal­ly. My grand­moth­er told me: “I am afraid of what the future might bring. I am sor­ry for Ukraini­ans and feel great con­tempt for Putin.” 

“The only pos­i­tive change in my life”, my oth­er grand­moth­er says, “is the real­iza­tion of how much good is left in people.”

When Ukraini­ans final­ly cross the bor­der, help is already wait­ing on the Pol­ish side. My grandmother’s broth­er, who lives close to the bor­der, described the sit­u­a­tion: “They are wel­comed with hot meals, cof­fee, blan­kets. Poles come from all over the coun­try to col­lect Ukraini­ans and bring them to the city or to their homes.” 

Many Pol­ish peo­ple accept refugees to their homes to live with them. They get infor­ma­tion on Face­book that some­one is look­ing for a place to stay. I spoke to the daugh­ter of a Pol­ish fam­i­ly, Anna Kowal­s­ka, who offered refuge to a woman with four chil­dren from Kiev. Anna is 17 years old and is a stu­dent in War­saw. She told me, “Most of them are in a quite healthy phys­i­cal state but are men­tal­ly drained. They did not bring many pos­ses­sions since most of them packed in a hurry.” 

My grandmother’s broth­er also wel­comed a fam­i­ly in his home. “I am very hap­py to be able to help Ukraine in this way. Unfor­tu­nate­ly the fam­i­ly does not under­stand any Pol­ish. It is dif­fi­cult to com­mu­ni­cate only with ges­tures and a few Ukrain­ian words known to me. But they are extreme­ly nice and grate­ful. They came all the way from Ivano-Frankivsk and are very tired. They rest a lot. In a few days their friends from Barcelona are com­ing to pick them up.”

Poles are donat­ing huge amounts of mon­ey to foun­da­tions. My grand­moth­er informed me: “There was a col­lec­tion in the church when peo­ple were leav­ing the ser­vice and altar servers were stand­ing with cans and peo­ple gave big mon­ey. There was no clat­ter of coins: peo­ple gave lots of paper mon­ey to help the Ukrainians.”

Pol­ish TV orga­nized con­certs and all income went to help Ukraini­ans. In mar­kets you can find bas­kets on dis­play. “When you do your shop­ping, you do more of it, and then you donate flour, groats, but­ter, oil. Big lor­ries come and take them either to the bor­der or to places near Kiev or Lvov,” my grand­moth­er told me. 

My uncle, who lives in a city in Poland called Radom, owns a restau­rant. Two of his best friends who work with him are orig­i­nal­ly from Ukraine but they have a Pol­ish pass­port too. My uncle said that they have decid­ed to leave the coun­try and go fight for Ukraine. “It is ter­ri­fy­ing to know that I might not see them again. We’ve been work­ing togeth­er for over five years and they have real­ly grown close to my heart. Their depar­ture was awful. See­ing my friends say good­bye to their wives and chil­dren, know­ing they might nev­er see them again, brought a feel­ing out of me that I can­not explain. Now they are off, fight­ing for their country.”

He explained to me that many Ukraini­ans who work in Poland have a low­er salary than the aver­age Pol­ish work­er. He says: “Now that men with Ukrain­ian descent leave to fight for Ukraine, their wives have to pro­vide mon­ey for the whole fam­i­ly. I have decid­ed to still pay the salary of my Ukrain­ian employ­ees. This way I can sup­port their fam­i­lies and make sure that if my friends ever come back, they will not have to start their lives from scratch. I know some employ­ers who are doing the same thing.”