News viewership on various TV channels and on the Internet has grown rapidly. Everyone is looking for information about what is happening on the eastern Polish border and what the situation in Ukraine is.
Photo: asifthebest (freeimages.com)
From there come dramatic news that Kyiv is surrounded on three sides by Russian troops, that the agreement on humanitarian corridors through which the wounded and civilians were to be evacuated was broken and civilians were shot at.
Smaller towns around Kiev are under attack. The bombs fell on cities well known and close to Poles: Żytomierz, Winnica, and Biała Cerkiew. Mariupol is encircled, there is no water and food, no electricity. Odessa's beaches are mined in anticipation of a possible landing.
Information about deaths and losses in equipment is shocking and contradictory. All this causes crowds of people fleeing the war, and more than half of them go to Poland and only a small percentage treat our country as a transit country.
Until Saturday evening, the number of persons cleared by border services had reached 920,000 since the beginning of the conflict. By Sunday evening, it must have already exceeded a million. Poles are extremely self-sacrificing and very organized, but the burden is very heavy.
Prime Minister Morawiecki visits the RARS depot in Niemce (Lubelskie Voivodeship) [Photo: lublin.uw.gov.pl]
The Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said:
We help from the bottom of our hearts, but we help using our heads. Aid goes where it must go. Where is it most needed. We help so that the Ukrainian people can defend themselves today not only in defense of their own independence, but in the defense of the security of the whole of Europe. (...) In order for Ukrainians to be able to defend themselves, they need help, especially humanitarian. We, as the government, organize this aid, both by collecting various kinds of funds from all over the country, by buying various goods that are most needed in Ukraine. (...) Every day, about 100 trucks with Polish aid leave Poland for cities, hospitals, schools, nurseries, kindergartens, local governments on the Ukrainian side. Aid flows through Poland also from many other European capitals, for which I am also grateful. [1]
At each railway station, there are receiving points where refugees can obtain information about further proceedings, rest, sleep before the onward journey, wait for pickup by family or friends. Refugees can travel by all means of public transport for free. There are around 30 check-in points in operation. They are located mainly in the Podkarpackie, Lubelskie and Białystok provinces. A lot of volunteers work at the reception points, including translators of German, French, English and others.
Poland accepts groups of refugees from orphanages — children and their guardians. Such a group of sixty people found a place in Polanica Zdrój; other groups in similar places.
Among the refugees there are also representatives of other nationalities who encountered the war on Ukrainian soil and who were unable to return to their homes normally.
Men working in Poland are returning to Ukraine. “I have to go back, because they are fighting for their homeland there. You have to help. " - say the emigrants in Wrocław.
Most of the refugees are women with children. Young children need to organize places in nurseries and kindergartens so that their mothers can go to work. Refugees do not want to eat our bread for free, they want to work, and return as soon as possible, or to settle down here somehow.
The Poles pass this difficult test of friendship and Christian help to their neighbors in flying colors. If only the fatigue comes as late as possible.
Translation from Polish by Andrew Woźniewicz.
