The influx in a few days of more than a million people who fled the Russian invasion of Ukraine prompted Nicolas Kusiak – like thousands of other Poles – to mobilize to offer them solidarity and support.
Volunteers, authorities, humanitarian or professional organizations and companies, as well as the large Ukrainian community already present in Poland, offer these refugees the essentials: meals, transport, and a place to rest and sleep, including in their homes.
And above all human warmth to children and women, traumatized, often in tears, who had to leave their fathers and husbands in Ukraine, mobilized to defend their country.
“We had doctors here from Israel and France. I supply them, I am their translator, because I understand a little Ukrainian,” explains Kusiak, 27, who has been living near the Medyka border post for four days.
Polish born in France, manager working in events and speaking four languages, he intended to serve as a translator to avoid misunderstandings with foreigners, after having seen xenophobic videos on the Internet warning against the entry of Arabs or Africans.
But he also brought tents, generators, heaters and food, then sought to organize coordination between the police, doctors, firefighters who provide transport and volunteers who distribute the hot soup.
“Everyone wants to do everything, but we don’t trust a private person,” he regrets. But “it’s starting to get organized” and he must “work legally” for the Red Cross from Monday.
“Bombs everywhere”
The mobilization in favor of the refugees is general. We see it for example at the central station of Krakow (south) where hundreds of them transit.
“Our reception point is really full and we have a lot of people all the time,” explains Anna Lach, a volunteer in her forties. “We have a room in the basement which is always full and that’s why other people are waiting here to find out if they can stay for the night”.
“But, adds another volunteer, Maja Mazur, we have other places in town where they can stop. They can stay there for a day or two before going elsewhere. We offer them something to drink, something warm, something to eat and a place where they can sleep. »
Some refugees want to continue their journey to western Europe straight away, driven by their traumatic memories and suffering from separation from their loved ones.
“I came from Kharkiv [dans le nord-est de l’Ukraine] with my family, with my two sons and my parents,” says Anna Gimpelson, an architect. “My husband stayed in Lviv [dans l’ouest] because he’s still good for the army, so he can’t leave the country. Our city is going through some really terrible times. We have bombs everywhere and our neighbours’ house no longer exists”.
“We have been on the road for three days and now we are going to a friend’s house in Düsseldorf [en Allemagne]. Maybe we’ll spend some time there and think about what to do next,” she said.
The Polish government expects the influx of refugees to continue.
“Preparing the infrastructure to be ready to welcome a new wave of refugees, the scale of which we do not know, this is our main challenge today,” Minister without Portfolio Michal Dworczyk, the chief of staff, said on Sunday. of the prime minister.
The UN had announced that the total number of people who had left Ukraine to seek refuge in neighboring countries had exceeded 1.5 million. In other words, two out of three chose to go to Poland.
For its part, the Polish branch of Amnesty International called on Facebook not to forget the Syrian or Yemeni refugees stranded at the border with Belarus and warned against “the enormous injustice” consisting in the unequal treatment of foreigners in depending on their nationality.