It is his little haven of tranquility. From her bedroom window, Alina Dukhonchenko motions to enter her three-story cubic house. The winter sun makes its last afternoon inroads into the Polish countryside of Jakubowizna. It is here, in this village one hour from Warsaw, that this Ukrainian mother found refuge with her daughter, Polina, in March 2022. It passed 3 p.m. The hearth comes alive. “It’s when the children come home from school,” says Alina, affably. Toddler laughter bursts from the stairwell, which creaks under their feet. Alina and Polina do not live alone.
The “House of Independent Mothers”, set up by the NGO Fundacja Otwarty Dialog, is the name of the home where Alina is staying with six women and twelve children, all of whom have fled Russian aggression. “Not long ago, there were more of us in the house, but two families have already gone back to Ukraine,” says Alina. Originally from Zaporijjia, in the south-east of Ukraine, the 29-year-old divorced woman dreams only of returning, too, to realize her ambition “to open a center for children with special needs”, a dream that the war has pulverized. However, she considers the Russian danger still too great, so there is no question of leaving Poland anytime soon.
The hostel is a reflection of the relative successes of welcoming refugees in Poland, a year after the start of the war. The little ones (like thousands of others all over Poland) attend a Polish school located about twenty kilometers away. As for the six mothers, they were able to find a job, like the approximately 60% of Ukrainian refugees still in Poland. An exodus that has mainly taken on a female face, men aged 18 to 60 not being allowed to leave the country due to general mobilization.
It was a bit of a coincidence that Alina put down her hastily packed suitcases in Jakubowizna. On March 4, 2022, fleeing the bombs, she arrived at the Warsaw train station disoriented. “Ten days later, thanks to the help of a volunteer, we found this place which quickly became my second home. »
A new life in exile, with its share of uncertainties. “We help each other in the garden, we cook, we clean together. It’s as if life goes on. But no one knows how long we will be able to stay here, ”she raises. For the time being, the residents of the residence do not pay rent, which allows them “to send a little money to [leurs] relatives who remained in Ukraine”.
Alina shares her room with Inna Martynova, who cradles her little Stepan, born six days before the offensive of February 24, 2022. In the spring, this 33-year-old former hairdresser deserted her locality occupied by the Russian army, where her husband lives always, in order to reach Poland. She shares from her room with Alina.
The language barrier, after a few months, fades little by little, “Ukrainian and Polish sharing a certain proximity”, says Inna. In the frame of the door appears at the same time one of their colleagues, Marina Riabinna. She has just finished her shift in a supermarket on the outskirts of Warsaw: “Eight other Ukrainian women also work there”, she says in an energetic voice, adding that at school, her “daughter is able to communicate with his Polish comrades”.
Polish solidarity
Poland, from the first days of the invasion, opened its doors wide to refugees from neighboring Ukraine. More than eight million of them have swept over its territory, which makes this country of 38 million inhabitants of Central Europe the one that has welcomed the most. The Polish government granted them full access to the labor market, the health system and education, as well as certain social benefits. Nevertheless, it is civil society which, in the opinion of a number of NGOs, has taken this welcome head-on. The great Polish solidarity was also those thousands of ordinary citizens who flocked to the stations in a totally disinterested way to donate food, or those individuals who offered their roof for weeks. Nearly 80% of Poles say they have assisted war refugees, notes Dominika Pszczółkowska, a political scientist affiliated with the Center for Migration Research at the University of Warsaw, who points out “that a study of [son] center shows that half of the war refugees still in Poland are housed free of charge. Aid continues, but the housing crisis has worsened in the Polish capital in the wake of the war. »
Against the backdrop of record inflation (17%), friction between Poles and Ukrainians is beginning to emerge, adds Agnieszka Kosowicz, president of Polskie Forum Migracyjne, an organization helping exiles. “The government has done a lot to allow these people to work legally, but it’s not enough. Some refugees are unable to meet their basic needs, such as housing. Single mothers also often struggle to provide family support and child care, and there is a chronic shortage of child care spaces. »
However, a year later, it has to be admitted that Poland, a country long reluctant to immigration, is holding up. They would be around 950,000 Ukrainian refugees staying in Poland at the moment. This is without counting the Ukrainian diaspora which already lived in this country before the war, which amounts to more than a million people. “The refugees did not end up on the street, it went better than I imagined,” admits Mme Pszczółkowska. Polish schools have also put themselves in working order to welcome young Ukrainians, even if “many of them continue their education online with the Ukrainian program”, adds the researcher.
The pain of exile
The Ukrainian House in Warsaw, set up in 2009 under the aegis of the Nasz Wybór Foundation, is one of these civil society initiatives that have taken part in the integration effort. Housed in the corner of an apartment building in the peaceful district of Muranów, the premises of the NGO have seen, over the past twelve months, a coming and going of people sometimes looking for accommodation, sometimes looking for a job. “From around twenty employees before the war, we have grown to nearly 200 employees, and the offer of assistance is as diverse as the needs”, specifies Valeriia Shakhunova, herself new to the team.
A year later, the strong influx of the beginnings has diminished, like the influx which has also dried up. “But the big difficulty, says Valeriia Shakhunova, is the difficulty of planning for the long term. Some don’t necessarily want to learn the language here; they want to return to the country as soon as possible, which could be compromised if the war continues. »
On this gray afternoon, the large room in the center was transformed into an improvised floor. A group of women start a rehearsal for a play. These budding actresses, all refugees, will stage it in a few days.
Text in hand, Anna Michalova, 38, “dreamed of doing theater from a very young age”. The activity allows her “to evacuate the worries of everyday life and to get to know women who live in a similar situation”. Since last March, this mother has been living off odd jobs babysitting. “Nothing to do with my job in Ukraine, where I was the manager of a restaurant chain! Talking about his life before suddenly blurs his eyes.
Soothe the pain of exile? At the Ukrainian school in Warsaw, in the Ochota district, the yellow and blue flag flying opposite designates its colors. Here, we live at the time of the Ukrainian educational program, “while giving Polish lessons to the students”, specifies the director of the establishment, Oksana Kolesnyk, 44, originally from Chernihiv. From the teaching staff to the 270 pupils aged 8 to 17, they have all fled the war launched by Moscow, coming from the four corners of Ukraine. kyiv, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporijjia, Mykolaiv, Kharkiv… As many places of origin as there are experiences, traumas too.
Larysa Lybchenko, in her sixties, has been teaching mathematics there since the very beginning. A way for this refugee from Izioum, a city taken over by the armed forces of kyiv, to rebuild after the ordeal. “I have 42 years of experience and I have never experienced such a work environment. Working here is a kind of refuge, like a big united family. Established in April 2022, the establishment opened its doors in record time. A team of three psychologists quickly joined in. “On a daily basis, the theme of war is discussed as little as possible, talking about it again can bring back traumas, underlines director Kolesnyk. The goal is to try to give these children a sense of normal life. »
Polina, 10, likes it. “Even that I prefer it to my old school in Ukraine. I have a lot of friends here,” slips the young student in her large checkered dress, looking discreet. The drawings on the wall at the front of his classroom, on the other hand, speak for themselves. A woman with long blond hair, her gaze turned towards the ground, holds in her arms an infant wrapped in a red blanket, as if stained with blood. A rain of missiles marked with the Russian flag fell around. The portrait bears the inscription “How my Ukraine hurts! The author signed her first name, in the right corner: Polina.