My Experience On The Polish Border With Ukrainian Refugees

DC Report - https://www.dcreport.org/2022/03/13/inside-a-polish-refugee-center/

Atlas Geographica Post - https://atlasgeographica.com/my-first-person-perspective-of-ukrainian-refugees/

My experience in Poland in early March 2022, 5 days after Russia invaded Ukraine.

🍻☕: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/ryanhogg

00:00 - Introduction
04:00 - My Experience With Ukrainian Refugees

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So it was on the twenty fourth of February of this year that Russia encroached themselves into Ukrainian territory, and now, six months later, we're still at war. Five days after Russia had invaded, I was just glued in the five days after the invasion. I was absolutely just glued to Twitter and as many news sources as possible, and um I'm sure many of us had this experience. But in that first week or two, the only thing in our minds, the only thing that um that I could think of at least um was the war. And I wanted to know exactly at every moment what was happening, who were the big players, what were the sanctions doing, what was the efficacy of all this, why did Putin make such a crazy decision? Um and I sort of became so enthralled with the minute to minute of it, um, I guess because I thought it was going to be sort of over quickly or or whatever. But anyway, six months later, and we're still uh um and the war is still ongoing. So shocking. But nonetheless, um five days after the invasion, so the twenty-fourth was the invasion, the second of March, I was in Poland. I flew down to Krakow, and then I rented a car and drove down to the Medika border, which is the little little town that borders Poland and Ukraine, and uh was at the time and still is now the um most thoroughfed uh crossing point for the Ukrainian refugees. And so I went down there and it's now six months ago. I don't know why it took me so long to convert this article that I wrote into a um podcast, but nonetheless, here it is. The war's still ongoing, so there is still some uh relevance to the podcast, um, to what I'm about to speak. But yes, so I went down and I wanted to uh get a sense of what was happening. Um I don't know what it was, but I just felt compelled to go and uh it was very cheap to go, and as you'll see in this article I'm about to read, I was in very good company um because uh literally uh when I was there there was hundreds of different Europeans, um I'm not a European, but I came from a European country, who without much um explanation for what they would do once they got there, just went. And so I wrote this article um after being in Preshmil and Medica for several days, um helping out, but then also documenting uh the the the refugee influx from across the border. The article I wrote was published in an American magazine called DC Report, which I'll leave the link to in the um podcast description. But what I'm going to read off now is what I published on my own website, which is just um a little bit longer um series of events, and it's just a sort of first-hand experience of what it was like to be at this Ukrainian refugee center. So obviously, not an interview podcast today, in very different format, but but this morning I was walking into the office and I thought, why did I never turn that into a podcast? There's no reason why it can't exist on the podcast feed, in addition to you know the annals of the internet. So I'm going to read it rote as is, um, but I understand that that can actually be kind of awkward to listen to, so I'll try and do my best to make it um a little feel at least a little bit flowing. But here we go. Every 30 minutes, another train of Ukrainian refugees arrives from Medica, which is an otherwise untrafficked and uneventful village, splitting the Polish Ukrainian border to Ukraine's west. It is here that tens of thousands of refugees drip at a delay across the administrative line from the war zone into the European Union. From Medica, they are hurried onto buses and trains. The officials, conscious of the crowds overflowing, are directing the refugees, hundreds at a time, towards one of two destinations, which are both just 20 kilometers further down the road. One destination is Preshishmill Primary and another Preshishmill Secondary. Preshishmill Secondary is an old abandoned supermarket that lays just off the side of the highway, really right on the outskirts of town, and then destination Preshishmill Primary is the town's central train station. It was between these two processing facilities where I experienced the controlled chaos of more than a million refugees being bottlenecked to safety. At Presmil Central Train Station, which is the primary location, trains full of refugees arrive and then, without fuss or fail, trains full of refugees depart. Things are rather orderly at Presushmil Central, despite the thousands shuffling back and forth seemingly every minute. The scenes as refugees disembark from the train, however, are not all exclusively heartbreaking. In addition to the crying, there is also laughter. People are helping each other out, the elderly lifting bags, hundreds of innocent, tiny little people darting about at knee height as well. This is an aside, but yeah, something as well that that really, really stood out to me in retrospect now, reading this six months later, but was just how little men there were, how many old people there were, but as well just how many kids there were. And as you'll see with a family that I document later on in this piece, um, it really was the case of a couple of mums getting together who each had two or three kids. And so you just assume that these are, you know, kind of friends or just neighbours, or they became friends in the journey, but you got the sense that everyone had their little clique of say 20 people, and it was usually three or four mums, four or five elderly people, and then ten to fifteen kids, and everyone sort of moved around in these groups. Okay, back to the article. For now, at least, this picturesque town of 60,000 people whose forebearers no such cruelty is safe. During the Holocaust, the Nazis executed 586 Poles in Pedeshishmil for sheltering Jews, and while there is no such threat of that danger now, history weighs down heavy and sombers the attitude of those old enough to know. Padeshishmiel is beautifully built like so many other former Soviet occupancies alongside an older European heart. The town centre is narrow and gorgeous, a cliche of awe-inspiring cathedrals, and civil planning from when cars didn't exist and the aesthetic was given priority. Venture outside the handful of streets that make up the old town, however, and you are struck by the cliche opposite, the Soviet trademark design of functionality above all else, where cement edifices, indistinguishable from one another, sit neatly in row. On the edge of the sprawling blocks, just on the outskirts where all the big shopping malls are, is the secondary processing facility. This facility is a transformation of an old abandoned Tesco's, a British supermarket chain. I was told that four years ago this large supermarket fell out of business and has since stood in decay, gathering dust and unwanted occupancy. Its huge parking lot houses the myriad buses and cars, shifting refugees around as various forms of transport. Lining one side of the lot are various tents offering everything from food and anemities to health and aid organizations. There is even a row of heated tents for these refugees to sleep as they wait for the next leg of their journey. This is also an aside, but it just reminds me, because it's something that I didn't include, but uh the um everyone would come in at the bottleneck of Medika on the border and then be shifted 20 kilometres up um to Petreshischmilde, the places I'm documenting now. But then they would get on any number of trains just deeper into the European Union. Um, but the absolute majority of people didn't know anyone or or or have the right sort of bureaucratic connection, say, for example, to go to France or Italy, you know, um, or somewhere nice like Sweden. I mean, not to say Poland isn't nice, but doesn't matter. Um and so they would get on a train to Krakow, or they would uh get on a train to Berlin, or they would get on a train to Warsaw. Um, and so these processing facilities are literally just that. It's taking in the refugee and then shifting them elsewhere. So this isn't really the final destination uh for anyone. I don't know if I make that clear or not. Back to the article. It was here at the Tesco's I met Tommy, a Norwegian volunteer from an impossibly desolate location at the tippity top of Norway. A place very suitably called Alta. Tommy's the best type of humble and understated. He told me that as soon as he realized there was no big cost for him to come to the border and help, he decided, why not? Tommy isn't looking for glory, attention, recognition, or any of the other hidden motivations that might colour, the humble author included, reasons for rushing off to the crisis. Tommy was what in any other circumstance you would slander as a redneck. He was a truck driver, loved motocross, had tattoos all over his arms, and when I asked him if he was from Oslo, he reported tongue in cheek, Do you think I'm gay? Yes, there he was, at the heart of a humanitarian crisis, playing an integral role to the organization of thousands of people for hour. For no other reason than it was the right thing to do. There was no money in it, there was no glory in it for him. It this was he was sleeping on the floor of the tent. Um Tommy was uh yeah, Tommy Tommy left a very strong impression on on me because he was um he just was looking for no glory. And he came from the very top of Norway. He just took some holidays and said, I'm gonna go down. And he just showed up, and by the way, I'm not this isn't the article now, I'm just speaking. But he just showed up and said, uh, walked around asking how we could help. This was a remarkable thing I noticed too. That's how the majority of these people were operating. Very few people came in with the existing organizations, the World Food Kitchen, Caritas, um, the Red Cross. The majority of the helpers that I interacted with just sort of made their way on their own expense uh down to the town and then walked around asking how they could help. Um the you know, as a as a confirmation of of humanity. I mean, there was uh there was so much of it to be found there. And again, that informs a little bit the end of the article because the Ukrainians were so dumbfounded by it. They they couldn't understand why everyone was helping. You know, the one of the great ironies was they they crossed the border and they were just given too much food, too much clothing. Like there was actually a lot of waste because the the the the refugees were immediately inundated with everything they needed. Uh back to the article. It's a very cold March in Poland's southeast. The temperatures dip and rise between zero to five. Noticing the bit of cold and how it was particularly affecting the children, some of the volunteers made makeshift fires, brutally stomping through pallets for quick burning firewood. Someone threw a newspaper into the furnace, and for a while I couldn't tell if it was ash or the snow which was settling on the tip of my lens. Um yeah, this article is very heavy with photos as well that I took, so imagine there is a photo of a little girl who looks kind of sad, standing next to the fire, very cold, and ash all around. There is so much activity that were it not for the high visibility vests donned by all volunteers minus the media, you would think this is some type of Sunday market. I pass literal tons of clothing to my left, all local donations. There were so many clothes just strewn all over the cold, grassy ground and tightly stuffed into industrial-sized bags. There is enough that I am sure it must have taken a few semi-trailers to deliver. Kids and mothers are rummaging through the donations, keeping a sharp eye out for anything especially warm. Someone plays soccer with the kids, and then in between passes, the next few busloads of people are delivered behind me. From the bus, the refugees line up at the entrance of Tesco's. They are overwhelmed by donations of food and inundated with information as to what they should do next. I asked Daniel from Portugal, volunteering to coordinate the big lines, whether I was allowed inside the Tesco's itself, because, again, as an aside, up until now I'm just surveying the car park and the literally thousands of people around. But inside the building itself was the real experience. Back to the article. Daniel had worked the last 24 hours straight. When I met him, it was nine in the morning, and on the previous night he said they they had facilitated over 10,000 people from sundown to sunrise. And as we were talking the following morning, most of them had already moved on. He told me to go in and have a look. It's crazy, he said. And here is a picture of my boy, young Daniel. He spoke English, pork and cheese, French, and Spanish. So a legend. Another bloke, another example of a guy who just came down because he f some something about him felt compelled to do it, and and um he just rocked up, said, How can I help? And then s um served a terrific function as being a great translator, because many of the Ukrainian refugees couldn't speak English or Polish. It was just Ukrainian, and then in some exceptions it was English or it was Spanish or French, for example. Back to the article. The scenes from inside Tesco's were from a dystopia. Imagine the bottom floor of your local shopping mall, completely stripped of all furniture, all advertisement, all doors, all signage, and just imagine the bare bones of walls and glass unencumbered. The echo is the first thing to hit you, but that sense is quickly drowned out by another. People are lining the walls, sitting, sleeping, crying, laying down, playing with their phones. They don't even notice me as I walk past. There must be thousands of people here. Every inch is occupied. To my left and right are stores that once before them would have sold jewellery, clothing, or furniture. Now they are large dormitories full of hundreds of people waiting for the next move. A third sense kicks in. The smell. Um which has an aside. You know, is explicable. I mean, but there were just thousands of people in an old abandoned building whose ventilation obviously wasn't turned on or working, and uh these people, um mostly the Ukrainian refugees, have been travelling for days at this point. So there was, you know, that is just a sort of ugly truth, but um there is a very there was a very noticeable smell everywhere you went, not just in the Tesco's. Back to the article. Back of the building, in what would have been the old food court, thousands of meals are being given away. I noticed the furniture is wrapped in plastic, exactly as it would be, out of the back of a bed bath and beyond, purchased and ready for delivery. I peek into one of the larger rooms and tiptoe my way to the back. I wanted to deliver a sense of how big and cramped the space was, but it just never looked the same in the photos. I scoop back to the primary location, the the uh central train station, to check in with how my mates are going over there. Because in the meantime of going back and forth and speaking to people, you know, I had befriended um the the local Polish people who were running the world uh central kitchen outlet at the at the central train station, and I was in between talking to people and taking photos, I was sort of just helping them out. So that was an aside. Back to the article. So I check in with how my mates are going there. Interestingly, while the train station is equally packed wall to wall with activity, there is a different sense of order here that I don't feel at the Tesco's. The trains arrive on the dot, people disembark and then with order make their way out of the train. Women and children are cordoned off, and everyone else is left to their own accord to find their space. I meet these refugees in the tunnel corridor with hot meals ready to go, supplied by the wonderful WCK World Central Kitchen Organization, who, as an aside, have stood head and shoulders above all others in terms of the visible impact at these two centers. And that is um, you know, that's just an indisputable sort of fact that you would have seen if you were there. The the branding of all of the um aid organizations was very minimal. Uh, you occasionally noticed people wearing a caretas, um, which I hadn't heard of before, but apparently it's a giant human aid um charity or whatever. Um Spanish, I think. Yeah, they had they had their vests on, but the World Central Kitchen, which is this lovely um American organization run by Chef José Andrés, I think. Um National Geographic did documentary on them recently. Truly, they are an amazing organization, and I learned a lot about them by sort of helping out the the little Polish faction that had set themselves up there. But everywhere, at both processing centers, at lots of locations throughout Ukraine, uh they just go in, make shitloads of food, and then just give it away for free. Back to the article. Whilst distributing meals, I was tapped on the shoulder and led by a Polish coordinator into a cornered off room restricted by one-way access and told, Hey, I think some people are hungry in here. This room, which was in the east wing of the train station, had been converted into 100 beds laid side by side. Walls and blankets coloured mustard yellow strung across the floor, toys are plenty, pizza boxes, chit-chatter, itchy blankets, and lots of activity. My escort was taking me to a specific family she had in mind, and as I started walking by the beds, I was met with everything from hysterical children, completely innocent of why they were there, to sobbing mothers, overwhelmed by the position they had been thrust into, stoic grandmothers who you got the sense they had seen this before, all the way to bored-looking teenagers just scrolling their thumbs off to Instagram and TikTok. I siphoned off some of the meals and then was left to my own devices. I didn't want to take advantage of this access that I had been given, so decided against prodding questions in hope of achieving a first hand interview. But as I was speaking with the head volunteer, a remarkable Polish woman who didn't want to be named, a very thick Ukrainian accent called out to me from around the corner of the room. She said, Hey, do you have any more of that soup? I gingerly moved over to her, making sure not to step on one of the many children spread eagled across the floor. And don't forget I'm tiptoeing around with a tray of hot soup overhead. On my first sweep giving out soup, Olga's one of Olga's children had tried some, and she decided it wasn't yucky, and decided that he wanted one all to himself. So Olga, the mother of two, asked me, What are you doing here? Why so many people giving us so much support? And this is in very broken English as well. And also if I didn't make it clear, now I'm reading it back, maybe I didn't make it clear, but this um room that was mustard yellow was uh specifically for women and children, and all and no one was allowed in there except a few officials, but because I was carrying around food, um they were like, hey, come in here, you know, uh give us some food. And I was very conscious not to take advantage of the situation because I'm also, you know, I'm here to try and sell an article. So there was a brief moment of oh shit, you know, do I ask these people how they are? Do I try and take photos? You know? And I decided against it. But until Olga called over to me and, as you'll see, encourages it. So back to the article. I told her that the whole world was watching what is happening to her people and her country, and everyone is um unambiguously on her side. The whole conflict is unprovoked, unfair, it's a disaster. And so I think because it's so unjust, people are responding with such sympathy. And that's not verbatim, only oh only Olga only spoke a bit of English, but that's the sentiment that I was trying to deliver. She was overwhelmed the whole time we spoke, verging between welling tears and a watchful eye on her children. We got to speaking and she was astounded to hear that I was Australian. She offered her opinion unprovoked of Putin. It was the same complete and utter condemnation that I had heard from all the refugees. He will go to hell, he's a murderer, etc. Since we were already speaking, and her little boy seemed to be fascinated by the English conversation, I broke my early resignation and took advantage of the situation I was in. I decided to be a meddling journalist and broke the rule of this private zone, and squatted down, met her at eye level, and asked Olga how she got there. She began to tell me her story and said it took her three days to get from Kiev to Breshmil. A train journey relatively unimpeded to Lviv, then a chaotic journey further west to the border. She there stood, or rather sat, for almost ten hours with her elderly mother and two hyper energetic. Energetic sons. She was exhausted, she hadn't slept more than a few hours in several days, hadn't cleaned, and worst of all, she hadn't had more than two conversations with her husband, who stayed behind. She then said, though, with fantastic pride, how although her husband stayed behind, he was fighting the Russians and winning. He was scrubbing the numbers from the buildings and removing street signs so as to confuse the Russians. She joked that everything they have is old, even their maps are old. They haven't got a new ones since the Soviet Union. Without street signs, their maps will be useless. I can't corroborate her commentary on the maps, but I thought it was a hilarious observation and ringed true nonetheless. I leave Oh, and by the way, uh there is then a photo of Olga and her two sons. I leave the women and children's room, not for the last time, and return to the routine of welcoming the Ukrainian refugees in and then seeing the Ukrainian refugees off. All the characters are here to help. A couple tricksters dress up in larger than life animal costumes to hand out candy, consequently lifting the spirits of the adults, perhaps more than the children. There are plenty of nuns to be seen. Poland is a famously Catholic country. It's harder to get an abortion here than really any other country in the EU. Volunteers are flowing in faster than they are flowing out. The US presence is felt more enthusiastically with each additional day. And I do have a few funny anecdotes with interactions with Americans because it really is just so cliche the way that they make themselves felt on the scene. And I'm a big fan of America. I love America, so I don't necessarily subscribe to the sort of European European superiority complex they have over America. Where you know the opinion is that they're always obnoxious and so forth. I really, you know, I'm a big fan of America. But but yeah, i you just get the sense sometimes they have zero self-awareness. Oh, they came in with um um, you know, almost military boots and equipment on, uh, you know, camouflage hats and very loud and walking around asking everyone, introducing themselves to everyone, what can we do for you, so forth. You know, it was impossible for them to follow through on all the promises they were making, which, you know, is a problem. But they also brought more money than anyone else. A few of the guys I interacted with, they they had just gathered money up from their local communities in America and flown down and wanted to distribute it. I really thought it was amazing. But that um yeah, that because I was there over several days, just in the few days I was there, the um presence of America was felt um more increasingly with each day. Back to the article. The situation as it stands is one of remarkable order and efficiency. An old abandoned building on the outskirts of town has now become one of the most lively, safe, and orderly parts of the whole city. A small train station, not designed to facilitate more than a hundred people at a time, is housing thousands at any given moment. There is more food, amenities, and support to go around than needed. Europe has opened up its wide embrace and exposed within a much more generous, caring, and overall resolute response than critics would have believed. In and amongst so much chatter of European Union membership, NATO membership, Brexit, Orban, Switzerland, and all the rest, one is led with a conclusion that it is every man for himself. Ukrainians are not European, they don't speak a European language, are not members of any mutual organization of note, and culturally don't even identify as Europeans. And yet, despite this, and in response to their plight, Europe has said, come on in, no questions asked. My experience on the Polish border has been an unquestioning confirmation that no matter the cost, this is the right thing to do. And for that reason, Putin's ambitions are not going to go as planned. So that's the end of the article. Probably a pretty bad closing, to be honest. I don't know why I was I was very swept up in this like um this community of Europe and and the and the um the great response and everything, which is why I probably wrote those last few uh if I was to edit it now, I'd I think I'd take those out. But um six months later, here we are. Those processing centers have less activity now, but they're still there, they're still facilitating refugees. There's 40 million people in Ukraine, and so far millions, millions have left. That is one of the biggest uh movements of people in modern history, I think even bigger than World War II. Um, and I could be wrong on that. I'm just going off things I hear, but that's the article. Shit, almost took me 30 minutes to read. If you're still listening now, you're an absolute legend. I'm not gonna promote, I'm not gonna ask you. Well, actually, I'm gonna ask you. Leave nice reviews, subscribe to the podcast, tell friends about it, all of that good stuff. Let me know as well what you think. Actually, that'd be cool. You reach me on Twitter, that's in the um podcast description. But I'd just rather email with you back and forth, so email me or LinkedIn. But yes, um back to regular scheduling. I just thought this might be a decent thing to put up as an audio format. Anyway, I'm just thinking out loud now. All the best, love you all, bye bye.