Warsaw man Pawel Jedral was in Ukraine visiting friends last month when Russia invaded. When he hurried home, he found horrified friends bringing food and nappies to fleeing Ukrainians on the eastern border.
Jedral went one step further: he secured an ambulance, packed it with medical supplies and drove it east. In the last two weeks, he has funded three further ambulances and taken them into Ukraine. On Friday afternoon the 31-year-old – a science researcher by profession – was still volunteering, one of the countless Poles who have aided more than two million Ukrainians on the run.
“It is heartbreaking and tough to see the all the destruction and such reckless hate unleashed on a place and people I know,” said Jedral. “I am proud of my country and people helping right now. But there is a lot of trauma here, too, and people feeling bad about things in the past.”
He means the Belarusian border crisis last year, when Minsk began funnelling people from Syria, Afghanistan and other countries towards the Polish border. Polish security services sealed off the region and, in some cases, illegally pushed back asylum seekers. At least 21 people died and Jedral spent six weeks in the freezing forest, trying to help.
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“It wasn’t illegal to help but our government was so strictly against it that people were afraid to assist,” he said.
The assistance this time around has been fast and uncomplicated: an eight billion zloty (€1.67 billion) fund for people fleeing Ukraine, allowing them access Polish healthcare, welfare allowances, labour market and schools. Anyone who takes in Ukrainians can also collect small state payments.
‘Culture of welcome’
Neighbouring Germany’s Süddeutsche daily was so impressed it praised Poland for its new “Willkommenskultur” – culture of welcome.
Germany coined that term back in the 2015-2016 refugee crisis, when the tone in Poland was very different. The centre-right Law and Justice (PiS) party fought that year’s general election, which it won, on a campaign instrumentalising the refugee crisis. At election rallies, PiS party chairman Jaroslaw Kaczynski warned that the fresh wave of migrants was bringing cholera and dysentery as well as “all sorts of parasites and protozoa”.
Seven years on, just last November, UN high commissioner for refugees Filippo Grandi criticised Poland for its “violent pushbacks and hitting of refugees and migrants” on the border to Belarus.
It was another story this week when he thanked Poland for its “generous welcome to refugees from Ukraine”.
Days earlier, Polish foreign minister Zbigniew Rau announced that “all refugees who come to the Polish-Ukrainian border will be accepted in Poland”. Visiting Warsaw this week, US vice-president Kamala Harris said the world was watching with wonder Poland’s “extraordinary acts of generosity and kindness”.
“We have seen through images on the television – looking at images of ordinary people doing extraordinary things in support of the dignity and the wellbeing of perfect strangers,” she said.
At their press conference Polish president Andrzej Duda said that even more impressive than the official response was how “ordinary Polish people feel in their hearts that they should extend a helping hand to the people in need”.
Close ties
Underpinning today’s aid effort are close historical, cultural and emotional ties between Poland and Ukraine; one million Ukrainians already lived in its western neighbour before the crisis.
Warsaw University sociologist Przemyslaw Sadura, who studied the Belarus border stand-off and is now analysing the refugee wave from the Ukraine-Russian war, says Poland is experiencing a reflexive “festival of solidarity”.
“But will this last,” he wonders, “when we realise that this is about millions of people who no longer have homes to return to and who are staying in Poland?”
Some ordinary Poles, even those volunteering, wonder whether their government values Ukrainian children more than Syrian children. Others fear the private generosity has camouflaged a lack of state preparedness. Without rapid intervention from Warsaw on housing – and a rapid refugee distribution deal at EU level – Poland’s finest hour may yet turn sour.
“People can be great heroes and generous for a week or two, or even a month,” said Pawel Jedral, just back from another trip to Ukraine. “Without more government help or adequate support systems, and there are not enough at present, people’s personal patience will run out quickly.”