Philly ex-pat in Poland: Volunteers and kindness alone can’t find beds for more than a million Ukrainian refugees | Opinion

WARSAW – Amid the frantic rush of commuters and the long lines of exhausted-looking refugees that wound outside of the money-exchange counters in Warsaw’s central metro station Monday, one woman stood out.

She wore a backpack and clutched two black bags in one hand, while staring intently at a map on her phone. Her other arm was wrapped around her son, a 10-year-old boy with a large puffy jacket who stared vacantly into the bustling station.

I asked her what she needed, thinking it would be as simple as directions to the bus stop.

“A night,” she pleaded. “Just one night to sleep.”

I took her plea to Facebook, where I’m a member of several groups organized over the last week to connect locals with refugees who need help. The response was immediate: Three people offered up bedrooms and couches. I picked the best (and what I hoped was the safest) offer — a young woman with a spare bedroom in a nice part of the city — and agreed to escort the woman, who told me her name is Natalia, and her son. On the hour-long bus ride, she explained the dire reality for people who are escaping Ukraine as Russian troops attack the country.

“Trains are packed,” she explained through Google translate, which was our main mode of communication because she speaks Ukrainian and Russian and I speak only English. “There are so many people.”

“A night. ... Just one night to sleep.”

Natalia (she didn’t tell me her last name) is not alone in her search for a night or two nights’ stay. Since the war broke out just two weeks ago, Ukrainians fleeing the bombings and gunfire have been forced to leave behind their homes, jobs, lives, and — in many cases — their fathers, brothers, and husbands who have been ordered to stay and fight.

In that time, Ukrainians have poured into neighboring Poland, with thousands of people taking trains every day into places like Warsaw, the country’s capital city.

Warsaw is not the only city feeling the effects — the influx of Ukrainian refugees has been evident throughout the country, especially in its major cities. On Sunday, the number of refugees who have entered Poland since the war began surpassed one million, according to the local news source Notes from Poland.

As more and more people seek refuge here, the demand for shelter, food, and transportation — especially in major cities like Warsaw — has skyrocketed. But the response on the ground is still overwhelmingly local and grassroots.

For many people, the effort has grown via word of mouth as more and more refugees come through the city’s high-trafficked bus and train stations. Like others living in Warsaw, I saw the influx of refugees in the days after the invasion and talked to friends, who shared some of the Facebook groups with me. After seeing the need and the desperate pleas for help, I became invested in not only checking the groups every day but going to the train station with food, toiletries, and medicine. Many of those groups have doubled or tripled in followers over the last week, as people around Warsaw join the effort to help.

But as the crisis continues to grow, one thing is becoming clear: This is not something local residents can continue to do alone.

After dropping Natalia and her son off at the volunteer’s apartment, I scrolled through the Facebook pages on my phone, where I found hundreds of posts just like my own.

“We adopted a Ukrainian with two children. … They have no one in Poland who could help them. They escaped from the fire, they tell terrifying stories about what the Russians are doing,” one frantic post read, adding that they can’t host the family much longer. “Does anyone know someone who can give them shelter?”

“Urgent!! Accommodation needed for two mothers and two children from Ukraine. ... Please help me!!” read another.

In the train stations, the sense of panic and desperation is similar — and palpable. Warsaw Centralna, the city’s main train station, has been packed with people every day, sleeping or resting on the floors, waiting for food and shelter.

Volunteers — some of whom are just residents trying to help, and others who are with small, local organizations — struggle to gather enough fruit, sandwiches, shampoo, and medicine to accommodate each new wave of refugees on the train. On Tuesday I saw Ukrainian mothers pushing babies in strollers as they tried to pick over empty boxes that once held apples. Others waited patiently for the medic station to try to find gauze.

Every post on Facebook receives dozens of replies from volunteers promising to bring sandwiches or medicine, or offering shelter for a few nights.

As much as locals try to accommodate, it’s time for major organizations like the Red Cross or USAID to step in and help in the train and bus stations of Poland’s major cities.

Currently, both organizations are providing lifesaving support for refugees at the border, and have online sites offering support for Ukrainians as they relocate to Poland.

But the simple truth is that the need for help like food, housing, and transportation has now exceeded what’s currently available. Refugees coming into Poland’s major cities shouldn’t be forced to rely on the kindness of strangers for basic needs, especially when so many have young children in tow.

“It’s time for major organizations like the Red Cross or USAID to step in ... in Poland’s major cities.”

The Polish government should be providing more help for refugees in Warsaw. Elected leaders have come under increased scrutiny in recent days as some Poles argue they are doing little in the way of support, while taking credit for local, grassroots efforts, according to Notes from Poland editor Daniel Tilles.

That’s all the more reason for the Red Cross and USAID to move beyond the border to provide aid in cities where the government may not be pulling its full weight.

As the situation intensifies, we need those outside organizations to step in on the ground. Volunteers and refugees need people who speak Ukrainian physically in the city’s stations, guiding refugees to shelter; we need trucks of medical supplies and food to meet the trains full of refugees that enter the stations every few hours.

Plainly put, we should not be asking locals to provide most of the food, housing, and transportation because, try as they might, average citizens cannot meet the massive demand alone. And it’s the Ukrainian refugees who end up suffering.

Anna Merriman is a freelance journalist and the former editor of Curbed Philly. She currently lives in Warsaw with her husband, a professor at SWPS University, and their cat, Bubbles.