How one border shaped another. Polish volunteers on the parallels in refugee aid

When Kraków-based group organizer Karol Wilczyński of the solidarity NGO Grupa Granica heard that the struggle in Ukraine had begun, he already knew who he might name on.

A few yr prior, Wilczyński had spent weeks in Poland’s Bialowezia area serving to refugees with the nation’s largest actors – Maja Ostaszewska, Marek Kalita, Mateusz Janicki, and Aleksandra Popławska to call just some. They had been a part of the identical group, visiting individuals in detention and attempting to forestall migrants from being pushed again to Belarus. It was a harrowing and a life-changing expertise, one the place you needed to depend on the individuals there with you.

By January of 2022, Wilczyński and different activists felt that the majority of their work was accomplished. Migrant visitors by way of Belarus had slowed after a collection of behind-the-scenes diplomatic negotiations. Humanitarian help factors on the Poland-Belarus border had been right down to solely three. Wilczyński returned to Southern Poland.

He was pivoting again in the direction of his media profession, educating programs on Islamophobia at Jagiellonian College, and writing about migration crises elsewhere. The worst of it in Poland was over, he figured. Time for enterprise as traditional.

Weeks handed, and struggle returned to Europe. A whole bunch of hundreds of Ukrainians had been on their technique to Kraków from the border, solely 4 hours away.

Classes realized

Wilczyński nonetheless had a bunch chat going with the movie stars. He dropped them a message, and everybody set to work. Six hours later, Kraków’s nineteenth century Słowacki theatre was remodeled right into a shelter that would match 120. Ladies and children slept in cots within the rehearsal room – not removed from the grandeur of the auditorium, with its pink velvet curtains and three-and-half metre chandelier.

Wilczyński says it’s “the extent of belief” between him and the celebrities from their time within the forest that allowed them to maneuver in unison. “With out this connection, we wouldn’t have this constructing. And with out this constructing, we couldn’t arrange a shelter and act so rapidly.”

Tales abound in Poland of those sorts of classes realized. A chef, who had as soon as made mason jars stuffed with soup for migrants on the border with Belarus, fired up the range yet one more time. Activists referred to as cellphone numbers already gathered on Google Varieties after the 2021 fall of Afghanistan of individuals able to welcome somebody into their residence. Workshops designed to coach new volunteers about assist somebody in shock or a sufferer of sexual assault had been able to repeat. And communication methods had been refocused simply in time for the size of operations to blow up.

Kalina Czwarnóg is a board member of the Ocalenie Basis, which helps refugees and immigrants begin life in Poland. She says that originally of the disaster on the Belarusian border, the flood of curiosity from supporters “actually bit us in our bums.”

“We had so many calls with everybody asking, ‘how can I assist? What ought to I do? I’ll ship you this, I gives you that,” she remembers. “And it wasn’t serving to. As a result of we had been on this hell.”

Double discourse

When the struggle in Ukraine started, there was an exponentially greater pool of Poles racing to assist. However this time, her organisation was ready. “We had been very clearly speaking what’s wanted. The place. Who to name, the place to go, who to speak with. So it made our work simpler – and it made it simpler for individuals who needed to get entangled.”

Czwarnóg is usually confronted with similarities between the work that she did at each borders. She remembers the primary weeks of the invasion as she drove to Korczowa, a Polish border village of lower than 600 individuals. All of a sudden, a warehouse on the outskirts of city had change into a refuge for hundreds of people that had simply fled the nation subsequent door – every exhausted and determining their subsequent transfer. When Czwarnóg opened the door to the commercial area, she was transported to the crunching leaves and petrichor of the Białowieża Forest, by a well-known scent within the air. “It’s exhausting to explain…however I imagine it’s concern,” she says. “The individuals had been in such completely different circumstances, but it surely struck me – it was the identical.”

However the reactions to her arrival couldn’t have been additional aside. All of a sudden, as a substitute of chasing her away or treating her like a legal, officers with the Polish border guard had been clocking her ID and asking how they may assist. “I felt virtually schizophrenic,” she says. “You understand, I’m in the identical nation – speaking to the identical individuals – and I couldn’t imagine how completely different it was.”

Whereas the Polish state was fast to embrace Ukrainian victims of struggle, it was actively hostile to refugees coming from the Center East and Africa by way of Poland’s northeastern border with Belarus. And though public opinion was extra nuanced, the identical contrasts had been nonetheless seen: For the community of activists who discovered themselves serving to save lives at each borders, the general public response has include some whiplash, a not-so-small quantity of irony. In any case, a lot of what they realized about sort out this newest humanitarian catastrophe got here from combating the authorities within the final one.

“The forest can suck you in and never let go,” says Czwarnóg. It may be straightforward to get right into a saviour mindset as you go to sleep, she explains. Why must you be in such a comfy, heat mattress, when others are dying on damp leaves because the snow falls? Isn’t it higher to forgo meals, forgo sleep, when somebody on the market most likely wants your assist proper now? “It’s a really damaging mind-set.” As a result of Czwarnóg knew about these dangers, she additionally might advise on handle them. When the invasion of Ukraine started, the Ocalenie Basis introduced on new employees and volunteers – lots of them Ukrainian themselves. Psychological well being was prime of thoughts. The muse offered group and solo counselling for the brand new recruits, and superior coaching to assist them anticipate tough feelings.

Unsure future

What was completely different was the size of the disaster: individuals fleeing to Poland within the tens of millions, moderately than hundreds. That has pressured native organisations to develop in methods they didn’t plan for.

For greater than ten years, Anna Dąbrowska has been working a neighborhood organisation in Lublin referred to as Homo Faber that focuses on refugee and migrant integration. After February twenty fourth, budgets turned greater and extra difficult. She went from a group of three to greater than 300 volunteers (as we speak, they’ve a workers of 62). Politicians swept in, in search of clout and credit score. In solely two months she had greater than 120 visits with NGOs from world wide.

Dąbrowska was assured that she knew her metropolis: she used these conferences to push for the issues Lublin would must be a welcoming place. She opposed copy-and-paste options from different crises, in favour of plans that used native data.

“I don’t wish to be part of their agenda, or have them resolve our issues for us,” she says. “We really feel we must be a frontrunner in these processes.”

Dąbrowska’s authority to deal with their sudden presence was partially, a results of these brokers’ prior absence. Lublin isn’t too removed from the Belarusian border, the place she had additionally volunteered. Worldwide help teams had been few and much between whereas Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenka despatched refugees from the World South in the direction of the EU’s borders – utilizing individuals as pawns in his personal geopolitical chess match. “We requested them for assist,” she says. “However nobody needed to be concerned due to the political causes.” Proper-wing president Andrzej Duda has referred to as the Polish volunteers there “fools and traitors”, and as just lately as September 2023, a 48-year-old humanitarian employee was criminally charged for her efforts to cease human rights abuses at that border.

To what extent the general public shares this disdain is tougher to pin down. On the peak of the refugee disaster flowing from Belarus, virtually three quarters of Poles supported humanitarians’ proper to assist individuals on the border. However Wilczyński says regardless of the numbers, his work there felt like a goal on his again – to the purpose the place he would even keep away from speaking in regards to the disaster in company conferences about range and inclusion.

The irony shouldn’t be misplaced on Wilczyński that whereas his work within the forest had been unpopular, the identical expertise, networks and instruments had been briefly essential in a Polish society keen to offer again to Ukraine. That’s altering now, too. Public assist in Poland for Ukrainians is waning, and the opposition coalition now in energy has not mentioned something substantial about reversing the outgoing authorities’s plans to halt help to Ukrainian refugees by 2024. However for some time, he says, “it was nice to not be lonely.”

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