PRZEMYSL RAILWAY STATION

 Przemysl is close to the Ukranian border and about 400,000 Ukranians have arrived  from Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion. They come mostly by train arriving in the station which has been converted into a crisis centre. It is a transit place only, providing immediate needs - food , clothes, medicines, maybe a shower and a night's sleep for an exhausted mother. This is where I have been working with many other volunteers and officials having moved on from Bielany. 

I have heard so many times, 'I can't believe this is happening in Europe in 2022' but believe it because it is happening and just like our forefathers in 1914 and 1939 we have to rise to the challenge - and the challenge is the threat to our very humanity, to our freedom and to the world we want for our children and grandchildren. People say nice things about what I am doing but in truth I am doing it because I can and because in different ways people have done the same for you and me in the past. I am as selfish as anyone, will be pleased to be home with my family soon and will continue to be a miserable old man so please don't be nice to me! 

Imagine you are a young mum, carrying a baby who is just three months old and with three other children under ten. You have spend weeks shielding in a basement from Russian armaments, with no electricity or sanitation, and little food and water. You have spent 5 days trying to get to safety crossing Ukraine into Poland, you have left your husband, your two brothers and your father behind to fight, your mother is too sick to travel. You have left your house and belongings - though the former is just rubble, the latter burnt, destroyed. The item you are most upset about is the loss of the family photograph album - your life story - images of great grandmother, grandmother, mother as a young girl, wedding photographs, baptisms, birthdays. This is not me imagining what it is like for those fleeing, this is me recounting some of the stories I have heard as I have held the hands and shaking shoulders of women whose pain eats into my heart. 

They come here to wait for where they go next - many to friends and relatives elsewhere in Europe and so having helped them with immediate needs we help them on to trains to other parts of Poland, and other, mostly European nations. My stomach sinks when few want to go to the UK because they say it's hard to get in there. While they wait we try to make them as comfortable as possible but this may often mean they are lying head to toe, shoulder to shoulder on blankets, with hundreds of others on the floor of the station. So I feel that the very least I can do between changeovers is to make sure the floor they will sleep on tonight is clean! And of course they also come with their pets!