The Refugee Madonna: One week with Ukrainian refugees

After several days of war, watching the devastating news from Ukraine became unbearable. The sheer cruelty of unprovoked invasion, the mounting civilian casualties, the images… As anybody who grew up in the Soviet Union, I listened to a fair share of war stories, so I could not but see the eerie resemblance to that other war, when in 1941 another deranged tyrant attacked Ukraine before dawn, bombed Kyiv, and sent his well-equipped soldiers to murder and pillage. But, at a personal level, the most infuriating was the helplessness: we can watch everything today almost in live time - yet do nothing. All these air carriers and transcontinental missiles and other sophisticated war machines we pay for with our taxes to equip Western armies somehow did not deter the dictator-gone-mad, and Ukrainians are left alone to resist. It was this helplessness in the face of tremendous suffering that pushed me to act. I took a week off work, hopped on a plane, rented a minivan, and helped to drive Ukrainian refugees for a week around Poland and Germany, from refugee centers at the Ukrainian border to other destinations. What follows are some notes typed on my phone following each ride.

March 9

On the KLM plane to Amsterdam, then Berlin

The plane is half empty: apparently, few Americans feel like flying to Europe right now. Oddly, the familiar sensation of travel, that of anticipating some sort of joyful or at least interesting adventure, pops up now and then. Looking at the flight map and seeing Ukraine there, one wonders how come the map doesn’t reflect the horror, the suffering, the ordeal. Ukraine looks precisely like Denmark there. 

The plane entertainment system suggests places to visit in Amsterdam. One of them is Anne Frank’s house. “Anne Frank is a hugely famous figure from World War Two.” Indeed…

March 10

Hartha, Saxony, Germany

The network of thousands of ordinary people all around Europe and the US created to support Ukrainians is amazing. In a matter of days, an organization of extraordinary efficiency sprang up. It is way more efficient than all private companies, government organizations, and armies I’ve ever known - and I’ve known quite a few. A request to get a family from point A to point B, to provide supplies, etc. are handled in minutes. Volunteer drivers sometimes exceed the demand - even though not always, of course. Funds get transferred, food purchased and delivered, houses open to refugee families… I’ve always been skeptical about anarchism, yet now I might need to admit that I was wrong all along. 

My wonderful hosts in Hartha, Olga and Michael, are both Russian emigrees. One of the more active nodes of this network, they coordinate help for refugees every evening, spending their weekends driving them around. 

This war, as, perhaps, so many other wars, shows how many people are unquestionably evil and how many are mighty good. Dostoyevsky, when he complained about human soul being too wide and capable of both a supreme good and abysmal evil was right. Most unfortunately. 

March 11

Hartha, Germany - Tarnów, Poland

The highway is full of trucks driving East. Thousands of them. Many carry blue and yellow signs like “Help for Ukraine” and “Stop the war!” Hundreds of minivans going to the border to transport refugees West, quite a few from as far as Holland. I caught myself hoping that not only feed and medicine but also powerful lethal weapons and ammo are being carried to Ukraine, so they can keep resisting the aggressor. 

Wroclaw, a beyond-lovely medieval city in West Poland though which I am passing on my way to the refugee center in Przemysl, has Ukrainian flags, fuck Putin, messages of solidarity and even Русский корабль, или нахуй! (Russian ship, go fuck yourself!) signs all over the place. Russian and Ukrainian are heard more than Polish, it seems - some refugees, apparently, made it there. The war though seems far away - old narrow streets, beautiful architecture, everything so endearingly European - and yet the war is on every person’s mind. Wroclaw was part of those “core German lands” that Stalin “gave to Poland,” as Putin mentioned in his delusional speech on the eve of the invasion; I wouldn’t put it past the new Führer to try and partition Poland again.  

March 12

Prszemysl, Poland

The refugee center in Przemysl. Endless stream of Ukrainian refugees coming here straight from the border. Some with their dogs, few had managed to pack up a bag or two. Others have small backpacks - and that’s it. Some have nothing but the clothes they wear. The center is full of well-minding volunteers from all over the world but is certainly mismanaged. Plenty of food for people and pets, medical care, lots of security- yet no showers to speak of available, chemical toilets outside, folding beds that are less than a foot apart from each other. It’s a former shopping center converted to a temporary shelter. Each store space is a room with people who know where they want to go: Norway, Portugal, Poland, Germany… These are for those refugees who are lucky enough to have friends or family somewhere and are just waiting for transportation. Huge space in the middle is for people who have no idea. Laying in beds with despair in their eyes. Grannies, kids... 

One persistently circulating rumor is that if they ask for asylum in Europe and receive some aid, they will not be allowed to return to Ukraine for a long time, months or even years. As a result, many refuse offers to go to Germany and try to find any options in Poland, which is close to the border. Other rumors are more hopeful – for example, those of Putin having a terminable cancer.

A young lady who volunteered to guide newcomers. I tell her that I’m a driver and can take her anywhere. “Can you take me to back Ukraine?” - she asks, her eyes flushing with longing, as desperate as unreal at the moment. 

Well-meaning Germans flock the refugee center, holding homemade posters offering transportation to Germany and stay in their homes. One of the things that make my optimism regarding human nature go up. A counterbalance to Dostoyevsky’s evil end of the human moral spectrum. Would it be strong enough?

Przemysl - Stalowa Wola, Poland

A kindly person from the town of Stalowa Wola, or Steel Freedom, a town of steel workers, apparently, comes and offers a shelter for a family in his apartment. The takes - a family from Kharkiv, eastern Ukraine, where my grandmother grew up She fled the city in 1941, saving my four year old future dad from the advancing Nazis.

A mother, two little kids, perhaps two and four years old. Two young women, a computer science freshman and a recent pharmacy graduate, her nieces. The little kids seem to have adjusted to the refugee center after being there for a couple of days, cheerfully running around, chewing candy offered by the volunteers. The young ladies are visibly in shock.

They all had spent a week in a moldy basement, hiding from the Russian bombs and missiles. During a short quiet they ran to the railway station, boarded an evacuation train with twelve people on one compartment, and went West. Then they arrived at the border. The woman’s husband stayed behind - men between eighteen and sixty are not allowed to leave Ukraine. The young ladies’ father stayed too. And their mother - she refused to leave her husband alone. 

The cheerful four years old points a candy at me, pretending it’s a gun. I fake being shot in the heart. The mother screams at him: you don’t shoot at people, even in pretend. She’s on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and it’s a miracle that she’s still holding on. 

During the ride, the young ladies struggle to talk. All what they want is to get some sleep - it was impossible in the refugee center. The only time they manage to squeeze a smile is when they hear me talk to their Polish host, trying to muster whatever Ukrainian I have and then turn it into what I consider sounding Polish.  

When we arrive in two separate cars, I ask the mother what their future plans are. She has no idea. 

 

Przemysl - Warsaw, Poland

A family of five from Poltava region. Well-established farmers. Two mothers, a girl of seven or so, a boy a bit older, and a teenager some seven feet tall. They've just arrived and registered, looking around, and feeling deeply uncomfortable. Self-reliant people who are not used to rely on the kindness of strangers, which is the core of refugee experience.

They get into my rental minivan together with another woman whom I will later bring to the town of Kalisz, further from Warsaw. Soon we are on the way, driving north, going through one Polish town  after another. The teenager is extremely curious, intellectual, and a big fan of art - every mildly interesting building cause quite an excitement. They fled right after the bombing of their place started. Full of energy and belief in the Ukrainian army and president Zelenskyy, happy they'd voted for him. Husbands stayed in Ukraine, apparently resisting the aggression. It is interesting that nobody wants to talk openly about their husbands fighting, even though it’s clear from various hints that that’s what they are doing. The temperament, the accent, the industriousness, and the fighting spirit remind me my wife’s family, from Ukraine too. They have a friend in Warsaw, and that’s where they are going.

As we move close to Warsaw on the five and a half hours ride, the talk switches to where they can find work immediately. They need to feed the kids, and they don’t want to be parasites. The teen is being lectured on how they need to work and help the country that is so kind to give them shelter. Not that he says anything against that, but still. 

When we arrive and the friend greet the family outside, I look at the building where she lives. I can’t imagine it has an apartment that can house them all…

Warsaw - Kalisz, Poland

My last passenger is a refugee from a village close to the city of Zaporizhzhya. Well, not exactly a refugee. She’s been living and working in Poland for a year or so. When the war started, she went back, to try and convince her nineteen-year-old daughter to leave with her. The daughter refused - the guy she’s in love with is staying, since Ukraine doesn’t allow people of military age to leave.  As the night drive progressed, she shared more. She actually got caught in the Russian-occupied territories. She pities both Ukrainian and Russian soldiers. She saw Russian tanks and other war machines and was quite impressed. The peasants in the region differ on the question of the occupation. Some are hoping that becoming part of Russia will bring them cheaper natural gas and the prospect of better trade with Moscow. She noted that the Ukrainian soldiers blew up a bridge and rail tracks to stop the enemy advance, and that they were firing in the Russian forces from a village - which the Russians raised in response. She met people who were just trying to live their lives, and noted that the Russians did not kill “simple people” just out of the blue in the streets – a criterion that seems rather low. Her attempts to make her interlocutors aware that the Russian can imprison and torture them if they open their mouths didn’t cause much steer. People are just trying to live their lives in very trying circumstances. 

This sort of view is sometimes called more nuanced. I always wondered why – it is not nuance it demonstrates but a different focus, on survival rather than on civic virtues. As somebody raised in the USSR on a steady diet of World War Two novels and movies, I could not but notice that this is pretty much the exact talk of people who had to live under the Nazi occupation and survive somehow, trying to make if not the most, then the precious little out of it. And who can kick them for that?

One observation she makes is quite striking in its obviousness. How come, she asks, a person who steals something goes to jail, while those who start wars get away scot-free? Indeed…

 

March 13

Kalisz, Poland

After crashing in the first hotel I found at 2AM and getting some sleep, I am sitting in a lovely little café called Kaliszfornia, a name that is the epitome of the evergreen cuteness of sophistication-light. The glass veranda is looking over a lovely and impeccably preserved medieval plaza, with those charming old European buildings and such. The whole town is all breathing the old Europe, parades it’s Europeanness. It is somewhat tarnished by the grim looking old Soviet buildings that surround the proudly European center, but Europe is the past the town chooses in hopes to get the future it wants. Pigeons fly around looking for crumbs, kids playing, couples kissing.  An idyllic picture indeed, all peace and quiet. 

Is the violent tragedy taking place next door a premonition of what to come here as well? This little town had known its share of world wars in the last century. What happens next?

My next charge I’m picking up in Wrocław, another charming very European city. 

March 13

Wrocław, Poland - Hartha, Germany

A refugee from Kyiv. Katya, a young lady, my older daughter’s age more or less, an accountant. When the war started, it came quite close right away: Kyiv was one of the first targets, just like for the Nazis in 1941. She thought to stay it out, yet the bombing became intense, and Bucha, rather close to her place, was demolished by the aspiring empire. She failed to convince her mother to leave with her and left Kyiv alone with a couple of bags. It took her twenty-seven hours to cross the border to Poland. Then she went to Krakow, from there - to her friends in Wrocław. Young Ukrainians frequently have friends and colleagues in other European countries, differently from those older ones who are laying on the folding beds in the Przemysl refugee center, not knowing where to go. Now I was taking her to Germany, to stay with the unfailingly kind Olga and Michael who coordinates more of the help to refugees and humanitarian aid than you typical government agency. 

Young and educated, the new generation of Ukrainians not handicapped by the Soviet rubbish, she is horrified by the prospect of being part of Putin’s empire. This is her first visit abroad, she is extremely curious. Her cheerful nature struggles against the grim reality, with the disappearance of her colleague in besieged Mariupol, with checking on her friends every day - to make sure they are alive. Hope the cheerful nature wins. For meanwhile, the sound of airplanes startles her, not to mention sirens.

March 14

Korczowa, Poland

I see a cry for help on Facebook from an old friend in the Resistance (remember Trump?): her friend has relatives in Ukraine who are trying to escape. They managed to get to Lviv and are heading to Poland, anywhere in Poland. They know somebody in Hannover, Germany, who’s ready to host them. I budge in, suggesting that I can help them out. 

Two mothers, two kids - a seventeen-year-old and a four year old. First, they were told they were going to board a bus to Warsaw. Then, to Bydgoszcz, in north-western Poland. Then they got into a bus and were told it would be Warsaw again. Then, when they were already on the bus, they were informed they were heading to Korczowa refugee center. All the while, talking to them, I’m making my way from Hartha, Germany, where I was given bed and board and emotional support and coordination by the wonderful activists, to the Przemysl refugee center. Korczowa is some twenty miles away. The most resourceful volunteer organizer at Przemysl arranges for a bed for me in a pilgrims' hostel and helps me out with making sure my refugees du jour will be welcome there too. 

I pick them up in Korczowa. Besides humans, there is an adorable yorkie. They are tired as hell, all of them, including the doggie. 

March 15

Korczowa, Poland - Dresden, Germany

A seven hour drive aimed at putting the refugees on a train to Hannover. While the landscapes of southern Poland roll by, I listen to their story. 

The mothers are close friends and business partners. They’d opened their own barber shop right before the war. Then the shelling started - their city was one of the hardest hit. The mother of the four-year-old had a shell going through the roof of her house. Then they decided to flee. 

That was a brave decision: getting out of the city was extremely dangerous, perhaps, as dangerous as staying. Fighting was going all over the place, with Russian troops trying to capture the city and, frustrated by the fierce and effective Ukrainian resistance, bombing it to the ground. A man coming to rescue his sister who refused to leave offered to drive them to Kyiv, from where they would catch an evacuation train to Lviv. The first attempt was frustrated by bombing. The second too. On their third attempt, they advanced quite far from the city and got very close to actual fighting. Ukrainian military approached them with a warning. They’d just destroyed a Russian armor column, yet those soldiers who survived ran away to the woods and were shooting at refugee cars. The story was quite believable, and they turned back. Those few who didn’t turn back and survived told them later that they saw cars riddled by bullets and bodies strewn all around on their way. They saw them too on their fourth, successful attempt to get out.

The four-year-old is a lovely little fellow, communicative, curious, very active. Pretty much that child from the travel-with-kids stories. I give him a soft toy, snow owl; I’d equipped myself with few of those before going to Poland. He immediately calls it a parrot. They had a parrot before. When the shell hit, the house trembled. The parrot’s cage fell down and broke apart, and the bird escaped. Lucky parrot.  

The seventeen-year-old had been just accepted at a police college - they have police colleges, with bachelor’s and master’s degrees, in Ukraine. Then Russia attacked. Some of her classmates have already been killed fighting off the invaders. Her boyfriend, while not drafted, could not leave nevertheless - he’s almost eighteen. 

We pass near Krakow airport in Poland. A plane is making a landing approach. Suddenly, the mother of the four-year-old makes a shrill cry: an airplane! Everybody is startled. I’m the only one in that car who still thinks airplanes mean travel, not death and destruction. 

The yorkie, as any of his kind, is endlessly cute and handles the road very well. His mummy loves him to pieces. They also had a cat, a stray they’d picked up on a street. Few days before the war the cat got sick and was hospitalized in a veterinary clinic. A special one outside town, where cats are also offered a period of convalescence after the main procedures have been performed. Yes, being a Ukrainian cat before the war is something we all should consider in the next life… Before the war. When the invasion commenced, the clinic called and asked to pick up the cat. They couldn’t, as it was impossible to approach the village where the cat sanitarium was located - there was intense fighting going on between that village and their city.

We discuss other things, of course. Trying to behave normally. But several times on that ride I bite my lips not to cry - this would certainly interfere with my already diminished ability to focus on the road. 

My favorite painting is Rafael’s Sistine Madonna. I saw her once in Dresden’s Altmeister gallery, and it left an impression stronger than any other attempt to put oil to canvas. Copies do not do it justice, the real thing is so different that it must be seen to begin to understand its message. Specifically, Madonna’s eyes get lost in the copying process, no matter the medium.

I’d been planning to see the Sistine Madonna with a dear friend of mine who lives in Holland. I’ve known him since the first day of the first grade in elementary school. A man of fine soul and formidable mind, PhD in theology, he would have a lot to say about Madonna. Alas, this didn’t work out. But then I realized something: I already saw Madonna. I drove her from Przemysl to Dresden, with her four-year-old little boy. Clutching him to her chest, taking him far away from home to save him from Russian bombs. Same world, same motherhood, same eyes.