Igor Horkow, head of Ukrainian House in Przemysl, Poland, stands in the kitchen with Maiia Horelkina, a refugee from Kyiv, and her daughter.Photos by Anna Liminowicz/The Globe and Mail
Pawel Sanocki never imagined he’d still be housing Ukrainian refugees in the office area of his trucking company in Radymno, Poland, near the Ukraine border, four months after The Globe and Mail first reported on his shelter.
“We didn’t expect to be doing this for so long,” Mr. Sanocki said this week as he sat at a small table near the front door of his family-owned business, set along a busy street in an industrial area of the city.
Mr. Sanocki and his wife, Ewelina, began taking in refugee families just after Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, when tens of thousands of Ukrainians began streaming over the border seeking safety. “It was so very emotional,” he recalled. “We saw people carrying one bag, all of their possessions in one bag.”
Pawel Sanocki and his wife Ewelina Sanocka sit in front of their family transportation company in Radymno, Poland.
The couple quickly transformed the small office area above a repair shop into living quarters for around a dozen people. They put in a microwave, a fridge, nine beds, a washing machine and shelves loaded with food. Most refugee families stayed a day or two, and the couple often helped people find transportation to Germany, Italy and beyond.
Many refugees who spent time at the shelter say the Sanockis’ help was life-saving. Ruzhena Aksamitovskaya spent several days in the office area in early March with her mother and two children. They arrived from Kyiv and wanted to move on to Berlin where the family had relatives, but didn’t know how to arrange transportation. Mr. Sanocki managed to get them a last-minute bus ride to Germany.
“We fell in love with him and his family very much in this short time, and Pawel and his family saw us off, he almost burst into tears and was upset that we were leaving. It was very touching,” Ms. Aksamitovskaya said in an e-mail.
Mr. Sanocki said he’s become close to dozens of refugees over the past few months and many keep in regular contact. Running the small shelter has also changed his outlook on life.
“Before the war, we didn’t live correctly,” he said. “We only thought about work, work, work. Now, I don’t care about more money in our bank account,” he said. “This has changed the way I look at life. I am a rich person now.”
Schools across Poland strained as they struggle to cope with influx of Ukrainian refugee students
But the strain of caring for so many people and bearing all the associated costs began to take its toll. The trucking business suffered and the Sanockis’ two daughters – aged 14 and nine – felt neglected. The couple nearly shut down the shelter in March, but they managed to keep it going thanks to donations from a pair of Canadians – identified simply as “Brent and George” – who read about Mr. Sanocki in The Globe and Mail. “If they didn’t help us, for sure we would have closed,” he said.
In May, they got an even bigger lift when workers from a U.S. charity called Core Response, founded by actor Sean Penn, showed up and started covering the Sanockis’ monthly costs for the shelter, which run to around $83,000.
Yana Bielienkina, left, Ewelina Sanocka and Maria Fedechko share a moment in the kitchen at Ms. Sanocka’s shelter.
Maria Fedechko gives her grandson Jaroslav Stoianov a bath at Pawel Sanocki’s shelter.
The financial support has allowed the couple to keep the shelter going. They’ve also been able to buy new furniture, beds and appliances. An Israeli charity also helped install a children’s play area in the company parking lot, and the Sanockis have grown a small collection of plants, which refugee families tend regularly.
The pace of the shelter has slowed considerably, and they now rely largely on word-of-mouth for refugees looking for temporary help. “People know someone and they get in touch with us,” Mr. Sanocki said. About nine women and children were staying in the shelter on Tuesday, and Mr. Sanocki estimated that around 300 people had passed through the shelter since the end of February.
The Sanockis’ shelter is one of the few still operating in Radymno and nearby Przemysl, the closet Polish cities to the Ukrainian border. While Poles generously opened their arms and homes to Ukrainians in the first few weeks of the war, the support has begun to wane.
Przemysl had more than half a dozen shelters in schools and other civic buildings when the war started. Most have since closed, and the largest shelter, in a vacant supermarket on the edge of town, is expected to shut soon. A government-reception centre for Ukrainian refugees at the Przemysl train station is also slated to close this month. Offers of free transportation to cities across Europe, which was common in February and March, has also all but dried up, leaving many new refugee arrivals struggling to come up with the cash to move on.
“Many of them just buy a ticket back to Ukraine,” said Maksym Nakonieczny, a regular volunteer at the train station. “The worst is when they show up without enough money to go anywhere or return home.”
The train station in Przemysl, Poland, once jammed with refugees arriving from Ukraine has grown largely quiet.
While the number of Ukrainians coming across the Polish border has dropped to around 20,000 per day – less than half the number of crossings in early March – refugees entering Poland now often come from the most war-torn parts of Ukraine. “Now, the stories are the hardest,” said Igor Horkow, who heads Ukrainian House in Przemysl. “When the need is the greatest, the support is ending.”
Ukrainian House manages one of the few shelters still operating in the city. It has around 50 beds, and some refugees have been living at the cultural centre for a month.
Mr. Horkow said volunteers have been dealing with far more difficult cases, including a woman with a substance abuse disorder. Volunteers also had to counsel a 16-year-old girl whose mother died a week after arriving at the shelter from Donbas in eastern Ukraine. The daughter “wanted to go home to spread her mother’s ashes, but we said it’s too dangerous,” Mr. Horkow said.
In Radymno, Mr. Sanocki said another growing problem has been employers exploiting refugees. A couple of women who lived at the shelter recently left to work in a packaging plant in another part of Poland, he said. But they plan to return to the shelter this month because the employer paid them less than other workers and didn’t give them employment contracts. Refugees “work more and receive less money,” he said.
He continues to try to find refugees proper jobs and accommodation, and often offers to pay their rent. But both employment and housing are growing scarce in the area and locals have become more wary of the increasing number of Ukrainians in the community.
Around 2,000 refugees continue to arrive every day at the Przemysl train station, according to Mr. Horkow, but there is far less support for them. “Most people have lost their home, everything. They really need help,” he said.
Andrii and Olena Tsebenko with four-month old Vira in Przemysl, Poland.
Our Morning Update and Evening Update newsletters are written by Globe editors, giving you a concise summary of the day’s most important headlines. Sign up today.