When humanity collapses under the bombs, another kind of humanity emerges in gushes. Both among those who struggle to survive among the ruins of the world, and those who refuse to watch impassively the tragedy of their peers. And the latter abound in Medykaone of the border crossings Come in Poland and Ukraine. Michael G., a 39-year-old Norwegian military man who will lose his job if his superiors ever find out where he is, runs there as if his life depended on it. He pulls a cart full of blankets toward the Ukrainian side of the border, traversing the mile-long no man’s land that separates the two countries. “On the other side, people are cold, you see the fear on their faces, you have to hurry,” he says, urging another colleague who will help him distribute blankets and gloves among those fleeing the war.
In this border of Medyka everything has improved significantly in the last two weeks, say those who have been there since the beginning of the russian invasion. They don’t go out anymore refugees In a rush and as soon as they enter Poland, dozens of booths await them with clothes, hot food, medicines, therapists and tents with braziers to regain strength. “The first two weeks were pandemonium,” says Phillip A., a Polish man in his 20s who works for the International Organization for Migration. “Some 25,000 people crossed this border every day. Some arrived after walking 17 hours from Lviv. There were many cases of hypothermia because the night temperature could drop to 10 degrees below zero,” adds this corpulent young man who arrived from Warsaw.
The street where the border crossing ends is not very different from those that are created at the entrances of massive music festivals. But here there is no more music than the crying of a child and the roaring engine of the buses that take the Ukrainians to the shelters of the neighboring towns where they will spend the night, before being transferred to other Polish cities or other countries. More than 3.5 million people have already left Ukraine, in the fastest exodus since the WWII, the vast majority women and children. “Lately many are arriving from the east of the country, from the cities most affected by the bombing,” says Svetlana Santalova, a Ukrainian from kyiv who volunteered at the border after prolonging the war.
hugs and comfort
“Those who manage to get out under more or less normal circumstances breathe a sigh of relief when they get here. But others are very affected. They cry, they need hugs and comfort, and their state of mind is very different,” says this doctor of geography, employed until recently at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. Svetlana stresses that, although quite a few people continue to leave her country, more and more are entering. “Many are women who left their husbands struggling and want to be reunited with them. Others have realized how difficult it is to start a new life as refugees and have chosen to return to their families.”
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The small gestures of the anonymous people who wait for them on this kind of solidarity boulevard – where the big NGOs coexist with groups of volunteers from all over the world who improvise as they go – will not change their lives, but perhaps they will help them recover a certain faith in the human species. Gestures like that of the British kid who makes smiles hand out by handing out sweets or the pensioner from Extremadura who pushes an old woman’s wheelchair. Santiago Sanchez is called. He is 69 years old and arrived with a convoy of 10 vehicles, loaded with medicine and some food. “We have paid for everything ourselves,” he says now. “I don’t want to leave this world to my grandchildren. I want to contribute my grain of sand, no matter how small”, adds this volunteer. When they run out of material, they will take 30 Ukrainian refugees back to Spain.
The Ukrainian side of the border is somewhat less benign. There is not the humanitarian deployment there that exists on the Polish side. And tonight, the first month since the start of the war, some 200 people are waiting in line to enter communal Poland. The older ones wait sitting on beach chairs. A woman sleeps on the floor covered in blankets next to her dog. And, in the queue, standing up, a cloud of human beings resists the cold with the blankets that volunteers like Michael, the Norwegian soldier, have brought them. Everyone is out of danger now, but a uncertain future.