Beyond political divisions

Having spent over half a year in war-torn Ukraine rather than in peaceful Poland, one could notice with some delay the bond, which is no longer Ukrainian-Polish, but Polish-Ukrainian, the one in the native land. In a provincial town, in a district town, in a commune town – everywhere there are Poles who are still committed to helping refugees; their personal involvement and thoughts continue to revolve around this ominous invasion.

Janusz Wielgosz, vice-chairman of the Czarnków Municipality Council, is bringing women from Ukraine to a meeting in tiny town Trzcianka. Where are you from? From Kiev, from Zaporozhye… The latter city is rained upon every night by several dozen rockets, which hit houses, backyards, sometimes also residential buildings; several dozen people die there every night. The sizable regional city of 700,000 people, which looks across the vast Dnipro River to its nuclear power plant in Enerhodar, was therefore also present in the talks in Trzcianka in Wielkopolska. Yet the town’s mayor, Krzysztof Wojciech Jaworski, also involved in helping refugees, was there at a meeting on the war in Ukraine. Among those there were Krzysztof Jacek Oswiecimski, the mayor of the municipality of Miasteczko Krajeńskie, or the deputy mayor of the municipality of Czarnków Monika Piotrowska, the parish priest Zbigniew Cybulski MS and the spiritus movens of local culture, the discussion leader, Włodzimierz Ignasiński.

When the topic of support for the victims of the Russian invasion is raised in Poland, political or character differences disappear – local activists of the Młodzież Wszechpolska (All-Polish Youth) also appeared among the participants in the discussion on the war. It would be hard to find a more meaningful picture to illustrate how much we are all affected by this horror in the east. There, within the walls of the Social Integration Centre, was the entire Poland in miniature – schoolchildren, students, pensioners, university lecturers, local government officials. When you hear „war” in Poland, you are awakened by a cultural code shared with everyone living around you.

When Arkadiusz Kubich, deputy mayor of Piła, wanted to share news from the front with a waitress, it looked rather strange at first. „Ask where she is from”, „Where are you from?” The woman answers first with tears, then with one word: „Bachmut”. It is as if, in the autumn of 1942, you were talking to someone who comes from Stalingrad – this Donbass city, formerly 100,000-strong, is now the object of furious attacks by the Russian army, which has already approached the borders of the village, showering it with hundreds of artillery shells every day.

„Is your house still there?”

— we force ourselves to ask some kind of caring question, although in this war one fears to ask anything.

„Yes, praise God”

— she replies, but look what that means in detail:

„I mean the roof is gone and the back has been blown off, but the rest is fine”

— says the Ukrainian woman through her glazed eyes. We saw similar eyes in the participants at the meeting in Piła, which was also attended by listeners of the Third Age University there.

But this is perhaps quite understandable – anyone familiar with Polish war literature listens to War 2022 as if they knew it from elsewhere. Even the talks about the war to schoolchildren were full of mature insight. After all, most of the listeners at such a School Complex on Teatralna Street in Piła consisted of students in uniform – military, police and firefighters. A conversation about the wartime sacrifice of Ukrainian youths with Polish students, who are, after all, being prepared for analogous tasks – defence of the country or the civilian population – made an electrifying impression. From a uniformed environment in the trenches to a uniformed environment in a Polish school? May these two worlds continue to be separated by a clear border of peace. The audience also included Ukrainian youngsters! At the Trzcianka Secondary School, we talked about how these times of MacDonald’s and Netflix seem to be brighter and safer, and yet, not far from us, crimes like those from the worst pages of human history are taking place.

And yet this war has been going on for so long! The world has grown tired of it after just one month, and so have we. Three million refugees, the consequences for Europe’s energy industry, arming ourselves to the hilt to avoid a Ukrainian scenario, sending weapons and humanitarian aid to the frontline. And yet our nation is helping like no other – across political, generational and professional divisions. Perhaps the organiser of the meetings, Adam Bogrycewicz, accidentally discovered and demonstrated in practice that all Poles can shake hands with one another in helping the Ukrainians. So do we still have the potential for mutual solidarity?

Tłum. K.J.

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