Ukraine and Poland: a personal reflection
Stephen Williams provides some thoughts on the situation facing Ukrainian refugees, gathered from a recent visit to Poland.
O
n Easter Sunday, I conducted a Communion service for Ukrainian refugees in a house in Wroclaw, Poland. By then, I had been living for three days in that house, along with 15 or 16 refugees and their two hosts, the Polish-based English and American house owners. We were joined for the service by about 40 more refugees. Talking to one of them after the service, I said that I didn’t know what I had to offer, because I was not suffering what they were suffering. Her response was: “We are drowning; it doesn’t help us if you are drowning as well.” She followed this up with surprising words, spoken on the basis of her experience as a counsellor: “But I am also experiencing exactly what you are experiencing. You are experiencing guilt because you are not suffering as we are. I feel the same guilt because I am not suffering back in Ukraine as my family is.” Out there in Poland, I learned how varied is the experience of refugees. A handful are personal friends or acquaintances. Some refugees have lived all their lives in villages and have never crossed any border. Some are used to travel and have international contacts.
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Herald June 2022
A remarkably high number are crossing back to Ukraine for an indeterminate time to see loved ones. Some have opted for a longer-term move to other countries in or outside Europe to find jobs. Most do not know what to do. They are often in shock: one day, the everyday business of life was going on; the next, they were getting phone calls urging them to leave their homes right away before their residences were under attack, or they had woken up to the sound of a blast. Some, usually women with children, encountered Ukrainian border guards demanding bribes of their fellow-citizens ‘for the defence of Ukraine’ before letting them cross. Such is human tragedy: the mixture of very sad smaller stories within the very sad larger story. But there is more to the mixture than that. God can visibly use the straitened circumstances of refugees to bless those with whom they take refuge. A refugee couple travelled for two hours to talk to me (men under 60 with three
…I learned how varied is the experience of refugees.
or more children at 16 or under are allowed to leave Ukraine). They were Ukrainian Baptists from near the Black Sea, whose 13-year-old daughter was unhappy because she was having to learn set prayers at the school she was now attending in Poland; she believed that prayer was spontaneous, real communication with God, not something to be learned as one might parrot history or geography. She asked her teacher whether she could learn a psalm, as psalms are set prayers. The request was irresistible; she received permission, and learned it so well (Polish and Ukrainians have linguistic similarities) that she was put in charge of teaching set prayers from the Psalms to other Ukrainian children already in or coming to the school. A teenage refugee evangelist! Although I had contact with Ukrainian refugees in Wroclaw, my main purpose in going out was to support Polish partners in an organisation with which I have long-standing connections: Central Eurasian Partners. They are helping the refugees, and many are exhausted. Polish hospitality and the level of its organisation has been admirable, but there are already signs
