The Diary of a Russian: Volunteering at the border

May 11, 2022 — VERA YAKOVLEVA

This Easter found me in Przemysl, the city on the border between Poland and Ukraine through which more than a million people have passed in the past two months. Every evening we meet passengers of Ukrainian trains at the station, every morning we talk to them and try to find a new home or shelter for them in Europe. For some of the people we rent rooms at the hotel opposite the station - there they can have some rest before they decide where to go next.

It seems that now there is a lull: more people are returning to Ukraine than fleeing the country.

Behind the decision to return, there’s always a drama. "Devil sister" (topos) kicked out of the house; the landlord ordered to move out; there’s no money left, and wandering around and eating charity food is miserable; there’s a beloved husband in Ukraine, and at least a month with him is better than eternity without him.

Such dramas are easier to relate to than the deafening stories of those who travel from Kharkov, Nikolaev, Kherson, Mariupol. How does a mother feel, when she has to cover her children with laptops, trying to drive them away from home under fire? How might a woman feel who saw such small a baby (she is showing with her hands how tiny it is) killed in a stroller? How might a woman feel, who has gone through rape, death of her husband, who has lived for two weeks with children in a basement?

“Why do they say, glory to Ukraine? What glory? Nothing will ever be good again"

“Nobody needs us. Nobody needs me”

“No one will ever know what happened to me”

"He died so I could live"

"I don't want anything anymore"

"I don't want to live"

I go to the Red Cross to ask for a psychiatrist – there is a suicidal risk with this woman. The Red Cross writes down my phone number and promise to call back later.

There’s a couple of pensioners from Kharkiv, we put in a hotel for a night, and they do not let me go for a while. The husband is an IT lecturer at the Academy of Culture, his wife is a patent specialist and a batik artist. They ask me about my dissertation, if the topic has been confirmed, if there are any publications, and what will be the outcome of my research. These are all beautiful matters from the old life, and it is better not to distract them from such conversations, or there will be a flow of memories and tears. “It was morally a very difficult decision for me to leave my son-in-law,” says that seventy-year-old IT lecturer with clear, attentive eyes, “He is now all alone. Our daughter and grandchildren have already made it to Germany, and now us.” In parting, he quotes by heart "Slaughterhouse Five".

One of the most difficult families I met was traveling from Mariupol to Germany to put their grandfather in a hospital. Their appearance at the station was striking: a volunteer walked in with a supermarket trolley filled with bags, another one was pushing a wheelchair with a thin, motionless old man, an overweight elderly woman on crutches was walking next to the wheelchair, a teenage girl with long hair and a look from under her eyelashes was running around, and in the middle of it all there was a confused woman in a cap, a bag in each hand – the head of the family. The procession stopped, and a Franciscan friar from Italy with a Caritas volunteer from the US flew up to the woman in a cap and started helping her – in English, which only increased her confusion.

It turned out that the family was going to Kassel to treat their grandfather who had terminal oncology but did not know about his diagnosis. Their house in Mariupol had been destroyed, and all they had left was a supermarket trolley filled with bales of various goods, including a sewing machine. The grandfather was not the only one ill in the family. The granny had troubles walking because staphylococcus had eaten her thigh bones, and the mother had terrible headaches after a trepanation operation, which she underwent in early February. All of them now and then would begin to cry. Only the girl would keep calm and say rather coldly: “Enough! There was a house - there is no house. There was a city - there is no city. That’s it, let’s live on!”

The woman in the cap understands perfectly well that her father will not live long and that her mother has a weak heart and might die of a heart attack at any moment. There is no Mariupol anymore, there is no old life anymore, and they have no energy to start all anew. But in Kyiv there is even no morphine left to ease the last days of the grandfather. No, no, no. “This war broke me,” she repeats over and over.

In fact, they are all strong. A day later, I see them off on a train to Hannover, where their oldest daughter is waiting for them - she’s a self-made-woman and she had two architectural bureaus in Kyiv before the war. The granny throws away her crutches and grabs her bags to carry them herself to the right compartment; grandfather gets up from the carriage and climbs into the train himself, refusing any help; mother in a cap keeps an eye on everything, and while we go with her to take food for their trip, she tells the love story she had with the first lad in Mariupol – he was a gambler fond of revelry, no one could curb him, but she did. They've been together for twenty years. "This war broke me."

When people ask where I come from, I answer, with a lump in the throat. One Ukrainian-speaking mother with a nine-year-old son was looking for the waiting hall. She quickly switched to Russian with me, but the child spoke only Ukrainian. I took them to the room, and already there they asked where I was from. "From Moscow". The boy was surprised: “From Moscow ?!” And the mom said: “You’ve just turned the whole world upside down for us!” (“I wonder in what way we turned the world upside down,” I thought). Half an hour later, the boy found me at the station, handed me a chocolate bar, said he in Ukrainian: "It’s for your help," and ran away.