War Has Changed Polish Cities Forever

Many expected nothing of the municipality, having come to join their friends and families residing – whether legally or not – in Gdynia since the previous Crimean refugee wave. We proceeded to set up a 24/7 Ukrainian-language call centre to help anyone in need, staff offering any essential information, and – if required – directions to accommodation centres and/or meal-dispensing kitchens. We published a printed book of guidelines. Others needed nigh on everything, having arrived in Gdynia – the terminal station for trains running from the border town of Przemyśl – with nothing, not even a plan for the following few days.

The Great Heart of the Community

Having joined forces with the province of Pomerania, we opened a 24/7 reception centre at the Gdynia Central Passenger Station. The Centre provided refugees with accommodation and/or transport directions as well as hot drinks and meals. We dispensed daily necessities for the first few days: bottled water, dry goods, pet food, disposable nappies, hygiene products and basic cosmetics.

Some needs were by no means obvious from day one; new shoes are a good example, old ones having practically fallen apart after their owners had walked dozens of kilometres to the Polish-Ukrainian border. Similar items included baby prams, strollers and suitcases. Territorial Defence Force troops, firefighters, boy scouts and girl guides provided assistance in the city centre, as did a huge army of volunteers, usually offering interpreting and translation services. Yet removed from their daily duties, municipal officials were the unquestioned core of the support mechanism. Some of our guests travelled solo, others arriving in organised groups by rail or coach, among others, from other Polish cities sending out the occasional alert of being unable to take in more refugees.

Before the state system kicked in, local government officials got themselves swiftly organised, efficiently taking one group after another to make space for new arrivals. From time to time, a special-purpose government medical train would arrive, usually in the middle of the night, carrying passengers requiring medical care. My memories of these weeks are ones of unbelievable chaos – and extraordinary human warmth. A three-generation family stands out in my mind: a mother, two daughters and grandma. Among the first to arrive, they had airline tickets for a flight to Germany from Gdańsk. The older teenage daughter had lost the sole off her shoe – this was on a Sunday, all shops closed, nowhere to buy new stuff. Our city treasurer came to the rescue, offering a pair of her own shoes to replace the unusable ones. Suffering from coeliac disease, the younger girl was very poorly after the long journey. The mother wanted to feed her broth before the next leg of their journey, but we had great trouble finding a restaurant serving gluten-free pasta. When we finally managed, the staff refused to accept my money for the girls’ meal. Everyone chipped in and did what they could. I deeply believe that were it not for community help, we would have fared much worse. All that was proof of the great heart of the community – and its amazing capacity for self-organisation. It swiftly turned out that the scale of the vast influx had rendered the former individual approach impossible, while our organisational solutions kept improving day by day – hot soup, new shoes, transport, medical staff, veterinary surgeons: anything anyone needed was right there. Instances of dramatic images were becoming increasingly frequent. I will probably never forget an elderly lady in a threadbare coat with no purse or luggage, carrying her passport, a handful of coins and some pills in a crumpled rubbish bag, a meowling kitten in her arms. There were so many of them…

The Polish Layover

Many Ukrainians wanted to travel on, mainly to Sweden and Germany – so we set up something akin to a travel agency, with immense support from private business, Stena Line in the lead. Anyone planning to stay in town was directed to one of our accommodation centres or families vetted by municipal authorities. “Travel agency” facilities were organised in schools or “Marinas” (Przystań) – Gdynia’s local community centres.

Our co-ordinators made sure that all new arrivals were placed in facilities best-suited to their needs. Whenever possible, for example, small children would not be put up at mass gym hall accommodation centres. Professional Welcome Teams of social workers would await our guests at each centre. The original and firmly outlined goal was for the temporarily necessary shelter accommodation stay to be a brief episode, preceding self-sufficiency. Having rested at our accommodation centres, some arrivals would opt for further travel, “travel agencies” operating non-stop and offering tailormade services. I can recall a senior gentleman carrying no ID, a professor of microbiology, with a command of French and fellow scientist colleagues in France. He left for France with housing, benefits and care pre-arranged. Such magnificent developments were possible only thanks to extensive collaboration with many non -governmental organisations and embassies of other European states.

“Marinas” and gym halls were not the only ones to change their intended purpose. The Games Room of the Gdynia Sports Centre was converted into a giant warehouse, donations flooding in from community collections, governmental resources and partner cities. Some were used on the spot, others redirected to Ukraine. An ambulance and two buses packed with medicine, dressings and spare parts were dispatched to Lviv. The buses were specifically requested by the mayor of Lviv from the president of Gdynia, the latter having travelled to Ukraine in March on a support mission. Lviv’s own buses had been sent to the warfront. The lion’s share of Gdynia’s humanitarian aid went to Zhytomyr, a city we entered into a partnership agreement with after the war had broken out. We have dispatched a number of transports to Zhytomyr: primarily generators, power banks and battlefield dressings, most recently also watermains and district heating equipment. Gdynia received Zhytomyr Choreographic Art Centre students, who gave a performance to a packed house on Poland’s largest stage: the Musical Theatre. One of Gdynia’s most beautiful public waterfront squares was planted with yellow and blue flowers, and renamed the “Free Ukraine” Square. Flags hung out in February 2022 are still flying across town.

International Co-operation

While the numbers of new arrivals began dwindling, the needs of those already with us changed. We managed to find enrolment options for Ukrainian children at schools and kindergartens. Nearly 2,000 Ukrainian pupils are studying at Gdynia’s municipal facilities today. We have also launched “Polish as a Foreign Language” classes, and bespoke job search solutions. As always, we have been trying to come up with tailormade solutions, for example, by looking for female Ukrainian trolleybus drivers, since Gdynia is suffering a resources shortage in the field. Specialist courses were organised for candidates, allowing them to meet European Union requirements for public transport drivers. Working together with UNICEF, we developed the project “SPYNKA”, designed to provide Ukrainian women with cultural promotor competencies and the resultant options to run classes: a source of joy for children and a little stability for their mums. We continued to provide assistance in seeking permanent housing and developing self-sufficiency in a new country. Having received considerable financial aid from the business community, we renovated and furnished multiple facilities. Once more or less settled in their new homes, our guests were provided with access to social worker assistance, food parcels, career counselling, free-of-charge clothing “shops”, and assorted healthcare programmes organised by the Gdynia Health Centre including general health education through to specialist medical advice, psychological aid, and anonymous HIV testing. For several months, Ukrainians were offered free-of-charge public transport across the TriCity (Gdańsk-Sopot-Gdynia agglomeration). Gdynia issued individual PESEL (social security) numbers to over 12,000 individuals.

Regardless of the tremendous involvement by public officials, local residents and non-government organisations, the city would not have been able to satisfy all needs based on governmental resources alone – which is why we decided to collaborate with huge international organisations. A United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees office managed jointly with the Danish Refugee Centre has been in operation in the city centre since the summer. This is where Ukrainians can apply for short-term financial assistance to be used as subsistence funding, or be referred to the so-called Blu Dot offering psychological and legal aid. The city entered into an agreement with UNICEF, pursuant to which funding of nearly PLN 32 million will be provided for integration activities. This is more than a crisis intervention – these are long-term strategic activities designed to provide Gdynia’s famous high quality of life to local residents; both to these who have been living here for years and all of a sudden were faced with a new reality of a city whose population has grown by 5 percent almost overnight, the Ukrainian language barely second to Polish in public – and those who have ended up here, in a country friendly yet foreign, seeking shelter from Russian bombs, for a while, for a longer time, forever. The shock is over – we now have to painstakingly begin building a good future for all. ©℗

Dziennik Gazeta Prawna, special edition, World Economic Forum