"We don't know how many trains are arriving, or when, or even how many people are on board. At most they tell us the number of carriages, and from that we get a rough idea, which is of no use to us whatsoever. The station is small, the exodus is immense." Katerina works as a volunteer at Przemysl station, in Poland, a town of just over 60,000 inhabitants, fifteen kilometres from Medyka, on the border with Ukraine.

A small town that until a few days ago was unknown to the world, where media from across the globe are now camped out to cover the arrival of around 20,000 people a day fleeing the war. Even if the figures can only be approximate, according to the latest data from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (Unhcr), Poland has taken in 2 million refugees from the Ukrainian border in three weeks — a migratory flow without parallel in Europe. At the border with Belarus, however, the system adopted by the Polish government for Yemenis, Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans arriving via the Balkan route is one of pushbacks. A dual migration policy — discriminatory and racist — that cannot, however, overshadow the immense effort of all those Polish citizens who, at the small station of Przemysl as in many other parts of the country, have been volunteering for over a month to welcome refugees from Ukraine.

Przemysl station is the first port of call after the flight

The shifts worked by volunteers at the Polish station regularly exceed 24 hours. They are men and women of all ages, as well as young children going around handing out chocolate and sweets from cardboard boxes. Alongside the volunteers, dozens of people — private citizens and organisations — hold up signs offering places to sleep and free lifts to every European capital. The supply is there, but demand far outstrips it, and spaces in cars and homes vanish in the blink of an eye. One moment's hesitation and the opportunity is gone. Katerina coordinates the reception at the station of the most vulnerable arrivals: mothers with children and elderly people, who make up the majority. The available spaces consist of a large room with cots and blankets on the ground floor, and four small rooms on the floor above reserved solely for newborns. The hardest hours are at night, when more trains arrive and within half an hour there is not even half a metre of floor space left for people to sit on. Outside, the temperature is below zero.

Every train brings a huge wave of people needing help

"Thousands of people get off every train, and every single one of them needs help." Katerina explains. "Water, food, clothes, medicine, SIM cards, information about where to go, how to get there, and above all a place to rest for at least a few hours — but we don't know where to put them. Fleeing the bombs, they have endured an odyssey lasting days — not because of the distance, but because of the waiting. They board, with enormous difficulty, carriages packed with people even in the corridors, carriages that then don't start moving for ten hours or more, and once they reach the border it's impossible to know how long it will take to cross."

For the volunteers of Przemysl — numerous, highly motivated, still combative and in good spirits — every arrival is like a tsunami wave: you can feel it in the air, because the adrenaline, which never fully subsides, spikes again. They shift into a state of alert, knowing they will have to help, redirect people to other reception points and get as many of them as possible back on their way, in as little time as possible, before the next train arrives.

"We are forced to rouse women who have only rested for a couple of hours from their cots, to make room for those who haven't lain down for two days." Katerina adds. "It's heartbreaking, but we have no alternative."

Not everything comes in through the door

Food and hot drinks are distributed free of charge around the clock. Through the corridor window, next to the ticket hall, rubbish is thrown out for someone to collect, and everything that people bring is passed in.

There is a constant stream of cars, vans, minibuses and people on foot arriving from Poland and all across Europe to drop off every kind of item: pushchairs, shoes, hats, blankets, creams, detergents and food. Things that may be needed both by the people themselves and by the many pets travelling with them. But it is not only supplies that come into the station through the window.

It is three in the morning; in the large room with the cots, even the floor space is exhausted, people are trying to rest wherever they can, and in the corridor there is a queue of mothers waiting to get in. Katerina's face seems to falter for a moment: "We've been told that many more children are on their way. They'll be passed through the window to us — in the crush, they can't even reach the entrance."

The Ukrainian women who want to help the Polish volunteers

The people stepping off the trains appear to have nerves of steel: not a complaint, not a demand, not a raised voice. Only the occasional tear — composed and silent. The one sharp, aggrieved reaction is directed at photographers.
Women drag luggage through the crowd with sleeping children sprawled on top. A little boy of two sleeps like a ragdoll straddling a trolley case in motion, his shoulders draped over the two arms of the extended handle and his face dropped into the gap between them. It takes only a moment to realise it is possible. Many of the women refuse to feel like they are fleeing, defeated, and they stop the volunteers: "My train leaves in two hours," says a woman with dark, determined eyes to a young Polish volunteer.

"Now tell me how I can help. I've already collected a bag of rubbish — give me another one, please. We're exhausted, but so are you, we can see that, and we want to do something." The Ukrainian women fight their exhaustion by trying to give meaning to their presence there, and it is clear there is no room to stop them — they need it too much. Mothers who, when they leave their cots to move on, spend long minutes removing every last crumb their children have dropped onto the blankets. The same blankets that have now been in use for over ten days.

The children lost in the station

Despite their resilience, lucidity is intermittent, and in the total chaos mothers sometimes lose or forget their children somewhere. And the little ones are there, standing like short posts, rigid with terror in the ski suits put on them at least to protect them from the cold. They know that if they get lost, the order is not to move. So they don't even stir, while sobs cut short their breathing. Children of all ages play with the piles of soft toys brought by people; some have severe disabilities, but in none of them does even the shadow of a tantrum ever appear. When they sleep, however, you can see arms and legs suddenly jerk beneath the blankets in fright, the unconscious rising to the surface.

Chasing the dog thief and losing the child

Katerina, with her gentle face, short haircut and blue eyes, tells me she ended up on television: in the footage she can be seen holding a child of about two who had lost his mother in the chaos. Mother and child were reunited, but behind this brief news clip, Katerina tells a story that is almost unbelievable: "While they were moving together to finally catch the train and leave, the mother had noticed that someone had stolen their dog and was running away. The woman ran after the thief and left the child alone.

When she realised she wouldn't be able to catch the thief, she immediately went back to her son, but couldn't find him because of the chaos. She had lost her child in a futile attempt to get the dog back. After very long minutes of panic, just as we managed, with the help of the police, to get them back into each other's arms amid floods of relieved tears, a man came over with their dog. He had grasped the situation and had kept up the chase, retrieving the little dog. All of this happened while the train they had been waiting for so many hours was already moving on another platform. I rushed forward, shouting to the staff to stop the train. I don't know how it was possible, but the mother, the child and the dog managed to leave together."

Giving birth and fleeing, without a break in between

On the upper floor of the station, a Moroccan girl barely in her twenties is being escorted; the expression of weeping seems to have frozen on her face. She moves with an odd, almost swaying gait. The gait of women who, after giving birth, still walk as if they had a bump. Her baby girl is three days old — the time it took her to cross the border and leave the war behind, along with the small dog in its carrier that no longer moves at all.
In the corridor, meanwhile, there is little Amira, who is six months old; her father left with her because he is not a Ukrainian citizen. They come from Kharkiv. Julia, the mother, left her parents there. "My dad is 57 and under martial law he cannot leave the country. My mum stayed with him. I left only for my daughter — we held out as long as we could, we were practically living in the metro, but the bombings wouldn't stop."

Everything that made sense until the day before no longer does

Oxana is on the platform outside the ticket office; she is 37 and comes from Kyiv. "I lived in the part of the city they hit hard, where the Russians are trying to break in." She speaks fluent English and works as a graphic designer for foreign clients. She travelled alone and inside Przemyśl's ticket office she couldn't find a corner to sit down on the floor.

"We had been told that once we reached this station we would be given a roof over our heads, but it's a very small town and they can't do more than they're already doing. I think I'll try my luck in Kraków." Oxana wants to talk: "You wake up and everything you were doing until just a few hours before — even with commitment, because it had value — loses all meaning completely. I tried to hold on. Every two hours the sirens would go off and I would run to the bunker, but it was far from a safe place; sometimes we found Russian soldiers or their weapons there. Many people, especially those older than me, told me to stay calm, as if they were already used to all of this. I left at the exact moment I felt I couldn't bear to stay any longer. We all fled for one single reason: to save our skins."

That building so attractive to Russian aircraft

"Why should the Russians have spared me in particular?" Oxana continues. "Mine is the tallest building, standing alone right in the belt that protects the city centre. I'm absolutely certain that when a Russian aircraft passes by there, that building will be too tempting a target." As she says it, she projects her gaze very far away and narrows her eyes to slits. She is putting herself in the shoes of the pilot, tense, full of adrenaline and relish, the instant before dropping a bomb on her home, the irresistible target. "My parents are old enough to be exhausted. They're not in good health. At first I tried to urge them to come to the bunker, but even just moving means pain for them. They're there, meeting their fate."

When we finish talking, my little water bottle drops over the barrier, down beside the tracks. I try to work out how to get it back. Oxana says goodbye: "Good luck with the bottle — you have your own task to complete. It's certainly not as hard as that of the people who are here right now. But everyone has their own adventure to live."

Alongside those who arrive, there are also those who leave

At the junction before the station, a man stops me at the traffic lights. I look at him — he must be in his fifties, wearing a jacket that seems too light for the weather, and in his hand he holds a plastic bag with fruit juices and crackers. He says something to me in Polish and I only understand "Medyka, Ukraine." To make himself understood, he raises his arms as if holding a machine gun and firing. Now it's clear to me. I point out where he can buy a ticket to the border, and he walks away with the simple, light step of someone going off to fight, as if he had nothing to lose.