HREBENNE, POLAND — “Porzucenie.”

 It is the Polish word for “abandonment” and in conversations about Poland’s generous welcoming of nearly 3 million Ukrainian refugees it is emphasized as “zyczliwosc” (kindness) or “wspolczucie” (compassion).

In Poland, there is great humanitarian sympathy for the Ukrainians flooding the border towns to escape Russia’s wanton murder of civilians as bombs fall on their cities.

But there is also historic empathy. Poland has been here before, abandoned by the rest of the world as Nazi Germany laid waste to Warsaw and began to enslave and execute 5.6 million Polish people, more than half of whom were Jews.

“In 1939 we saw how aggression by Hitler in our country was only met with resistance by our people,” said Jacek Bartosiewicz, 55, who came 160 miles from Pionki-Radom outside of Warsaw to this border village in southeastern Poland.

‘So, we understand, now, very much how abandoned the Ukrainians feel. So, we do everything we can to help.’

“We learned in school that we were abandoned by the British and other European powers who promised to help us fight the Nazis if were attacked. But when we were attacked, we had no help. We were sacrificed to Hitler’s ambitions, then later to Stalin’s.

“So, we understand, now, very much how abandoned the Ukrainians feel. So, we do everything we can to help.”

Reminded of the days after 9/11

Bartosiewicz wore the orange vest of the Rycerze Kolumba (Knights of Columbus), which had a tent with dozens of tables and chairs as its volunteer members served food to refugees at the Rava-Ruska border crossing, just 30 miles north of where Russia bombed a Ukrainian military training center in Yavoriv.

This section of the border between Poland and Ukraine is in a lightly populated area of fields and forests of tall pine trees with clusters of needles only at their tops. In these farm towns, people heat their squat masonry homes with wood or coal, and the air is dense with morning smoke and evening haze.

The smoke gives some a sense of alarm, as do repeated sirens and the inordinately strong police presence at this normally quiet border. I likened it to the days after 9/11, when low-flying military jets gave Americans pause.

’Many of us think Putin will come here next. And many of us fear NATO will do nothing to stop him.’

“Yes, when you hear the sirens, you wonder, ‘What has happened?’’’ said Lukasz Sieduszewslei, a 33-year-old volunteer, wearing the light blue vest of Polska Akcja Huminitarna, outside their tent in Hrebenne. Like Dorohusk, the border town where I worked for 10 days, Hrebenne has become a village of tents in the colors of the volunteer organizations that run them, offering travel information, coats and other clothing, and food and other essentials to the refugees.

“There is a real fear we are next,” said Kasha Habieda, receptionist at the hotel where I stayed in Chelm near the border, where most of the other guests are refugees. “We were given up to Hitler in World War II, then given up to Stalin after the war. Many of us think Putin will come here next. And many of us fear NATO will do nothing to stop him. History has taught us that.”

Habieda remembers the bleak days of Soviet dominance, which ended 31 years ago when she was 14.

“We didn’t have sweets, we didn’t have chocolate, we didn’t have nice stores,” she said. “Once a week, in school, we got an orange … all the apartments they build look like army barracks, with small rooms. They destroyed the Polish aesthetic for architecture. Nobody here wants to go back. It was a sad time. We felt abandoned by the rest of the world, and we know how lonely the Ukrainians must feel. I think that is a big reason all of us want to help.

“The other night, I checked in a woman with a seven-day old baby. They come at all hours, with their old parents and little children. My heart breaks for these people.”

While the borders at Dorohusk and Hrebenne can be chaotic, the inundation of refugees is more pronounced at the Chelm train station, which is an 11-hour train ride from Kyiv. There, the refugees embark by hundreds at a time to be registered by Polish officials, then directed to trains or buses. Think Penn Station at rush hour, except the buses and trains don’t leave promptly, and very few people understand the language of the others. Many spend hours upon hours, even overnight, sleeping on chairs, benches, and the floor, using their overstuffed suitcases for pillows and their coats for blankets.

It also reminds me of the scenes from Ellis Island, where 2.5 million Poles came through in the first years of the 20th century. While many headed to Chicago, New Jersey got its share. “Polonia” sections thrived in Newark, Elizabeth and Linden. Today, Bayonne in Hudson County has the largest number of people of Polish descent in the state, while Wallington in Bergen County has one of the highest concentrations in the U.S., with 40% of the people claiming Polish heritage.

Tensions in the past

The same immigrant picture is portrayed at the Dorohusk reception point, where Marek Wagner Lorentz has returned to Poland from the Netherlands to volunteer, arranging rides for refugees to the interior of Poland and deeper into Europe.

“We empathize with them,” Lorentz said. “We have had our differences with Ukraine but in the end, we are a big family. We have bad times and good times, we fight and we make up. At times like this, you have to put the bad history aside, because people are people no matter what.”

Lorentz was referring to another World War II atrocity when Ukrainian nationalists slaughtered tens of thousands of Polish people, partly in the region around Dorohusk and Hrebenne. It makes the Poles’ enormous generosity to the desperate Ukrainians even more tender and impressive.

Sister Sophia of the Daughters of Charity, who sent nuns to work at Dorohusk, also grew up in the immediate post-war and Soviet era.

‘We have to undo and defeat the wrong with good, with kindness and open hearts, and pray for peace.’

“During the Second World War we had the same situation,” she said, interpreted by Sister Agnes of the order. “We were abandoned by the European powers, then the Communists came, and it was a very difficult time for us. So we feel what they (Ukrainians) feel.

“We, too, are afraid the Communists will come back, but we will not close our hearts to them,” she said. “We have to win. We have to undo and defeat the wrong with good, with kindness and open hearts, and pray for peace.”

All photographs by Mark Di Ionno.