Today, on April 14, 2022 the 49th day of the war in Ukraine is ending. Because of it, almost 4 million inhabitants of this beautiful country have fled abroad. These are mainly women and children. Of these, 2.6 million Ukrainian refugees came to Poland. About 13 million people are stuck in war zones and cannot leave, although they would like to. Many towns are threatened by a humanitarian catastrophe. On a daily basis, about 25,000 Ukrainian refugees are coming to Poland. In Poland they are receiving appropriate help by local authorities and ordinary citizens.
From the very beginning of the war, the scholarship recipients of our Foundation have been very actively involved in various help for war refugees. I have already written about this in previous materials. Now, I would like to present the commitment to refugees of our two scholarship recipients: Ola Ilczyna, a student of Polish philology on a doctorate track and her sister Janina, a fifth-year student of computer science. They themselves write about this help in the following way: “There are many families living in Poland who were forced to flee Ukraine from the Russian aggression that is still ongoing to this day. We, students from Ukraine, feel particularly obliged to provide all kinds of help to our compatriots. One of such forms is volunteer engagement. Through simple conversations with families, providing advice, playing with children and helping them to learn Polish language, we try to help people, often lost in the new reality in which they live. On Saturday, April 9, we set off from Lublin to the Retreat House of the Light-Life Movement in Księżomierza, where almost 60 Ukrainians found a place to stay. Mainly they are mothers with children. We went there to visit one of the families with whom we became friends at the end of February, when they were still in the buildings of Caritas of the Lublin Archdiocese. It is a large family, a mother with six children, who came to Poland from a small village in the Volyn region. Thanks to the openness and kindness of local priests and members of the Domestic Church and residents of Księżomierza, this family has a place to stay and meals for free and also children have free education in the local primary school and stays in kindergarten on a daily basis. We, for our part, try to visit our compatriots, supporting them with a good word, a kind gesture and small gifts from Lublin. May the merciful Lord God have in His gracious protection all, especially children, who suffer very physically and spiritually because of this terrible war.”
We ask everyone to pray for peace in the world, especially for peace in Ukraine.
Fr. Jan Strzałka
