WARSAW — Local governments can’t buy beds fast enough. Poles who offer to take in refugees receive more than 100 emails from newcomers looking for a place to sleep, often full of details of their ordeal. The influx of people increased Poland’s population for the first time since 1987.
Europe is facing its biggest refugee crisis since World War II. In the nearly two weeks since Russia invaded Ukraine, more than two million people have fled to the European Union, with no end in sight. The vast majority are in countries in the east of the EU. Officials are scrambling to expand housing, schools and social services for an influx of people expected to grow by millions more.
“They call day and night and ask if we have beds,” says Marta Molińska, who has turned a parachute camp she runs in western Poland into a shelter originally designed for 15 people. Now it has 50.
Two Ukrainians enter Poland every three seconds. The 1.4 million people who arrived in Poland will create the country’s second largest city. By next week, they are likely to surpass Warsaw, the country’s largest city, Polish officials expect.
Since 1987, the population of Poland has been stable at about 38 million people, due to emigration and low birth rates. In the 13 days since February 24, it has reached 39 million, and within a few weeks, it is likely to exceed 40 million.
The wave hits Warsaw, where 200,000 Ukrainians have arrived in just over a week. If these newcomers stay, which the government most expects, one in nine residents of the capital will be a newly arrived Ukrainian.
This assessment by the Polish government is conservative. According to Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, tens of thousands of Ukrainians who come to city stations for food and medical care are only a small part of the city’s residents. The number should continue to grow. The pre-war population of Ukraine was 44 million people.
Reception point for Ukrainian refugees at the main railway station in Krakow, Poland, on Tuesday.
Photo: Lukasz Gagulski/Shutterstock
A Ukrainian refugee holds her baby as she tries to keep him warm at a border crossing in Medyka, Poland, on Wednesday.
Photo: Vizar Krieziou/Associated Press
From his desk at City Hall, Mr. Trzaskowski worked on the phone, managing to find accommodation in neighboring countries: on Tuesday, he booked a stadium in Berlin with a capacity of 300 people, while a building in Vienna was available for 800 people. after he made those deals, the government called to say there were five trains heading for Warsaw, each packed full of Ukrainians.
“We have more and more people who have no friends, no family, and who are completely disoriented,” he said. “Now we really need a system… This is like our biggest humanitarian crisis since World War II. What we can do? We are one city.”
For the EU, which received 1.3 million asylum seekers in 2015, mostly from Africa and the Middle East, the current refugee crisis is more serious and targets a very different set of countries. Then Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic resisted the proposal to redistribute the refugees, who were mainly sent to Germany, Italy or other wealthier European countries.
People fleeing Ukraine walk to a resettlement bus through Poland after crossing the border in Kroshchenko, Poland, on Wednesday.
Photo: Omar Marquez/Getty Images
This time, the refugees are overwhelmingly heading to the eastern EU countries, the very ones that have tried to limit the arrival of refugees fleeing wars in Syria or Libya. For Ukrainians, both Polish and Slovak languages are similar, and their countries share a centuries-old common culture and history.
Tight job markets, accessible cities and a pre-existing diaspora have made these countries a more attractive alternative for Ukrainians, who find options scarcer in Western Europe. The UK has so far taken in about 300 Ukrainian refugees, fewer than Poland takes in every four minutes.
The government, which has promised to take in as many Ukrainians as possible, has provided an 8 billion zloty ($1.7 billion) budget package to deal with the influx. His proposals include a one-time payment of benefits to refugees, as well as an allowance to the Poles who sheltered them.
Poles, overwhelmingly sympathetic to the plight of their eastern neighbor, have opened their homes and businesses to accommodate Ukrainians. In Krakow, a nonprofit turned an old theater into a shelter that housed 12 people on the first day of the war and 100 people the next day, and has been overcrowded ever since with dozens of people flopping onto mattresses on the floor. and only three souls. About 3,500 people have offered their apartments in the city, and all of them are now occupied, says Karol Wilczynski, head of Salam Lab, a migration and human rights group.
Online, more than 10,000 Poles have joined the website, promising to host refugees in their homes for free. Each offer can receive over 100 responses from families asking to stay. Volunteers complained to the site’s founder, Rafal Rybatsky, that their phones didn’t stop ringing.
Ukrainian refugees receive food and other items they need at Berlin Central Station on Wednesday.
Photo: ANNEGRET HILLS/REUTERS
A mother sleeps with her children at a temporary shelter for Ukrainian refugees near Przemysl, Poland, on Tuesday.
Photo: afp#afp/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Some refugees leave for other parts of Europe. On Wednesday, train tickets from Warsaw West Station to Berlin were sold out, leaving Oksana Poplavskaya, a 36-year-old mother of two, with nowhere to sleep after nine days of non-stop travel from Kyiv. As her children ate pastries and drank hot cider from paper cups, she wept, asking passers-by if there was a place she could take shelter.
Other European countries are preparing for the influx of Ukrainian refugees. Italy, home to one of the largest Ukrainians in Europe, says 800,000 refugees could arrive in the coming weeks. Europe has learned from the 2015 refugee crisis and is moving fast to overcome the crisis. In just one day, European Union countries approved temporary measures that give Ukrainians access to housing, health insurance, schools and social assistance.
At Warsaw’s central railway station, a mother and her two children walked along a narrow path through a crowd of refugees sitting on the floor, steps, suitcases or bags. The driver took her money and left without her, she said, leaving them to spend the night among dozens of families crashing on blankets in front of a crowded McDonald’s.
“We have a problem with these people who don’t know what to do. They are from some rural area in Ukraine, speak only Ukrainian and have no idea where to go or how long they want to stay,” said a nearby volunteer, filtering through the crowd.
Before he could finish his next sentence, he was interrupted by an elderly woman traveling alone from the Ukrainian countryside, saying she didn’t know where she should go.
“I have nowhere to stay and I don’t speak the language,” she said.
Ukrainian officials say a Russian airstrike hit a maternity hospital in the besieged city of Mariupol as conditions became desperate for civilians unable to leave the country. Photo: Yevgeny Maloletka/Associated Press
—Yana Tashkevich contributed to this article.
Write to Drew Hinshaw at [email protected] and Ian Lovett at [email protected]
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