How a quiet Polish village became a new home for thousands of Ukrainian refugees

The quiet, often forgotten town of Raciborz, located in southern Poland in the Silesian area, with a population of 55,000 has never felt so important until now.

Close to the Czech border and a two-hour drive from the nearest cities Krakow, Wroclaw and Katowice, Raciborz is the close-knit community often erased from maps.

Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24th and according to United Nations, an estimated 5.1 million Ukrainians have fled the country as a result.

Over two million Ukrainians have taken refuge in Poland and thousands are calling Raciborz their new home.

Over the last couple of months, Raciborz’s residents have been eagerly preparing for the arrival of the Ukrainian refugees, as well as contributing to national efforts to donate aid for those crossing the border.

One of these locals is Ala Napierala, a 47-year-old GCSE teacher at the town’s technical school of mechanical engineering, who has lived in Raciborz for her whole life.

“Firstly, in every single school in Raciborz, [the local authority] organised a donation collection that would run every evening- all the teachers including myself helped, we were divided into groups.

“Everyone that lived in Raciborz would come and donate clothes, hygiene products and long shelf-life food.

“Everything was really well organised, all the aid was checked to make sure it was in date, the cartons were labelled, and tables were made detailing how much of each product was available and its expiration date.

“Massive lorries would come and pick all the aid up, we had to help pack all the aid into boxes that were loaded onto pallets.”

Once the lorries were full of donations, the drivers, often volunteers, would instantly start the 4-hour journey to the Ukrainian border, near Lviv, to distribute the aid to those who had just arrived in Poland.

From early March, Ukrainian refugees began to arrive in Raciborz, often with no prior contacts in the town.

However, Raciborz has also given Ukrainians the option of free housing, not just being limited to staying with a generous family.

Napierala said: “The Raffako buildings in town (a Polish energy company) used to be offices ages ago but were abandoned and turned into overnight rooms recently. They have kitchens and bathrooms, and house loads of refugees.

“The people that have the resources are housing Ukrainians themselves, I teach two pupils who are. One of them has a whole family under their roof because they have a big house and the other has a family staying in their second home.”

According to the ‘Help for Ukraine’ Raciborz government website, those who house refugees are entitled to financial aid once a month for a minimum period of three months.

You may be paid 700 zloty (approximately £126) monthly per person with an additional 660 zloty (approximately £119) for another person in the same family, with a maximum of four people.

In comparison, the UK’s ‘Homes for Ukraine’ scheme offers a ‘thank you’ payment of £350 per month from the government.

Napierala said: “The people that can’t house refugees are still doing all they can to help them find their feet and set their new life up in Poland, from translating documents to helping find furniture for their new accommodation.

“There’s a huge Whatsapp group for everyone that is involved. We had one family moving into one of the converted offices so we put a message in the chat asking for donations and within an hour they had everything from a bed to a fridge to lamps, it was amazing.”

“After they properly moved in, many of the refugees got jobs working as cleaners in houses but also Biedronka (a popular Polish supermarket chain) had a scheme where they hired lots of them.”

Sebastian, Ala’s partner, who is also been heavily involved in helping the Ukrainian refugees settle in, added: “If there was a message saying that anyone needed help whether that was financially or items that needed donating, the response was overwhelming.

“If anything, there were too many donations, the local authority even had to stop people from coming to donate certain items like clothes because of the surplus, they were so overwhelmed with the donations.

“To deal with it, the local authority started publishing specific lists of things they needed, it was usually very big or very small clothing sizes, a specific shoe size or a particular medicine.”

He recalls a moment in the early days of the war when there was still a massive demand for aid and all the residents on his street got together to collect as many things as possible.

“As I have a big car, I volunteered to drive everything to the collection point. I had all the doors and the boot open and everyone was raiding their cupboards and wardrobes and throwing it in my car.

“In the end, it was so full I could barely see the back window in my mirror, I’ve never felt so proud of my community in my life.”

Additionally, all of the shops in Raciborz, whether they’re big chains or small businesses, have donation boxes, with a request to purchase non-perishable items.

“It’s been months since the war broke out but you never see those boxes empty- you see someone donating every few seconds. People’s generosity hasn’t died down as the months have passed.”

Once the refugees were securely housed and settled, they were enrolled in a local language school to learn Polish.

“The school is actually run by an English woman who’s lived in Poland for twenty years,” said Napierala.

“All the teachers at the school are volunteers and everything for the refugees is free of charge including textbooks, pens, and workbooks.

“There’s such a high demand for more volunteers at the school because of how many classes are run- they’re all divided by age, from teenagers to children to the elderly.”

17-year-old Wiktoria Napierala, who attends an upper secondary school in Raciborz has also been trying to make the town’s latest residents feel as welcome as possible.

She said: “My class at school all bought colouring books and pens and after lessons, we went to the building where all the refugees are housed.

“Most of the refugees that are living in Raciborz are mothers with their children, very few men came or the ones that did have gone back to Ukraine to fight.

“We gave [the children] the colouring things we bought and played with them for a bit to give the mothers a break.

“I hope we managed to give the children a break from what’s going on and just let them play freely.”

When asked if she thinks the Ukrainian refugees of Raciborz have settled in, Napierala said “I really hope so, I can’t even imagine how daunting it must have been for them.

“For the first couple of months you couldn’t even tell the village gained a few thousand refugees, I think they were all too scared and uncertain to leave their accommodation.

“But nowadays I always see them sitting in groups around the town or the park whilst their children play together which warms my heart.”