My Grandmother Hid Jewish Children' - Poland's Underground Refugee Network - Global Development - The Guardian

24/12/2021, 21:38 ‘My grandmother hid Jewish children’: Poland’s underground refugee network | Global development | The Guardian
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‘My grandmother hid Jewish children’: Poland’s

underground refugee network
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/dec/24/my-grandmother-hid-jewish-children-polands-underground-refugee-network 1/18
As thousands attempt to
cross the Belarus-Poland
border seeking asylum in
Europe, local activists are
trying to help
by Lorenzo Tondo in Hajnówka and Narewka; photographs by Alessio Mamo
Kamil Syller, 50, and his wife have started an unofficial network of local residents and activists trying to shelter refugees.
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I
Fri 24 Dec 2021 07.00 GMT
n the attic of a cottage in the woods near the Polish village of Narewka, a young Iraqi Kurd crouches, trembling
with cold and fear. Through the skylight, the blue lights of police vans flash on the walls of his hiding place.
Outside, dozens of border guards are searching for people like him in the snowstorm. Downstairs, the owner
of the house sits in silence with his terrified wife and children.
The young Kurd is one of thousands of asylum seekers who entered Poland across the border with Belarus, where
countless others have become trapped on their way to Europe. The Polish family have offered him shelter. But if the
Polish police find him, he risks being sent back across the frontier into the sub-zero forests of Belarus, while his
protectors risk being charged for aiding illegal immigration.
As people fleeing conflict or starvation have become trapped on the Poland-Belarus border in the
middle of a freezing winter, Polish families have been secretly hiding hundreds of desperate people in their homes.
Fears of the knock at the door as border police launch a manhunt bring back terrible echoes of the second world war,
when thousands of Polish Jews were given refuge by their neighbours during the Nazi occupation.
A young Iraqi Kurd hiding in a small attic in the woods near Narewka, Poland, as dozens of border guards search for him and his travel companions.
“Let’s make one thing clear, this is far from being the Holocaust,” says a Polish woman who has sheltered a Syrian
family in her home for five days. “At the same time … when you have six people hiding in your attic forced to stay in
the dark to avoid being sent back, as a Pole you can’t help thinking of the similarities with that time.”
Every day since early October, Jakub*, 38, from Narewka, has searched the forests near the border to find people in
need of water, food and a safe place to sleep. With his dog, Jakub follows signs of the presence of people who
attempted to cross the frontier: nappies, damp blankets, or makeshift huts built with tree branches.
During the war one of his uncles, who died a few years ago, helped dozens of Jewish families in Warsaw avoid
deportation. Now, 80 years later, Jakub has hidden and helped at least 200 people who risked being herded back over
the border to Belarus. “I’ve never compared what I’m doing today to what my uncle did,” Jakub says. “I help these
people because they need help. It’s that simple.”
Jakub and a volunteer follow signs of the presence of people who attempted to cross the border.
Two men from Syria talk with an interpreter by phone before submitting an asylum application in Poland. They have called border guards to reveal
themselves but are worried that police will send them back to Belarus.
The European Union has accused Belarus of deliberately provoking a new refugee crisis by organising the movement
of people from the Middle East to Minsk and promising them with safe passage to the EU, in reprisal for sanctions
that Brussels has imposed on its regime. Poland, in turn, has been accused by human rights organisations of violently
pushing back thousands of people across the border. People such as Jakub, seeing the desperate families huddled in
the snow, have taken it on themselves to help. Often it is a race between local volunteers and police to find the
border crossers first.
In his room in a small home a few miles from Sokółka, Bartek, 14, has invented a device to locate
people at risk of being sent back into Belarus. “I opened accounts to connect migrants’ phones,” he says. “I set up
their accounts on Google and WhatsApp and linked their phones to one of my accounts. This way I can see where
they have recently logged in and send help.”
Bartek and his aunt, Ewa, aided a Syrian family whose oldest child was five. They had been pushed back to Belarus 17
times.
Bartek, 14, has invented a device to locate people who have been pushed back into Belarus.
“What is happening here is totally unacceptable,” says Ewa, 40, whose grandmother smuggled pork fat and potatoes
into the Jewish Ghetto during the second world war.
“My grandmother hid Jewish children in her house too,” she says. “The flap in the floor was covered with a bed on
which my great-grandmother lay. I feel like I am carrying on my grandmother’s work.”
Ewa has bought thermal cameras to locate people at night. “When you go to the forest, you don’t know what awaits
you, if someone is behind you,” she says. “Next year when you go to the forest to pick mushrooms, you don’t know
whether you will find mushrooms or dead bodies. Some people said they found bodies of refugees torn apart by
animals. In the area where migrants are camping, sometimes you can smell an intense smell of decay.”
At least 19 people have died since the beginning of the border standoff between Poland and Belarus. Most of them
froze to death. Some of their bodies were buried in the Muslim graveyard in the village of Bohoniki, near Sokółka, in
the heart of the forest that claimed their lives.
A Muslim graveyard in the village of Bohoniki, near Sokółka, where some asylum seekers have been buried
As temperatures dip near freezing, Bartek, Jakub and Ewa belong to a network of Poles who are working desperately
to prevent more deaths.
“We’re doing something normal to help others,” says Ewa, “but they make you out to be a criminal.”
Since Poland imposed a state of emergency, all help for the people in the woods is on the shoulders of local residents
and activists. In recent weeks more and more aid workers and citizens have been stopped by police forces, who have
searched at least three homes looking for migrants.
“The situation seems to have escalated and officers became more violent towards aid workers,”
says Witold Klaus, a professor at the University of Warsaw’s Centre for Migration Law Research. “This is part of
intimidation and is probably calculated for its chilling effect – a discouragement to offer help to immigrants.
Providing humanitarian assistance is not a crime. But this is the law in books and it doesn’t stop authorities from
breaking it.”
Polish border guards during an operation near the border
On 14 December a group of activists were stopped by military personnel in the forests near the village of Zabrody.
They were forced to lie face down on the ground and searched. On 15 December Polish armed police forces raided
one of the humanitarian aid hubs in the border region of Podlachia, seizing mobile phones and laptops.
“They suspect us of organising illegal border crossings”, says Anna Alboth, from the NGOMinority Rights Group.
‘’But if anybody is creating a space for illegal crossing the border it is Belarusian and Polish authorities, who forced
freezing and hungry people without any choice to cross the frontier.’’
The Polish ministries of interior and defence did not comment when approached by the Guardian.
During recent pro-migration protests in Michałów and Hajnówka, young activists met elderly people who had
sheltered fugitives during the second world war. Jakub says: “They said that they had hidden Jews during the war
and that they had something in common with us.”
In 1939, Tatiana Honigwill, a young Polish Jew from Warsaw, was deported to the German concentration camp in
Ravensbrück. After Russian liberation in 1945, Tatiana returned to Poland. She died a few years ago, survived by
several granddaughters. One of them is Maria Przyszychowska, 43, a painter, who now lives near the border town of
Hajnówka.
Maria Przyszychowska and her daughter in their home near the border town of Hajnówka
She and her husband, Kamil Syller, 48, have started an unofficial network of local residents and activists who have
placed green lights in their windows to show that their home is a temporary safe space for refugees. At first it was a
symbolic gesture. Then, suddenly, the first people started to show up at their doors.
The couple welcome them into their home and give them basic necessities. “We are trying to protect asylum seekers
and now our activity has become a form of resistance,” says Kamil. “But we don’t want to be heroes. And it’s
becoming really frustrating.”
Maria Przyszychowska and her husband, Kamil Syller, place green lights in their windows to show their home is a temporary safe space for refugees
For weeks, Maria and Kamil’s home has been under surveillance. Border guards patrol the streets around their
building. Green lights have also started to attract the guards, who hide in the forests and wait for people to come out
and then push them back.
Prohibiting an individual from the right to apply for asylum is an infringement of human rights.
Despite individuals expressing their intention to apply for asylum, arrivals in Poland have been forced back in
systematic mass expulsions.
“Maybe someday, when this is over, we’ll be able to talk openly about what the police did to migrants and what we
went through to help them,” says Jakub. “I don’t know when, but I’m sure that day will come. Until then, we’ll
continue to work in the dark. In the end, we are what they called us: secret guerrillas.”
(*Some names have been changed to protect people’s identities)
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24/12/2021, 21:38 ‘My grandmother hid Jewish children’: Poland’s underground refugee network | Global development | The Guardian

‘My grandmother hid Jewish children’: Poland’s

Global development is supported by

About this content

Polish border guards during an operation near the border

(*Some names have been changed to protect people’s identities)

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