Prague Main Railway Station – Dance Magazine
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Anna Kalusenko: “As it turned out, in the current situation, friends are everywhere. Very many good and good people. “
Prague Main Railway Station – a crossroads of fate for many refugees from Ukraine
The Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Republic Vít Rakušan (STAN) announced that around 5,000 refugees from Ukraine come to the Czech Republic every day. However, the numbers are not exactly known and it is still difficult to estimate the exact states. Apparently over a million people have left the country since the beginning of military operations. The refugees met at the border, then immediately spilled over to the station. Who meets them at Prague’s main railway station? Who explains to them what to do next, how to get the most elementary in a foreign country: food and housing?
The white tent with a colorful poster “Information for a citizen of Ukraine” is difficult to bypass, it is in the middle of the hall. It is here that migrant transfer coordinators are waiting for Ukrainians. City services and numerous volunteers speaking Ukrainian, Czech and English work here continuously. For example, Karen Pears of Atlanta. As it turns out, we are colleagues: Karen is a journalist from a missionary organization. “My heart is breaking because of the Ukrainian people,” he says excitedly. “I was in Kiev, in Lviv, in Donbass. I wrote stories about Christians. I met them in Kharkov. And now I am horrified to find that the city has been bombed. That’s why I’m here. “
Jakub Jukl is Czech, he works as a curator of collections at the Veltrusy chateau. A Ukrainian woman with an adult daughter who holds a ticket to Warsaw is trying to find out which platform to go to. We run there in fours. The train is already delivered. Guides that Ukrainians are used to and who are in every car in Ukraine are not here. We don’t know where to sit. We don’t know when we have to come out either. After all, you are going to an unknown place and the trains may be completely delayed. This means that you cannot orient yourself over time. And you won’t even ask a passenger in the compartment because you don’t know the language. As a scald, we walk along the platform. We are looking for at least some staff. It turns out that the train that is being put on the line is disconnecting along the way: part goes to Warsaw, part to another city. But we already know that. We made it.
“I was sent here by a Czech colleague who works as a volunteer for Ukraine,” says Jakub Jukl.
“What would you like to wish to the Czechs, who are now so sincerely accepting Ukrainians?”
“So that it doesn’t all trigger Russophobia, because many Russians are not guilty of the horror. And they would be against it if they knew what was really going on in Ukraine. “
Marjana Děrkač: “I am proud of my friendship with the official enemy of the People’s Republic of Luhansk”
“Do you need help?” He says next to me as I talk to Jukl. A polite smile, a serious look indiscriminate to age… Besides, this young girl feels strangely protected. It is Marjana Děrkač from the small Ukrainian town of Bershad. In Prague, she works as an assistant technical director in a company that sells equipment for the food industry. The station is from two at night. At eleven, she received word that help was needed and came. The girl puts me in the “admission procedure”:
“When the train arrives, the volunteers go to the platform, take 10 to 15 people and bring them here. We “sort” them here. I’m sorry, I understand what that sounds like, but people really need to be divided into two groups: those who stay in the Czech Republic and those who move on. With those who go on, we go straight to the box office and buy them free tickets in the required direction. Just show your passport. Today, for example, we sent people to Poland, Austria and Germany. Then the Czech group “sorts” again: those who stay in Prague and those who go to other cities. It would be good if the refugees who board the trains were immediately asked where they were going. Because sometimes you get so back and forth! I will come to Prague, and here I will find out that he should have performed in Brno, because he is waiting for him a short distance from there. It happens that someone is waiting in Prague, but you can’t pick them up. Do you see that boy? This is a volunteer. He takes such refugees with his car to where they are needed. The others take buses to the police registration center. And there they already handle all the papers: from insurance to accommodation. So that people don’t get lost and freeze anywhere. Of course, not everything is perfectly tuned yet, but no one expected such a scenario. We learn as we go. ”
Other girls are coming. Marjana quickly explains to them what and how. Volunteers must be well versed in the station. Refugees do not read in Czech, they confuse indicators, they cannot find a platform. The information on the tickets in a slightly different way than in Ukraine. But there is no panic or pressure. There are not that many migrants with a transfer. According to a volunteer from the Ivano-Frankivsk region, a bricklayer Ivan Puk, who in principle works independently, people in the Czech Republic usually go “to someone”. But maybe they go to Germany “blind”, nowhere.
“Marjan, have you been working here since day one?” I ask.
“Of course not. The first day I was confused, I didn’t know what to do. I saw a comment on social media that people were going to demonstrate in front of the Russian embassy in Prague, and I decided to join. Along the way, I saw boys with Ukrainian flags on their shoulders. There are eight of us now. We raise money or our friends send us something. We buy what we can: drugs, knee and elbow pads, shooting gloves, tactical goggles, we found one bulletproof vest, four helmets in Poland. When we were looking for a way to squeeze in front of the Ukrainian regime, we met with the “enemy of the People’s Republic of Luhansk”, Kiev’s minion Serhiy Gustilin. This is an official accusation. And I am very proud of such an acquaintance! He was commander of the assault brigade of paratroopers, a member of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Serhije’s war caught up in Poland. He loaded everything he could into the car and drove to Kharkov. Then we called to each other briefly, “How are you? And what kind of thermal vision that Ukrainian volunteers wrote about in the Telegram is supposed to be what? ”You know what it looks like when you don’t know anything, but you try to learn it quickly. I think all the soldiers are tough and fierce, but Serhi thought everything to you as calmly as a kindergarten educator.
Oil (9 years old): “No. I’m not Russian. I’m UKRAINIAN! “
Migrants can simply wait for their departure or relax in the “Rest Room”. The spacious hall with large windows is austere: military sofa beds are made. It is possible to sleep. There are new blankets on the table in the corner. There are baby diapers in the middle. Next to the table is a pram for everyone with the announcement that it is possible to take it. Tea and a sandwich can be made in the improvised kitchen. There aren’t many people here now. Everyone is just passing through.
Two little girls, both from Kiev, are painting at the big table. There’s seven, Olje’s nine.
“Hi, honey, are you talking to me?” Olja smiles, why wouldn’t she talk.
“The trip was terrible, wasn’t it?”
“From Kiev? Yes. There were a lot of people there when we boarded and I was almost squeezed. Ilja is my brother, he is one year and four months old. Some black people. No, they have a different culture, that’s why they squeezed him like that. “
“And in Kiev she was afraid?”
“No, the shooting was far from us, but my mother and I still preferred to go to the station and buy tickets where they were. We will probably go on to Germany. “
“Where’s your dad?”
“Dad? He doesn’t live with us. “
“Do you know what’s going on in Ukraine?”
“Of course, the war. The Russians attacked us. “
“And what do you think all Russians are bad for?”
“No, only in Moscow.”
“And those who live in other cities?”
“No. After all, they can’t blame them for living in Russia. “
“And those soldiers who came to kill our people are to blame?”
“You asked Putin. He rules there and they know their duty. “
“They didn’t want to?”
“I don’t know.”
“Olinka, who are you? Russia? You speak Russian… “
“No. I am UKRAINE! ”
There are other children in the lobby. Olexandra is only one year old, his sister Solomi is five. The boy shakes his hands at a woman who can’t hold him. Natalja Jaciv is from Ivano-Frankivsk. She arrived with her grandmother, daughter and two of her children. The family is heading to Frankfurt. “The queue at Chop was big,” the woman explains. “We stayed there for three hours. There were a lot of people there. Different people. And they also behave differently. Everyone is upset, many panicking. From Odessa, from Kiev… For such as we are, with children, there is a special queue. Our grandmother has crutches, she has a hard time, so the Ukrainian police took her completely out of line. They helped us a lot. And people are great here. They welcome us here. We are very grateful. Now we will rest and go to bed at the hotel. My daughter booked him for us. “
Another woman treads nervously at the kitchen window by the window. A ten-year-old boy, Hleb, runs around her. His mother’s name is Olena Ponomarjova.
“I’m completely out of it,” he explains. “I came to see my sister and friends. They shot their car, there were three children! Glory to God, they only hit the wheels, they didn’t hurt anyone. They ran to a village, and people immediately took them there and hid them in their cellar. I can’t get out of there now and the pressure is going up and down. We’re going to Madrid. To my parents. They lived in Kiev until the war, but when the shot down plane crashed into the next house, they moved into our grandmother’s old house. The cellar collapsed there, it did not have its own cellar and the cellar in a nearby kindergarten was overcrowded. The sirens sound. They’re shooting. To prevent the windows in the bathroom from glazing due to explosions, I sealed them with duct tape. A siren sounds, we put our son in the bathroom, cover him with a mattress on top and go to the hallway with my grandmother. We squat, cover our ears, and keep our mouth open. That’s the way to do it when shooting from heavy machinery. “
People have few things with them, many have thrown suitcases along the way and bring cats and dogs with them. Čiča is a street mix. They sold her owner as a purebred chihuahua because they wanted a small dog. “And look what a giant it is,” smiles Chichi’s owner, Kievan Lera Ihnatenko. “We’re going to my cousin’s. To Wroclaw. But it was not possible to cross the Polish border, so we first got to Hungary and then here. What did we feed Čič? Granules. But we fed her a lot on the train. Where would she go to the toilet? And here everything is fine. They immediately gave us a bowl and a pocket with food. “
Most people get off the train to Poland
They tell me that a RegioJet train has arrived from Poland and will now run between the Czech Republic and Ukraine every day. This humanitarian bridge on the tracks is the result of cooperation between People in Need, ČD Cargo and Rail Cargo Group. According to the volunteer from the Reich volunteer Marije Chuchla, half of the people who boarded in Przemyśl performed in Krakow, many in Katowice and some in Olomouc, so only 72 people arrived in Prague, of which only 18 were “homeless”, those who no one is not waiting.
For example, no one is waiting for Anna Kalusenko from Poltava and her family: her mother, her Egyptian husband and Amin, who is a year and a half old.
“We were on the road for two days and two nights,” he says. “After Poltava was Kharkov, then Lviv, Poland and now we are here. The worst nights were the nights. When the sirens go out, they shoot in the street and you look like a child and hide him in the bathroom or basement. During the day, our men chase those who mark gas pipes, and you don’t know when they should explode. (She starts to cry.) Don’t get mad, I don’t want to think about it. It is very heavy.”
“Don’t you have friends in Prague who could take you in?”
“We have no friends anywhere. But as it turns out, friends are everywhere. Very many good and good people. When we left, I was afraid the baby would cry hungry, but my sweetheart always had milk. ”
Olena Laň for Dance Magazine
Photographs by the author and Savvy Dolomano
Message to all readers: Strengthen peace! Nationality is not important. The man is important !!!! And dance is the unique language of all people around the world! Dance and peace and love for all !!!
Everyone will understand in the dance!
Dance magazine editorial staff
Dance magazine