Three Touching Stories About Ukrainian Refugees I Witnessed in Poland
They will help you to regain hope that not everything is lost. Yet.
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Poland, where I live, received more than 2 million refugees from Ukraine so far. Since the country has 38 million residents, that means the population rocketed 5% in a matter of weeks.
I live in Warsaw, a city that has received nearly 500,000 refugees on its own.
With this influx, the city population rose from 1.8 million to 2.2 million in only three weeks. That means Warsaw overtook Hamburg, Vienna, Minsk, and Paris to become one of the 10 largest cities in Europe.
In less than a month.
While this may not be (yet) the largest refugee influx the World has ever seen, it is the fastest.
Every 8 seconds, a new family of refugees arrives in Poland, and the Polish people are going above and beyond to assist them.
As Stefan Tompson, a respected Polish cinematographer, stated:
Poland does for Ukraine what nobody did for Poland in 1939. […] In 1956, when Hungary rose up against the Soviet Union, thousands of Poles donated their blood to help the Hungarians Uprising. In 2022, when Ukrainians defend their homes, yet again, thousands of Poles have stepped up to help by donating their blood. Solidarity, it’s literally in our Polish blood…
I personally witnessed all three of the stories I’m about to tell you. They are only a drop in the ocean of kindness shown not only by Poles but also by Europeans and even citizens from other continents.
In times of adversity, a ray of hope.
Americans, Canadians, and Italians Sponsoring a Roof for Refugees
One of my businesses is a hostel for tourists and transit passengers in Warsaw.
The last two years were hard for us. Very hard. I saw many of my competitors go bankrupt and the only reason I didn’t face the same fate was that years ago I adopted the business principle of antifragility from Nassim Taleb.
But still, we lost a considerable amount of money during the consecutive pandemic lockdowns. We…