Teenagers protect the little ones.
They hug them tightly when loneliness and fear become too great a burden to bear.
Some of them suddenly burst into tears, while playing, while eating.
Many, almost all, have eyes full of sadness.
In Ukraine, there are 100,000 children without parents living in over 600 institutions across the country;
either because mothers and fathers died or because they abandoned them: too poor to support them.
Since the war has invaded their rooms, since the sounds are those of the alarm sirens, the bridge has left to bring them to safety
.
Poland is the first landing place for orphans.
There is a hub that the government and Caritas have set up in Stalowa Wola, a town an hour and a half from Lublin.
They called it the 'relief' hub: children arrive tired and hungry after hours, or often days, of travel.
They are registered and after one night sorted into smaller facilities throughout the country.
"Several evacuations have already been made - says Monika Figiel, of Caritas - a train with 200 disabled children and their companions has left Kiev. One adult for every six children. It was a hard and difficult journey".
The little ones are now safe in the Opole region.
One of these centers is managed by the 'Fondacja Happy Kids', which on the twelfth day of the war has already brought out a thousand children from Kharkiv, Cherson, Odessa.
Seven hundred are in the conference center in Rawa Mazowieka
.
Another 90, very small, arrived in the last hours by train in Przemysl.
"They are very tired and are subjected to a double trauma, that of abandonment and that of war - says Ewa Tetianiec -. The first groups that arrived were in better conditions, because they came from western cities where the conflict has not yet arrived. . Those who arrive these days, on the other hand, have the horrors they have seen in their eyes ".
The NGO posted a short video of the children on board the bus that took them away.
They greet with a smile.
"It was tough, almost three hours without sleep but it was worth it. The kids are safe."
Ewa again: "The nice thing is that they support each other. The older ones embrace the little ones. But in reality the latter are the ones who are better off, because they don't understand. The older ones are very nervous. hard".
A hundred arrived from Lugansk, the heart of the separatist republics.
The association 'Sos wioski Dzieciece', which means the Children's Village, took care of it.
"They only went out to get some air, but they spent five days locked in the bunkers. When it was time to leave, they ran away under the bombs. In addition to their terror there was that of the escorts: they were afraid of lose them, they prayed that it wouldn't happen. It took them 30 hours to get to Warsaw ", explains the spokesperson,
Anna Choszcz-Sendrowska
, recalling
their stories where" chaos "is the protagonist.
to.
How are they, Anna?
"At first glance the trauma is not visible, but that they are traumatized is obvious. And they are twice. You see them playing and joking. However, especially the older ones, they have sad eyes. It happens that while they are playing one bursts into tears. out of nowhere and then suddenly calms down. The trauma is like a wound, you can heal it in all ways, with love and with goodness. But one day the wound reopens ".
To understand what these wounds are, how much they hurt, you need to see the project that two students and photographers,
Paulina Byczek and Klaudia Kopczynska
, made at the Warsaw station: it's called 'Sloneczka' and it means 'little suns'.
They did not work with the orphans but with the little ones who fled with their mothers.
They asked the children to express their emotions with drawings.
Hearts, rainbows, Ukrainian flags came out.
But also tanks and bombs.
Then there are the comments.
Those of each child: "I want to become a doctor";
"I want to have a Lamborghini".
And those that children shouldn't know: "I want my dad to be next to me";
"I want peace".
Umid, 6, designed the house and the school.
Then he wrote: "I want to be a soldier. Don't kill me. I don't want to die."
Paulina tells us that she was most impressed by the drawing of Evelina, 8 years old.
"She drew two smiley faces that would be Putin's face and the Ukrainian flag: then she went to support her mother who was crying a lot. It was she who hugged her and dried her tears".
Each child reacted differently.
"Many seemed clearly traumatized, others just shy, still others held their heads in their hands as if trying not to hear, others ran as if nothing had happened."
On Instragram Paulina put the drawings and wrote something very true.
At this moment "they may be the ones who show us the way. Children put the light where we do not look, because we are afraid or forget. Then let them speak".
And above all, let's get them away from the war.
