Collection of donations

• We collected donations made by friends and added those gathered at a clothing store in Mitte. There we filled the van with warm clothes for adults, warm clothes for children, baby food, dog food, feminine hygiene items and other items needed at the border.

Beginning of the trip

• Around 17.00 hrs we left for Krakow to spend the night there and leave the next day to Pjemitz / Medyka (the Ukrainian border). Around 1.00 am we arrived at the hostel where we stayed.

Travel from Krakow to Przemysl and Medyka (the Ukrainian border)

• We woke up early and refueled on the outskirts of Krakow because we heard on the news that the closer we got to the border, the less fuel we got.

First contact at Przemysl terminal

• The first place we visited was the terminal station in Przemysl, the largest city near the border. Trains arrived there from Kiev and other parts of Ukraine. Trains leaving from there take people to Krakow and other cities in Europe. We tried to leave the donations there but it was not possible. We talked to the volunteers who explained the desperate situation there.

Przemysl refugee center

• We took the donations to the outskirts of Przemysl, where a large refugee center is organized. The queues to leave donations were very long and there was no more room. We decided to continue to the border.

Medyka border crossing

• We arrived at the Medyka customs control on the Ukrainian border. Here the impact was very big. A camp was set up just steps away from the customs controls. Women, children and elderly people arriving in their thousands are received there. They have been queuing for hours, maybe days, to get through customs. They are given warm food, shelter, drink, medical care and are taken in buses to other refugee organization centers near Przemysl.

Crossing to Ukraine

• Thanks to our European passports and our press accreditations we were able to cross momentarily into Ukraine. The queues on the Ukrainian side seem endless. Most of them are childrens and women. At this point we met Jean-Paul Vande Reyde, he is a Belgian citizen, a retired university professor who thanks to his diplomatic passport travels to Ukraine to rescue Ukrainian families. At the time he was on his way to rescue the wife and children of a friend.
  On returning to Poland we were able to enter through the customs area where cars and buses pass. There we also set up a temporary reception post for refugees where they are given food and shelter.

Delivery of donations

• Back in Przemysl we tried again to drop the donations in the different refugee centers. All of them were full. Thanks to the information of a Polish soldier we went to the gymnasium of a school that was enabled to receive donations. When we arrived a group of volunteers received us kindly and formed a human chain that unloaded everything quickly. We were able to leave everything in good hands.

The night at Przemysl station

• We decided to go back to take some pictures at the first point, it was almost midnight. The station was almost empty of journalists and media. Only families traveling from Ukraine and volunteers remained. One of the last trains was leaving for the west and the last people were running to catch it in time. Then we went back to the accommodation where we could rest a bit.

Przemysl refugee center

• On the outskirts of the city of Przemysl is a huge refugee center. There the logistics have been organized to redistribute the people coming from the border a few kilometers away in Medyka. We decided to go early because the day before it was a chaos of vehicles and people carrying donations from Germany and other parts of Europe. The place was quite organized, there were many tents with donations in what was the parking lot of a kind of shopping mall. The main building was converted into dormitories for women, children and grandmothers.

No drone, no filming, no photos

• We tried to take some pictures in a small village near the border to illustrate our documentary material. We were intercepted by two Polish soldiers and after checking our passports we were escorted to leave the area. We were not allowed to take aerial or any other kind of pictures due to border security issues.

Back at the Medyka border

• We went to record some more pictures at the border around noon. There we waited to receive news from Jean-Paul but we didn’t get any until a few days later when we found out that he was able to accomplish his mission. Having no one to take back we decided to go to the train station in Przemysl from where we were sure to find someone who would like to take advantage of our trip.

The return trip from Przemysl to Berlin

• We made a sign that said Krakow / Berlin and stood in the hall of Przemysl station. Immediately an older woman appeared with a small puppy. Her name was Marina and her dog Tiberius. Thanks to the help of a translator she told us that she wanted to travel to Berlin to meet her family. We had two more places left and Jakob found two other middle-aged women who were friends, both named Helena. With the 4 passengers we set off for Berlin. The trip lasted about 12 hours during which we took turns driving with Jakob. We were able to communicate thanks to Google translator. We bought food and drinks for our passengers but they did not want to have dinner. Only one of the Helena’s dared to have dinner with us at a gas station near the German border. She explained that she had traveled from Dnipropetrovsk and that it had taken almost 3 days to reach the border. When we were about to continue our journey Jakob found a van carrying other refugees, the driver spoke German and Russian. This way we were able to clear all the doubts of our passengers so that they would be more at ease. In this last part of the trip they were able to sleep a little while we continued driving to Berlin.