900 km from Berlin is Przemyśl in Poland. This is the largest town near the Medyka crossing point at the Ukrainian border. There we went with German photographer Jakob Schottstädt. Thanks to the cooperation of many people, we were able to cover the costs of our trip and document what happens to refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine. This is just one of the points on the border, but there are many others. As I write these lines, thousands of people are still escaping the madness and many thousands more are dying there because of the constant shelling by the Russian army.
When we arrive at the various refugee reception points, the first impression is of order in the chaos. Volunteers come and go, some soldiers guard the place with their faces covered. At times a tide of people crowd in some space consulting, looking for orientation, lines are formed, the feeling is that they are lost, they do not know which way to go, the panorama is desolate.
They left everything behind, some only bring a bag, their life is left behind and they have nothing more than what they carry with them.
The refugees speak only Ukrainian or Russian, it is very difficult to communicate and they do not stop arriving and arriving.
The cold is terrible, the amount of people is too many, the feeling that what we do is too little.
It is impossible to be in their skin, we can only empathize with them, not forgetting that it could be us, any of us.
Today all the eyes of the world are on Ukraine but in many other places there are people, who like them, neither more nor less important, are being displaced from their homes, leaving everything behind, being left with nothing.
This is a visual memory of a few days on the border, where solidarity is the most important capital we human beings can have.
One more demonstration of how ridiculous wars are, how unjustifiable. Today I shout out loud: no to war, no war at all.