“My mother woke me up with the words that the war had begun”, Anna’s story
Anna was a 13-year-old student in Kharkov when war woke her up in the middle of the night on February 24. "My mother woke me up with the words that the war had begun and my native Kharkov was attacked. Honestly, at first, I thought it was a stupid joke, but when I read several hundred messages from my friends, I realized that, unfortunately, this is not a joke", she remembers vividly. This would be the start of a long journey of fleeing the violence of war in Ukraine.
With only the essentials in a few bags, they left their apartment to a safer place in the city, where they stayed for ten days. However, by the start of March, they decided to take a train to Lviv because "every day it got worse". "We didn't have a plan; we were simply saving our lives. When we drove through the streets, my favourite city was unrecognizable. Once on the train, we were lucky and took seats in the compartment. A lot of people were fleeing. They stood in the train corridors, in the vestibules. At the stops, people knocked on the windows, screaming and begging to be allowed to evacuate, but the train was packed to capacity," she recalls the trip out of Kharkov.
The train took 28 hours to arrive in Lviv. There, they only spent one night, but for Anna, that night in the city "after a cramped train, seemed simply heavenly, despite the air raids." The following morning, they boarded a bus to go to the Polish border and Warsaw.
The trip was not over yet, but a volunteer at the station in Warsaw would prove of crucial help. "Late at night, we arrived in Warsaw, where we bought tickets for Bratislava the next day. At the station, a volunteer approached us and offered to find a place for an overnight stay. It turned out he had a friend in Bratislava, and he called him," described Anna.
This last train to Bratislava was tough for Anna. She reminisces clearly, "There were many people on this train who went to different places, and everyone saved themselves and loved ones from the war. Every person I met had a heartbreaking story." The following day, they arrived in the city and "were able to sleep with the thought that finally, we did not need to run anywhere to save ourselves."
Anna and her mother have been living in the Jesuit house in Trnava for seven months now. Anna's mother works as an assistant in the kitchen while she improves her Slovak to find a job to match her administrative experience. Meanwhile, Anna is attending high school and is also working on learning Slovak, which "is similar to Ukrainian, so it's not that difficult; also, I like learning." In addition, she helps at the Family Help Centre of the house in her free time. "There are wonderful people here who have helped us a lot. I don't even know how things would have turned out if Pavol Trgo SJ and the Jesuits had not helped us. So now we have a house, food, and help."
JRS works with the Xavier Network, Concordia Moldova, the Society of Jesus in Europe, local civil society, and NGOs in a coordinated Jesuit response. Together we help thousands of people like Anna.You can read more about The One Proposal: the coordinated Jesuit response to support the Ukraine Crisis here.
Source : jrseurope.org
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