While Talewicz-Kwiatkowska has been able to coordinate with Roma organisations in Sweden and Germany to organise accommodation, many are reluctant to take up the offers. The best option for the Roma in the hostel would be to go west, Masudi says, to countries that are “more diverse, where they would blend in”. “Finding accommodation was another challenge, because when someone does not want to have Roma in their car, you can imagine they will not want to invite them under their own roof.” We also received information that Romany families and groups were turned away from cars and buses offering transport,” she says.
“Roma were chased away from reception points, where it was said they were stealing clothes to later sell. “I would have never imagined we would be here talking about discrimination or dehumanisation, but that is what we are seeing.”Īccording to Talewicz-Kwiatkowska, Roma have been refused access to transport and resources offered by the volunteers welcoming refugees at the border. “In the first days of the war, we saw Poles make beautiful gestures of solidarity towards refugees from Ukraine,” says Talewicz-Kwiatkowska, who is a member of Poland’s Roma. The fact that much of the relief effort is provided by self-organised volunteers rather than the government means equal treatment of minorities is difficult to assert. Romany refugees face not only a lack of support but outright discrimination, both from relief providers and fellow Ukrainian refugees.
“Without governmental support, we will not manage.
This is a question that Karol Wilczyński, director of Salam Lab, cannot answer. Ukrainian women were let on the train with their pets, but they didn’t want to let me on Nadia, Romany refugee “And then what, they throw us out?” one woman says, as she kicks an invisible ball towards the door. That date can often be heard repeated with uncertainty among the women sitting in the hostel’s lobby. “We didn’t think that all responsibility for the situation would be shifted on to us.”Įven Nadia’s hostel has only been made possible by a private donor from the US who rented out the property until 15 May. “We wanted to gather information about people in need of help, communicate with central organs and find people ready to host Romany refugees,” she says. Most of the relief has been coordinated by self-organised individuals and NGOs, says Joanna Talewicz-Kwiatkowska an anthropologist at the University of Warsaw, who organised the Facebook group, Poland-Roma-Ukraine at the start of the war. However, institutional help has not been forthcoming. Individuals are not able to organise support for such large groups of people.”įamilies are uncertain how long they will be able to remain at the hostel, with rumours they may have to move out in May. “This situation requires institutional help. Most don’t have a precise plan when they arrive in Poland,” she says. “These are large intergenerational families, some of 30 people. No one knows how many Ukrainian Roma have arrived in Poland, says Poland’s civil rights deputy ombudsman, Hanna Machińska. The official number puts Ukraine’s Roma population at 400,000, though experts see that as a low estimate. Those who have been able to move out of the hostel have moved abroad.” I don’t know anyone who has managed to settle in Poland. “Roma are not admitted to other reception points.
“They face discrimination,” says Mariam Masudi a coordinator at the hostel, working for Salam Lab, an NGO. While the women have found work in a meat processing factory making hotdog sausages, like other Romany refugees they have hit a wall in finding a home. She came to Poland with her son’s wife, 22-year-old Raiia, her adult daughter, and with seven children between them. “I just wish landlords would meet with us before they reject us,” says 42-year-old Nadia, who fled from her village near Donetsk when Russian bombs fell on her neighbour’s house in March. Now it is home to 80 Romany refugees from Ukraine, nearly all mothers with children. Before the invasion of Ukraine, the building was a hostel offering cheap accommodation to young Europeans Interrailing during their gap year.
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