Polish people since the start of the war have been helping Ukrainian refugees throughout Poland. Whether it’s to set up shelter for the short-term or long-term, they have extended a helping hand.
While most Poles do this work out of their home or business in Poland, one Polish man uprooted his life in Warsaw to move to Ukraine to help his neighbors impacted by war.
Jonasz Skrzypkowski is a member of First Baptist Church in Warsaw and sings at services when he is in town, but that is not as often as it used to be.
“I resigned from my career as a tax lawyer,” explained Skrzypkowski, He says he was at one of the world’s largest professional services networks and is now executive director of Baptist Charity Action. “It’s wartime, it’s not like you’re working with someone who has email, you need to have a personal relationship so that’s why I moved there to build that trust.”
This is the effort Houstonians help support through donations with Texas Baptist Men, work we began highlighting weeks after the invasion.
“Since March of last year, we have been sending trucks with food and hygiene supplies into Ukraine,” explained Skrzypkowski.
The mission has moved more than 2000 tons of products from Poland to Ukraine.
“Currently we are one of the biggest senders from Poland of humanitarian aid into Ukraine,” he said.
Baptist Charity Action is currently working on winterization projects, supplying churches being used as distribution centers and shelters close to the war zone, with generators, blankets, and solar-based power tools.
“The project we are getting ready for is construction in the town of Irpin outside of Kyiv. With the help of local churches, we want to help rebuild individuals’ households,” he said. He referenced how 70% of Irpin was damaged by bombings. “This is where the Russians got as far as Irpin this is where they stopped, the city was a battlefield, decimated. On my street where I live there are 12 buildings, two of them are destroyed vanished and three others partially.”
Skrzypkowski said he is not afraid to live there at the moment. “I will never forget the first time I went there, checkpoints, driving on empty roads and people with no electricity; but now it’s not like that anymore. Western Ukraine goes back to life, even Kyiv but not to the extent how it was before the war.”
Russians are now using drones to bomb critical infrastructure like electricity plans, according to Skrzypkowski.
“They were doing very consciously during wintertime tofreezee Ukrainians to death, to scare them. Yes, the power cuts are continuing, but not to the extent they were before,” he said.
He said the fear of survival is obvious in even the youngest of Ukrainians.
“I met kids who are gray-haired already, because Russians were at the villages for several weeks. STRESS. They would spend several weeks or months under the bed. Russians had a list of people they needed to liquidate from villages and towns. You pass the damaged destroyed homes, and you don’t realize anymore,” he said.
To date, the Ukrainian government has not officially released the death toll, but it’s estimated more than 50,000 civilians have been killed.
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