Escape disguised as children's play from an orphanage in Ukraine

Imane Rachidi Lodz (Poland), 21 Mar The image is heartbreaking: dozens of children lying on the beds, waving toys or looking at their caregivers. They are the Ukrainian orphans of Kovel, now refugees in an old building in the Polish city of Lodz, and they still believe that their flight from the Ukrainian war “is part of a game”. They left the Ukrainian orphanage with three caregivers and blindfolded to “play” in real life a version of the hide-and-seek they had been “practicing for a couple of days”. Halina Jowic, its director, explained to her 35 children that, if they heard the sirens, they had to be quick and hide in the basement, but the ultimate goal was to run to the bus so that they could get going as soon as possible. The prize? “We're going on vacation to Poland,” he says he told them. Although, he admits, the flight trip was “very hard” and everything was done to prevent the children from realizing the real situation. The ultimate goal of the trip, in reality, was to bring them to safety outside Ukrainian territory because Vladimir Putin's forces were intensifying the bombing. The trip lasted almost eight hours in total, but when they reached the border, they had to cross on foot into Poland and did so with another group of orphans who had also fled from another center. In total, 94 children between the ages of 3 and 16 were picked up by buses sent to the border by the Happy Kids Foundation, which has helped evacuate thousands of Ukrainian children and continues to try to remove minors from other orphanages around the country. Ukraine has more than 150,000 children in foster care. This group found refuge in a building in Lodz, which had previously housed a shelter for Polish minors and was practically empty. Now, in addition to the children, there is a group of volunteers assembling furniture, two cooks, and several educators trying to make this building the closest thing to a home. “We would like to return to Ukraine soon, but I don't know,” Jowic doubts. Twentysomething Irina Chosik, one of the caregivers, does not separate herself from the youngest children in the group and does not manage to stop the tears either. “We just want to go back to Ukraine, this is a nightmare, although the Poles have given us everything (...) I don't forget how bombs began to be thrown and gunfire started that day, when the war started,” he says. The children of Kovel also share space with children with disabilities and special needs, who are accommodated on the second floor of the building, but under these circumstances it is difficult to provide special attention to each of the groups, and Ukrainian orphanages have not been able to bring all the staff from Ukraine either. Jowic has only one request for the international community and especially for Europe: “We need a no-fly zone so that children can leave Ukraine, we must stop bombing to remove children and women,” he urges, while recalling that Russian forces do not distinguish between civilians and military objectives in their attacks. One of the children who came with her to this orphanage is her own grandson. She has two children, a 29-year-old military girl by profession and a 30-year-old boy recruited into the Ukrainian Army after the Russian invasion on February 24. Now both of them are fighting Moscow troops at the front, so she has to take care of her grandson. “Just as they have the goal of defending Ukraine, my mission is to save the lives of these children, who have nowhere to be, nor the care of their parents,” he says. The mayor of Lodz, Hanna Zdanowska, promises to do everything possible for the children who are still trapped in Ukraine, such as a group of 17 babies who have arrived this week in the city's hospitals, after spending two weeks in a basement in Kiev, developing severe pneumonia that put their lives at risk. For now, Jowic thanks him for welcoming this hundred orphans, and, as a gesture of gratitude, the children concentrate in the room to sing the Ukrainian anthem. They do it with one hand on their hearts, and without losing sight of their caregivers. “We have done everything possible and it seems that, for now, most have not noticed the war,” celebrates the director. CHIEF go/cat/jgb (video) (photo) (More information about the European Union at euroefe.euractiv.es)