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from: ADAM PEMBLE and MATTHIAS SCHRADER, Associated Press
Posted: Nov 14, 2021 / 02:36 AM CST
Updated: 11/14/2021 / 4:53 AM CST
Members of a Muslim community cook soup for migrants at the Polish-Belarusian border in Bohoniki near Sokolka, Poland, Saturday, November 13, 2021. (AP Photo / Matthias Schrader)
BOHONIKI, Poland (dpa) – Maciej Szczęsnowicz cried when he first saw migrants at the border, hungry and exhausted from the ordeal of being stuck trying to enter from Belarus.
The chairman of the local Muslim community in the eastern Polish village of Bohoniki, Szczęsnowicz, saw people so tired that they could no longer stand, so hungry that they picked mushrooms from the ground to eat, and when they got an apple, the Ate kernels.
But what hurt him most was hearing the sounds of her suffering.
“It’s the sound of the children crying and screaming,” he said. “That’s the worst.”
When Poland saw Middle Eastern migrants cross from Belarus to an area of forests and swamps, Szczęsnowicz went to work collecting clothes and preparing food for them.
Large numbers of migrants showed up on the border with Poland this week, exacerbating the political stalemate between the European Union and Belarus. By building troops on the border, Szczęsnowicz also helps feed soldiers and other service people who protect the country.
The AP visited him on Saturday at a restaurant where he and other volunteers were making a large pot of steaming chicken and vegetable soup. It was intended for soldiers and other guards at the border, but he hopes that some of them will find their way to the migrants too.
While the border zone has been closed due to the state of emergency that has been in force since the beginning of September, his soup delivery to the border has given him access that others do not have – and a glimpse of the suffering of the people right behind barbed wire fences in Belarus.
Thousands of migrants have been trying for months to get from Belarus to Western Europe via Poland’s eastern border.
For Polish and EU politicians, the arrival of migrants, most of whom are Middle Eastern Muslims, is seen as a problem that needs to be stopped.
But there are a significant number of Poles who simply see that people need help and have looked for ways to help them. Paramedics have gone into the woods to provide medical assistance to those who manage to slip through. They are often sick or injured. Meanwhile, people across the country have donated money to organizations that bring food and other aid to migrants in the forests.
Most of the volunteers are Roman Catholics, as are their country, but Szczęsnowicz heads the Muslim community in Bohoniki, which is still home to a tiny minority descended from a population of Muslim Tatars who settled in the area 600 years ago.
Still, he says his Muslim identity is secondary when it comes to helping migrants.
“We should help everyone who has entered the Polish border. Everyone, yes, because they are human, ”he said.
Already now, the situation in the region can be fatal, with nine deaths reported so far, including the death of a young Syrian man, who was reported on Saturday. The closer winter approaches, the greater the risks.
Szczęsnowicz fears that “there will simply be more dead here”.
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