Where once there were trolleys now there are wheelie suitcases packed with families’ worldly possessions.
A former superstore that locals know as Tesco has become a hub for Ukrainians fleeing the war.
After arriving at Przemysl railway station, the first major stop in Poland on the line from Lviv, refugees are sent by volunteers to the supermarket on the edge of town. Some are elderly, nearly all of them are women and many of them have children in tow, often clutching stuffed toys as big as themselves.
The outside of the superstore has many of the trappings familiar to British shoppers. Locals still call this Tesco. In truth, it is a former Tesco — it closed in the last couple of years, a casualty of Covid.
Inside the shop, the former shopping aisles have been swept away, and row upon row of mattresses are laid down for refugees and their children.
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The side stores — where shoppers used to go to buy accessories or get keys cut — are now manned by helpers from Przemysl in their hi-vis vests, along with firefighters, paramedics and, at one desk, a team of boy and girl scouts.
In their uniform of scarves, toggles and shirts covered in badges, three children patiently register the names of refugees in a huge file and direct them to yet more volunteers, or to the buses and vans outside.
Majka, 16, said: “I feel really good to help people. We are doing our best.”
In the crowd, Volodymyr, a Ukrainian who emigrated to Denmark 20 years ago, has returned to help. “I left my wife and family and everything in Denmark,” he said. “My children are six and ten years old. I see the children here and it breaks my heart.”
Outside Cici, a French charity worker, leads a team of ten, suggesting that France is an option for Ukrainians with no family or friends to call upon, and contacting municipal offices at home to arrange their accommodation. “A lot of them want to stay here because they believe it will be easier to go back home more easily when the war is over,” Cici said. “But the problem is Poland has one and a half million refugees and it is becoming really difficult for the country to hold them.
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“The French were welcoming Ukrainians warmly. It’s really touching. They want to help. It makes me a bit sad, because all of the Afghan people I work with every day deserve the same care.”
A Ukrainian family — Nastia, her mother Nina and daughters Marichka and Katya, aged nine and five — stood together in the giant car park of the former Tesco. They had arrived from Kyiv and were driven by a stranger to the border after their own car and mobile phone were taken away by Russian soldiers.
She said her daughters had watched the Russian jets fly overhead at home near Kyiv. “They heard the ‘bang, bang, bang’ and they were very scared. She asked me when we came to Poland, ‘Is it true it is safe now?’ ”
Nastia’s family had an offer of a home with a family in the Netherlands, arranged by friends in Ukraine through Facebook, and they were about to board a coach. Watching her youngest daughter, Marichkan, holding her soft toy, she laughed. “She’s smiling. As a mother it’s very good for me to see.”
