How a nation opened its arms to refugees

Fascinated by Polish hospitality extended to Ukrainian refugees, Tory Baucum delves into its nature.

Tory Baucum

Tory Baucum is the director of the Benedictine Center for Family Life, Benedictine College, in Atchison, Kansas.

A helper in a yellow vest reaches up to a open train carraige window while offering a bottle. The side of the carraige is covered in graffiti.

A Polish volunteer hands water to Ukrainian refugees at Przemyśl, Poland.

Mirek Pruchnicki, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How does one explain three million refugees in Poland but not one refugee camp? Even the experts find it hard. Dr Marc Gopin of the Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University, and a world expert on refugee crises, says in 30 years of work among refugees he has never seen anything like it.

In December 2022 I was visiting early responders near the Ukrainian-Poland border. One man (whom I’ll identify as Slawomir) was particularly heroic in his efforts to whisk fleeing Ukrainians to safety. Upon introduction, he asked if I wanted to know how he did it. I replied,

“What I really want to know is why? Why did you risk your livelihood, even your life, to rescue people whom you did not know? Indeed, even people with whom you share a hard and sometimes bitter history?”

He had no answer. He could only manage a shrug and murmured,

“I just had to.”

This conversation, with variations, could be told repeatedly. By all the accounts I’m aware of Poles are acting inexplicably heroically. It merits investigation and understanding beyond the anecdotal.

So why then has Poland played such a heroic role in this global crisis?

One answer I’ve by given Poles, is that they have experienced what the Ukrainians themselves are now going through. Their own history of PTSD has primed them to empathize with effects of the shock and awe of an aggressor’s invasion - indeed, of Russian invaders. A scholar at the Jagillonian University said to me of their two 20th Century invaders - the Germans and Russians - most Poles preferred the Germans. Having just visited Auschwitz I found that incredible. “Oh, the Nazi’s were wicked, but they were civilized in their wickedness. Russians show no constraint whatsoever,” she said.

Poles also know abandonment, such as when they fended for themselves as the neighbourhood bullies took turns pounding them. The 1944 Warsaw Uprising, ending in the razing of Warsaw, could have been averted if the West had intervened. But Poles were betrayed by those they believed were friends, or at least, allies. We weren’t. So, Poles are constitutionally unable to simply stand by and watch atrocities. But other European neighbours can and still do.

So what makes the Poles’ response so extraordinary beyond its rarity?

As we probe deeper - beyond collective experience - we hit Polish character. Character is durable. Ever since the late 18th century when Poland was partitioned by three neighbouring Empires (Prussian, Russian and Austria-Hungarian), Poles have been in survival or nearly survival mode. In the 1770s Swiss political theorist Jean Jacques Rosseau wrote an epistolary tract warning the Polish government that if these empires succeeded in “eating you then you must never let them digest you.” For nearly two hundred years the Poles learned that culture and faith keep a people together when even the state buckles. Culture and faith make a people indigestible. These lessons, learned in the crucible of multiple failed uprisings and even death camps, steel the Polish people to do the truly remarkable deeds the world now witnesses.

Poland’s long partitioning and occupation baked in their collective experience. At his recent visit to Kyiv and Warsaw American President Joe Biden singled out the Poles for their heroism. It was a first in this particular crisis.

But can we dig deeper still for an answer to why Poles have acted in such a remarkably generous manner?? For it’s not only singular and durable but it’s also a theological response. This answer requires a little history to absorb.

Many Polish people possess a heroic - even radical - hospitality. The ultimate cause of Polish homes, hostels and hotels welcoming the stranger can be proffered: their faith in God. The Poles have a saying:

“When a neighbour is under your roof then God is under your roof.”

In the 12th century Boleslav the Bold had Bishop Stanislav murdered while celebrating mass (let the English understand). The Poles turned against their king and embraced Stanislav as their martyr and patron. To be received back into the good graces of his people, Boleslav placed a Benedictine foundation in every Cathedral of the land. Rule 53 of Benedict’s Rule states that monks are to receive every stranger as Christ. The common saying of the Poles (if a neighbour is under your roof then God is under your roof) has its roots in this ancient act of royal penance. This Christian practice of hospitality was the core strategy of the Christianization of Poland. In the history of Benedictine evangelization through Christian hospitality we’ve finally hit the bedrock of the Polish response.

They understand people need not only justice but also transcendence in order to flourish. Or even survive.

However, it would be a stretch to say the Poles’ extraordinary response to their neighbours in need of shelter is simply the triumph of the distinct Benedictine character or even more genetically of Catholic sensibilities. Nothing this complex is that simple. All these factors are integrated in this moment. But after five visits to Poland since the third day of the initial invasion, I’ve concluded the Poles are, by and large, a uniquely virtuous people. Not morally virtuous - original sin is distributed evenly, even amongst Poles. But they are theologically virtuous: they are people shaped by faith, hope and love. They understand people need not only justice but also transcendence in order to flourish. Or even survive.

Their great 20th Century saint, Pope John Paul II, during the Stalinist occupation, taught them the practices of Domestic Church. The domestic church is nothing less than the family faced outward in love. Christianity began as a domestic movement. Writing to residents of Rome, St Paul greets the Christians who gather weekly in each other’s homes). In moments of great distress Christians have been known to revert to these root realities, these primal instincts. Not always, of course. But in February of 2022 and for the many following months they have. In Poland.

We are sitting on the most amazing story the world has mostly not heard about. I’m grateful to tell the world what I’ve seen unfold before my very eyes. I wish my telling was adequate to the Poles’ heroism. For as they modestly tell it “we just have to.”

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Politics

25 September 2024

5 min read

Exploring Labour’s parameters of hope

At the party’s conference, meeting mayors and old friends rekindle a restless hope.

David Barclay

David is a partner with the Good Faith Partnership, collaborating on solutions to social problems.

A group of four people stand in front of an even banner, smiling

Labour mayors smiling, despite the weather.

@UKHospKate.

If weather can set the tone for events then the meteorological omens for the Labour Party Conference this year were hardly promising. By the time I’d made it to Liverpool Dockside from the train station I was already soaked and cold, and wondering if anything our new Government was going to say would cut through the gloom and kindle some much-needed hope and optimism.

The downbeat mood of bedraggled conference-goers searching for umbrellas felt like a pretty fair reflection of the wider public as a whole. A recent piece of research found that ‘broken’ was the most common word used to describe the state of the country, and if Keir Starmer had a honeymoon period as Prime Minister it has clearly already long passed. We have become used to politics as a force of chaos and division, and as the events of this summer revealed all too starkly, this state of our public life has left our communities highly vulnerable to the forces of hate and violence that lie closer to the surface than most of us like to admit to ourselves.

Yet my experience over 48 hours in Liverpool did give me cause for optimism, even if that came from some slightly unexpected places.

Mayors are uniquely unburdened by the departmental silos of Westminster and Whitehall, as well as having a direct mandate from the people and communities they are serving.

One of those was the energy of new MPs. Amongst the large intake of Labour MPs there are some seriously impressive people with a vitality and creativity that has been sorely missing from British politics in recent years. I got the chance to speak to Josh MacAlister, the new MP for Whitehaven and Workington, who is a case in point. Josh set up Frontline, a graduate social worker training programme modelled on Teach First which has had huge success in boosting recruitment into a vital part of our public life. He was then asked by the last Government to lead a landmark review into Children’s Social Care, which is without doubt one of the most broken aspects of British politics with private companies making obscene profits from providing terrible care to vulnerable children, leaving a trail of human misery and financial ruin for local Government in its wake. Now he is looking to put the review’s recommendations into practice with a Government that seems far more likely to spark radical change in this area than it’s predecessor. As a foster carer myself who has seen the human cost of the current system up close and personal, meeting Josh gave me real hope that we can do better for the most vulnerable children in our country.

The other politicians who seemed very much in the limelight in Liverpool were Mayors, who now cover more and more of our English cities and regions and are taking an increasingly significant role in our public conversations. I’ve had the opportunity to work closely with the former Mayor of Bristol Marvin Rees, and saw first-hand the incredible impact that place-based political leaders can create by convening different leaders and organisations from across the public sector, business and charities around common goals.

Mayors are uniquely unburdened by the departmental silos of Westminster and Whitehall, as well as having a direct mandate from the people and communities they are serving. So seeing increasing amounts of resource and powers flow to Mayors is undoubtedly another cause for hope.

One of my areas of passion is refugee and asylum inclusion, and I was part of several conversations over the Conference on how Mayors and other regional actors could play a bigger role in this policy area. As Marvin Rees used to say as Mayor of Bristol, city leaders see the issue of migration and human mobility in a fundamentally different way to national leaders, because nation-states are defined by borders and therefore constantly obsessed with controlling them, whereas cities by definition exist due to the movement of people, good and ideas, and are therefore much more interested in how policy can lead to greater welcome and connection in order to harness the strengths of having a diverse population. It is this kind of mindset and perspective shift that having stronger Mayors could bring into British politics, and to me at least it feels like a breath of fresh air.

History teaches us that really significant change happens rarely from the top down but rather through constellations of leaders and organisations with similar worldviews but distinct resources and perspectives.

My final source of optimism for change came not for politicians at all but from the friends and colleagues I was able to catch up with or bump into. Having been around the world of politics for nearly two decades, things like Party Conferences are a lovely opportunity to touch base with people I might not otherwise get to see.

Over lunch with an old friend from the Bristol Mayor’s Office, we were reflecting on how being part of a wider political movement can create opportunities for collaboration and mutual support over the years and in different professional and personal contexts. As someone whose ancestors were actively involved in the Abolition Movement and the Clapham Sect, I often find myself thinking about the social dynamics of change and how movements and coalitions grow and evolve. History teaches us that really significant change happens rarely from the top down but rather through constellations of leaders and organisations with similar worldviews but distinct resources and perspectives. At a time when it often feels like party politics lacks the imagination and courage to really answer the demands of the time, I find real hope in this idea that we can all organise ourselves and our institutions for change, and we all have a responsibility to build a stronger web of relationships to make that happen.

So, if like me you are longing for some positive change in this country, I think the Labour Party Conference did have some real signs of hope. But it’s not a passive hope that somehow having ‘the grownups in charge’ will by itself guarantee real progress. Instead, it’s a restless, active hope that says nothing will happen without us making it happen, and particularly joining the dots between people of goodwill to build something better than our status quo.