Primary School No. 5 in Przemyśl has two entrances. They lead to two different universes: one to the school building where regular classes are run, and the other to a sports hall which has recently been turned into a refugee centre.

Agata Kuzmiek, 55, shuttles between both of them. A Polish language teacher at the school, she now volunteers as a refugee worker in the evenings and between classes. ‘We self-organised spontaneously on 26 February,’ she explains while showing me around the bustling hall where more than 160 people find refuge every day. Most of them are women, children and elderly people.

‘We started with a few sports mattresses and bottles of water. Now, the donations exceed our storage capacities,’ says Agata. Food, clothes, shoes, toys, blankets, and hygiene products pile up everywhere—they fill the corridor, the improvised canteen in the girls’ changing room, and even the stairs. The twenty or so volunteers working here count amongst them teachers, pupils, parents, paramedics, firefighters, and scouts; as broad a cross-section of Polish society as you could imagine.

Everybody does everything: they provide refugees with information in Polish, English, and Ukrainian, help them find transport, cook, and wash, comfort them, and take care of their pets. ‘This is the first time in my lifetime that we are facing such a dramatic situation,’ Agata explains. ‘We are surprised to discover so much strength, so much empathy in us. [The Nobel prize poet] Wisława Szymborska was right—“we know ourselves only as far as we’ve been tested.”’

But this testing becomes strenuous. Agata is worried that in the absence of systemic solutions, the outpouring of generosity may soon turn into burnout and frustration. As she points out, she is dealing with volunteers, not professionals. ’We have suddenly become social workers, psychologists, mothers, and nurses. But none of us has the qualifications to do this.’ She recalls a situation from two days ago. ‘Volunteers brought 150 orphans evacuated from Lviv. We needed to quickly change, feed, and wash them. There were little babies and kids with medical conditions among them. I have never been so overwhelmed in my life.’

At the time of writing, the refugee exodus from Ukraine to Poland has reached 1.7 million. The town of Przemyśl is the first port of call for many of these refugees. Its 60,000 population has almost doubled since the Russian invasion on 24 February. There are six trains from Ukraine daily with more than 1,800 people on board. ‘The train station is the first welcome point for refugees,’ explains Agata. ‘They are fed and warmed there, provided with a Polish sim card and given verified contacts for transport. But they can’t stay there overnight, so volunteers direct them to private houses or to our school.’

This is how two young Ukrainians—Ksenya and Katya—got here this morning. Their train arrived in Przemyśl from Vasylivka in the Zaporizhzhia Oblast. When we speak, they are still dazed after a three-day journey. It was especially challenging for Katya, who is seven months pregnant. She speaks about the pains she has experienced since the stress of the overcrowded train. Ksenya shows me photos on her phone: ‘We were so many that kids travelled on luggage shelves,’ she says.

At first, Ksenya and Katya didn’t want to leave their hometown. They both had good jobs—Ksenya as a pharmacist and Katya as a florist. They also didn’t want to separate from their relatives and friends who all remained in Vasylivka. One of them is Katya’s husband and father of her baby. ‘He couldn’t have left Ukraine,’ she says. After Kyiv decreed a full military mobilisation, Ukrainian men aged 18-60 were forbidden from leaving the country.

They finally made up their minds on 8 March. ‘My dad came to give me flowers for women’s day,’ recalls Ksenya. ‘Wishing me all the best, he said: “and now, why don’t you take Katya and go somewhere safe?” I understood then that it was serious.’ Two hours later, both women were on the train to Poland, their worldly belongings stashed in three bags.

Ksenya says that until a few weeks ago, war was an abstract concept. ‘You won’t believe me, but I learned about the Russian invasion from Instagram. I saw tanks on the streets of cities and I couldn’t believe it. A war in Ukraine? In 2022?’ The realisation really came when she heard military planes flying outside her window. ‘They were louder than any plane I have ever heard. We didn’t know where to go. We don’t even have a basement.’

As we speak, a volunteer approaches and offers Ksenya and Katya accommodation in a private house in Przemyśl. ‘Would you go with us?’ Ksenya asks me. ‘Just to see if the guy is OK.’ I agree. I understand Katya’s and Ksenya’s cautiousness—sadly, Ukrainian refugees face threats of human trafficking and forced labour.

But Marcin, the local who comes to pick us up in his old Opel Astra, doesn’t seem like a dangerous sort. While driving us to his mother’s house, where Ksenya and Katya will be hosted, he says that his whole family is involved in helping Ukrainians. ‘When we learned that the school opened up [for refugees], we rushed to give volunteers our phone numbers and tell them that we are ready to provide accommodation,’ he says. ‘Since then, I have hosted two mothers with children.’ Marcin, who is a soldier, imagines being in the same situation as the Ukrainian refugees. ‘If the war came to Poland, I would then be called up to the army and my family would have to flee,’ he says.

On our way, we pass a big Tesco supermarket that has been converted into a refugee centre. ‘Przemyśl is a different town now,’ Marcin says. ‘Ukrainian flags are in every shop window and job offers for the newcomers appear in every local Facebook group.’ He draws a parallel between the Ukrainian refugees and Poles who went to work in Britain. ‘There will be jobs for them in Poland. But they will probably be paid less than Poles,’ he says.

Marcin’s mother, Teresa, greets us at the stairs of her house. But before we enter, she wants to show us the pantry, where she cooks soup for refugees in a thirty-litre pot. ‘A different soup everyday,’ she exclaims.  It is distributed at the train station by volunteers. She also shows us her porch that has recently been converted for food storage. A huge truck with supplies is expected to arrive today from the Netherlands. ‘They will drop the stuff here and later, smaller cars will distribute the supplies inside Ukraine,’ Teresa explains.

When we enter the house, Katya is relieved. She and Ksenya will be more comfortable here than at the school. The room that Teresa prepared will offer some privacy and there will be no queues to the toilet. This is important to Katya now. As we drink tea at the family table, another group of young Ukrainians tell Teresa how grateful they are and that they won’t stay long. Their aunt is driving from Lviv and as soon as she crosses the border, she will come to collect them. Their final destination will be Hanover in Germany. But Teresa interrupts her. ‘Don’t be silly. You need to take some rest before you go.’

As I leave Przemyśl, the future seems very uncertain for a small town and its oversized role in a terrible conflict. How many refugees will Teresa host in the coming weeks and months? Will the school’s sports hall become a permanent refugee centre? More ominously—will the solidarity movement begin to dim as Ukrainian arrivals rise?

The latter is a question that many Poles are asking themselves now. I hope not. The solidarity movement which has sprung up to support Ukrainian refugees is one of the most inspiring political developments in the country, and probably far beyond, in recent years. The war is far from over, and it will need to prepare itself for a marathon rather than a sprint.