Through a mountain pass, Poles frantically rebuild a rail link to Ukraine to help refugees

The effort is part of a tidal wave of support Poles are offering their Ukrainian neighbors, with whom they share a tumultuous history marked by Russian aggression.

They escaped Ukraine. But their ordeal has just begun.

“I would go kill Putin myself,” said Piotr Gubala, 35, a brawny construction worker, “but we’ll each do our own part to help Ukraine.”

His and other teams have been working along dozens of miles of track from sunup to sundown over the last three days, repairing steel ties and shoveling dirt off the tracks, and said they didn’t expect to be paid. Miroslaw Siemieniec, a spokesman for Poland’s national rail operator, said at least six trains a day would be able take refugees from the border to towns throughout the country once the lines are ready.

Across Poland’s southeast, locals have organized the distribution of donations, food and offered their homes to the flood of Ukrainians who are confronting an undefined period of displacement often with nothing but a suitcase.

The ad hoc response has blurred the line between civilian and government, and Poland’s infamous bureaucracy has momentarily receded as the government enlists volunteers to mobilize humanitarian efforts. From Gubala’s construction company to private schools and hotels functioning as reception centers, there’s a sense that now is time for mutual aid, funded out of people’s wallets instead of government coffers — at least for the moment.

In a statement to The Washington Post, Poland’s top infrastructure official, Andrzej Bittel, thanked everyone for their efficient work.

“Poland cannot be indifferent to the tragedy of the Ukrainian people,” he said. “Railwaymen will help wherever possible.”

The refurbished tracks run through the Carpathians, an arc of wooded hills dotted with ski resorts that runs from Poland through Ukraine to Romania. Many fleeing Ukrainians have chosen to travel through the mountains to the border, seeing it as a safer option than going through the cities and towns along main roads that might come under attack.

The Polish Carpathians, despite being a tourist destination, are also a place of trailer parks, rundown towns and relative poverty.

Gubala’s team happened to be working on a section of track that ran through land belonging to Lech Motyka, 62, a truck driver whose flannel shirt was fraying, his jacket vest stained with grease, and who had built his own tractor from scratch.

He was eager to join the volunteer effort, and drove the gurgling, steaming contraption that he lovingly called “Mercedes Original” up toward the tracks.

“My company’s got no drivers because they were all Ukrainian and they’ve gone to fight,” he said. “They’ll do what they have to and we’ll do what we have to.”

Motyka’s wife, Boguslawa, was all for helping but said she was too consumed by fear to do much. It wasn’t just the influx of so many refugees, surely full of both good and bad people, she said, as the prospect of the war reaching Poland, that made it difficult to concentrate.

“My daughter says she isn’t afraid — and by the way I don’t believe her — but in any case, I am double afraid, for her and for me,” she said. “Not one generation has lived in this region without war.”

Her adult daughter, Justyna, rolled her eyes, and told her mom she was watching too much TV and believing too much of what she read on Facebook. Boguslawa gave her a stern look.

“We have Ukrainian friends — it’s just over there,” Boguslawa added, gesturing over the hills to the east. “Can you imagine, women my age, saying they will stay because they can’t bear leaving the country where their children will die fighting the war?”