WARSAW: Hoping to restore some normalcy after fleeing the war in Ukraine, thousands of refugees waited in long lines on Saturday in the Polish capital of Warsaw to get identification cards will allow them to get on with their lives, at least for now.
Refugees started queuing by Warsaw's National Stadium overnight to get the coveted PESEL identity cards that will allow them to work, live, go to school and get medical care or social benefits for the next 18 months.
Still, by mid-morning, many were told to come back another day, the demand was too high even though Polish authorities had simplified the process.
"I'm very impressed with Polish people as they were so kind," said one woman standing in the line.
"We are new here, we are just looking and trying to adapt to new life."
Poland has so far taken in more than 2 million refugees from Ukraine, the bulk of more than 3.3 million people that the U.N. says have fled since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24.
Hundreds of thousands more have also streamed into Hungary, Slovakia, Moldova and Romania.
Most of the refugees fleeing Ukraine have been women and children, because men aged 18 to 60 are forbidden from leaving the country and have stayed to fight.
Polish authorities said more than 123,000 refugees have been given the ID numbers, including more than 1,000 each day in Warsaw, since the program was launched Wednesday.
Svetlana, a Ukrainian woman from Ivano-Frankivsk who has lived and worked in Poland for over 10 years, has had relatives come now to Poland as well.
She said receiving the Polish ID numbers will make a huge difference for everyone from Ukraine.
"This is really so important to us that we can officially look for work, send children to school and be active here," Svetlana said.
"It really changes the way we feel here."
Refugees can receive one-time benefit of 300 zlotys (USD 70) per person and a monthly benefit for each child under 18 of 500 zlotys (USD 117).
Those who find jobs will have to pay taxes on their earnings just like Poles.
Pavlo Masechko, a 17-year-old from Novovolynsk in the Volyn region of western Ukraine, has been trying to rebuild his life in the southeastern Polish city of Rzeszow.
Before the war, Masechko had plans to come to Poland to study when he finished high school, but he says being forced out of his country by war is something completely different.
"This is so stressful to leave your country in this moment like this," said Masechko, who has joined a local school in Poland since arriving.
Now, Masechko's Ukrainian teacher is seeking to organize classes online that were suspended when Russia attacked.
"When the situation started, it was very difficult for me to focus on other things. But time passed and now the situation is more stable and stable in my head also," he said.
"I have started to focus again on other things in my life."
Many of the refugees from Ukraine have since moved on to other countries in Europe, mostly to stay with friends and family.
Some, however, have chosen to go back home even as the end of the conflict is nowhere in sight.
Among them was 41-year-old Viktoria, who was waiting Saturday with her teenage daughter Alisa to board a train back to Zhitomyr in central Ukraine.
"For the last five days it has been quiet," said Viktoria.
"Our local authorities are good. They prepared everything for us there so we can go back to work, have normal life and children can have online education."
Alisa said she is not afraid to return and wants to reunite with the rest of the family who are still in Ukraine.
"My relatives are there," she said.
Twenty-two-month-old Yeva Vakulenko had been through four rounds of chemotherapy for leukemia at a hospital in Ukraine, and then suffered a relapse.
As she began returning again for more treatment, Russia invaded, disrupting doctors' efforts to cure her.
Air raids forced the toddler to shelter in the basement of the hospital in the western city of Lviv for hours at a time, making her feel even worse.
She cried a lot and sought comfort from her grandmother, who is caring for her after her parents were in an accident that left her mother disabled with brain and leg injuries.
So when doctors told Yeva's grandmother that they could evacuate to Poland, she seized the chance.
"It is very difficult for children to go somewhere in the middle of the night and sit in the basement for a long time," said Nadia Kryminec as she held her granddaughter, whose sweet-natured smiles gave no hint of the ordeal she has endured.
"We were told that she was in stable condition and we should try to go. Otherwise, she is simply doomed to death," the grandmother said.
The little girl, who her grandmother says understands everything, is one of more than 400 Ukrainian children with cancer who have been evacuated to a clinic in Poland.
Doctors then place them in one of some 200 hospitals in 28 countries.
"We triage the patients when they arrive at our center," said Dr. Marcin Wlodarski, a pediatric hematologist at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, who is staffing the Unicorn Clinic of Marian Wilemski in Bocheniec, in central Poland.
Stable patients are transferred quickly from there to hospitals in other countries while those in worse condition are first stabilized in Polish hospitals, he said.
"Then they return to us and can be sent for further travel," Wlodarski said.
Decisions have to be made fast because time is critical for the young oncology patients.
The evacuations began immediately after Russia attacked Ukraine on Feb.24, and is a joint effort of St.Jude, the Polish Society of Pediatric Oncology and Hematology, Poland's Fundacja Herosi (Heroes Foundation), and Tabletochki, a Ukrainian charity that advocates for children with cancer.
Dr.Marta Salek, another pediatric hematologist oncologist with St.Jude who is staffing the Polish clinic, said the center receives large numbers of patients and convoys that arrive from Lviv through humanitarian corridors.
"At times we can have convoys with only 20-something patients but we can have up to 70 patients at a time and even more," she said.
At the clinic, a large bin of white unicorn stuffed animals sits in a room, along with a wooden train set, brightly colored balloons and other toys that the children happily play with.
More than 3 million people, about half of them children, have fled Ukraine as the country faces a brutal military onslaught by Russian forces that has targeted civilians.
Of those, more than 2 million people have arrived in Poland, the largest of Ukraine's neighbors to its west.
A Polish health ministry official said Friday that the country is treating 1,500 refugees in hospitals, many of whom are suffering hypothermia after their journey, and 840 of whom are children.
The World Health Organization said Friday that cancer is one of the major health challenges resulting from the war.
It said it was supporting the effort by the organizations that "are working against the clock to reconnect pediatric cancer patients with their treatments."
"Cancer itself is a problem, but treatment interruptions, stress and risk of infection mean that hundreds of children might die prematurely," said Dr. Roman Kizyma, head of the Western Ukrainian Specialized Children's Medical Centre in Lviv, where the pediatric oncology patients are first stabilized before they are sent across the border into Poland.
"We believe that these are the indirect victims of this war," Kizyma said in a WHO statement.
Among those at the clinic this week was Anna Riabiko, from Poltava, Ukraine, who was seeking treatment for her daughter Lubov, who has neuroblastoma.
"Treatment is currently impossible in Ukraine. Fighting is taking place, there are no doctors, it is impossible to have surgery or chemotherapy. And even maintenance therapy is also impossible to obtain," she said.
"So we had to look for salvation somewhere."
It's not a step that all parents were able to take for their sick children, she said.
"A lot of sick children stayed there," she said.
"Because parents were worried and did not want to go into the unknown."
Since the shelling began to intensify in Kyiv and Kharkiv about a week ago, Julia Entin has been working feverishly, thousands of miles away in Los Angeles to evacuate Holocaust survivors in Ukraine who find themselves trapped in yet another conflict.
For the last six years, the 39-year-old paralegal at Beth Tzedek Legal Services has helped connect Holocaust survivors with local services.
Now, Entin is coordinating rescue efforts in Ukraine because she "feels a personal connection" to their painful predicament.
"These are already survivors of severe trauma," said Entin, a refugee from the former Soviet Union and granddaughter of a Ukrainian Holocaust survivor.
"And now with this war, they are experiencing that trauma all over again."
Entin is a strand in an intricate web of grassroots organisations, Jewish and non-Jewish, that has been spinning round the clock in Ukraine, working with taxi and bus operators to ferry members of vulnerable communities out of the war zone.
In a time of crisis when Jewish people from Ukraine are attempting to flee to Europe and Israel, groups such as the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles and partner organisations such as Entin's, have been helping families stateside who want loved ones extricated.
Entin said many have reached out to her directly because her work with Holocaust survivors.
Entin has been calling survivors in Ukraine, usually with a family member or friend on the line.
It can be challenging to establish quick rapport with older people, many with serious health issues, huddled in their homes during wartime.
Entin starts out by apologising for speaking in Russian, instead of Ukrainian.
"I identify myself and tell them who I am, the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor," she said.
"I tell them how my grandfather was not evacuated and lived through (World War II) under Nazi occupation. It is a deep connection we have. And that helps build trust," she added.
Entin still had trouble getting survivors to leave with trusted taxi or bus operators, who she said were vetted and recruited through referrals.
This week, one man in his late 80s refused to leave because he was afraid he might die on the way.
"Convincing him has been a real challenge because you cannot guarantee, no one can guarantee, that it won't happen," she said.
But there have been a few success stories that have kept Entin hopeful.
On Sunday, 81-year-old Holocaust survivor Valery Semenovich Zharkovsky, his daughter Inna Valerievna Zharkovskaya, and her eight-year-old daughter were rescued from their home in Kharkiv.
Entin on Wednesday said the family arrived in Germany, where Zharkovsky's brother lives.
She said Jewish refugees typically choose to go to Israel, its Law of Return lets Jewish people make "aliyah" and acquire citizenship, or other parts of Europe where they could receive benefits, such as health care, right away.
"Regardless of where they choose to go, it has to be a warm handoff, which means someone will always be on the other side of the border to greet them and put them on the path to their destination," Entin said.
Zharkovsky's cousin, Marina Sonina, who lives in the Chicago area, said she was relieved to hear her relatives made it out safely.
She spoke with him last Saturday, a day before he left Ukraine.
"He was scared because the situation was really bad," she said, choking up.
With attacks intensifying, volunteers have been arriving at the Polish border to assist evacuation efforts.
Liana Georgi, an artist, psychologist and LGBTQ activist who splits her time between Berlin and Istanbul, is among a core group of volunteers with Safebow, a group formed by gender nonconforming actor and activist Rain Dove to conduct rescue operations.
The group has been communicating via WhatsApp and started "as a mental support group to give people the courage to flee," Georgi told from Warsaw.
"It's about being there for each other, even if it's virtually."
Safebow has partnered with Entin's organisation to evacuate Holocaust survivors, as well.
Georgi said the group was focusing on rescuing vulnerable minority groups, including those in the LGBTQ community, the disabled and people of colour.
The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles and the Jewish Federation of North America have been involved in getting Jewish refugees from Ukraine to Israel, said Rabbi Noah Farkas, president and CEO of the former.
He said his organisation raised USD1 million in four days, with the suffering in Ukraine resonating with members of other diaspora communities in Los Angeles.
"We've received donations from children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors. We have a diverse community in Los Angeles, from Iran, Morocco and other Mizrahi communities."
Jewish Federation of Los Angeles Vice President Aaron Goldberg, who is based near Jerusalem, has helped connect newly arrived refugees with much-needed services.
"Our goal is to support their immigration and integration into Israeli society," Goldberg said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has, in what experts call a cynical ploy, claimed he want to "denazify" Ukraine led by Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a Jewish president whose relatives were killed in the Holocaust.
There are fears of renewed Jewish repression and some of Russia's remaining 250,000 Jews are also trying to flee to Israel, but the process has been more complicated because there are not nearly as many resources, Goldberg said.
"But, right now, we don't know how the sanctions could affect the Jewish community there," he said.
The work of evacuating Holocaust survivors in Ukraine continues as bombings have escalated this week.
Entin on Tuesday said she was working to help three couples, all Holocaust survivors, struggling after a night of more shelling and devastation in Kharkiv.
"One of the couples has no water and heat," she said.
Entin said she was trying to get a taxi driver to check up on the couple without heat, whose apartment was also starting to flood.