War is something that affects everyone, whether they’re in the actual war zone or in a settlement on the Hungarian border. What if they die? Who will feed the family then? They’re afraid and they don’t want to go to war at all. But now that war has come to Ukraine, the men have to stay behind to defend the country. The Romani who do manage to get a passport go abroad to earn money, mostly to Hungary, Slovakia or the Czech Republic. Most Ukrainians in this region have a hard time finding work, which is why we see many of them here in the Czech Republic – on building sites, though even more of them are working on assembly lines in factories or other hardly visible but physically demanding jobs. Many are unschooled and have no papers, so it’s hard for them to find work. Roma have been living in Berehove for generations and are more or less left to their own devices there. So history repeated itself for them recently when those living in Ukraine’s second-largest Roma enclave, over in Donbas, had to flee from Russian fascists all the way to Kyiv. All told, roughly fifty thousand Romani live in Ukraine. This is why most Romani in Berehove speak Hungarian. The settlement – or “camp” as the locals call it – was established in Berehove back in the 1930s when Hungarian Roma fled en masse from the Hungarian Nazis to Czechoslovakia. It’s the largest such settlement in western Ukraine, with about five or six thousand Roma, many of them permanent residents. They tell me their stories – though constantly interrupting each other: They’re from Berehove, many of them have come here straight from the Roma settlement that’s been there for about a hundred years. I’m from Ukraine, so we communicate in Russian, which is one of the languages they can speak to a certain extent. Some bring pallets by car so the women and children won’t have to sleep on the bare ground. We’re a loose-knit group: some of us are from NGOs, others help out as private individuals. I’m a member of the Grand Initiative, which is run by people who care about the fate of Romani families from Ukraine. And I ask myself the same questions first thing in the morning whilst brushing my teeth, packing some sweets and a few toys for the children in my knapsack and setting off for the main station, where I’ll try to help these people cope with the situation and find out more about them. Why are they here? What do they want? To escape the horrors of war or are they here just for the welfare benefits? These are the questions everyone who’s met them over the past few months has had to ask themselves. Women with children, big families – they simply picked up and left, just like that, with nothing. They congregate here at big train stations. As soon as my alarm clock rings, I reach for the phone to check the news: How many new arrivals today? Do they have anything to eat? Who can deliver lunch today? Have they got a place to sleep? Who will sort through and bring sanitary products and things for the children? They need medication, can somebody take care of that? It looks like there are cries for help, but reality is that most people, especially those in power, steer clear of this issue. It’s been the hardest time of day ever since the war started.
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