Trauma is the only certainty, but experts say there's still hope for refugees escaping Ukraine war

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As beleaguered Ukrainian refugees crossed their nation’s border, destination uncertain, an aid worker addressed them via a megaphone:

“Welcome to Poland. You are safe.”

The scene, captured on video, reflects the end of one ordeal for millions who escaped a war zone, but the beginning of another as they confront life without homes, jobs or any idea about the future.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, declared Ukraine's exodus “the fastest-growing refugee crisis in Europe since World War II.”

As Russian munitions destroy cities and troops tighten a stranglehold, more displaced persons leave each day. They arrive at the border with only a bag of personal possessions and clothing, mostly women and children queuing in bitter cold for shelter, food and transport to destinations unknown. 

Now is their moment of truth – a threshold where they leave behind relatives, friends, homes, jobs, schools, pets and everything else that has been their lives. And where they confront uncertainty.

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This is the burden of refugees today, as it has been through the ages. Historians, relief advocates and displaced persons stress that trauma and anxiety are common denominators. Though it may afford little solace, the uprooted Ukrainians may have advantages over millions who fled World War II and other military conflicts. 

An international refugee aid system developed at the end of World War II is more coordinated than at any other time in history. Nonprofit relief agencies are bigger and more organized. At least for now, the Ukrainians are welcomed into neighboring nations.

“It might have been worse in World War II,” said Mary Brown, archivist with the Center for Migration Studies, a think tank in New York. “But the little Ukrainian mother with a couple kids in tow – she doesn’t know that.”

Peter Gatrell, author of “The Unsettling of Europe: How Migration Reshaped a Continent,” said it's important to remember that although refugees face tribulation, they've escaped death and devastation.

“Sometimes,” Gatrell noted, “refugees are the lucky ones.”

This is not like World War II, but ...

In January, Ukraine’s ambassador to Britain, Vadym Prystaiko, presciently warned that a Russian invasion would unleash a human wave of his countrymen across Europe. 

“Imagine you start seeing pictures of Ukrainians killed, bodies lying in the road, cities bombed by the Russians looking like Grozny and Chechnya, and millions of immigrants fleeing,” Prystaiko said. “I’m not threatening people with this. We will have to face this.”

Two months later, those images are on YouTube and across social media, rather than in people’s minds. 

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The scenes are reminiscent of World War II. But historians who studied Europe’s displacement in the 1930s and ’40s stressed that the scope and circumstances were strikingly different. 

The Ukraine exodus stems from fighting for a few weeks in one country. World War II saw combat for six years in dozens of nations, involving perhaps 40 million European refugees during the violence and its aftermath.

Gatrell said those migrants included distinct groups of humanity: Jews and others fleeing the Holocaust; residents of conquered nations trying to escape the rule of Adolf Hitler; laborers who were enslaved by the Nazis but released after the war; non-Russians deported from Soviet bloc countries or who fled the communist regime at the start of the Cold War; and Palestinians left stateless by the formation of Israel. 

Brown, the historical archivist, said the world did not even have a common definition for “refugee” during World War II. Displaced persons in Europe fled through battlegrounds in multiple countries, nearly always amid broken governments and chaotic relief efforts. 

Some of those migrations were epic, yet buried by history. Records document how the Red Cross helped ship several thousand starving Greek children to India in 1941, and thousands of Poles were transported to Tanzania, Kenya and other destinations in Africa. 

Then, as now, historians said, the struggle begins with survival. Once refugees escape a war zone, their plight hinges on politics, economics and racial-religious discrimination in host nations.

Put simply, world nations chronically feud over the number and type of displaced persons they’ll accept.

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David Nasaw, author of "The Last Million," a chronicle of displaced civilians after World War II, said the last refugee camps did not close until the 1950s, when the creation of Israel provided haven for 250,000 stateless Jews.

"It took five years to settle the last million," he said.

Political resistance is greatest, according to analysts, during economic hard times or when refugees are culturally and ethnically different from domestic populations.

That phenomenon is playing out among Africans and Middle Easterners living in Ukraine and struggling to exit. 

Ironically, Ukraine itself has been a part of the world’s anti-immigrant backlash. As the United Nations tried to find homes for Syrian and Afghan refugees in 2016, Ukrainian protesters warned that migrants would bring disease, crime and terrorist attacks to the homeland.

“Just like eight years ago, just like 10 years ago, Ukraine is not a safe country for asylum seekers,” Maksym Butkevych, coordinator of the No Borders Project, was quoted as saying in the Kyiv Post. “The Ukrainian authorities do not fulfill the obligations assumed by signing the 1951 U.N. Refugee Conventions and its 1967 Protocol.”

'The end is not in sight' for Ukraine refugees

Even before Russia invaded Ukraine, the U.N. refugee agency estimated there were 84 million forcibly displaced persons globally – about 1 out of every 95 people.

The exodus from Ukraine has added about 3 million refugees, and 7 million are displaced internally, according to the United Nations.

Poland had absorbed the bulk of Ukraine’s refugee surge as of March 15, taking in 1.9 million refugees, according to the United Nations. Romania was second with 468,000, followed by Moldova, Hungary and Slovakia with more than 200,000 each.

Those nations, mere stop-offs for many of the travelers, pleading for international assistance with short-term housing, food, medical care and other services.

As the bureaucratic process of finding more permanent homes gets underway, Kathleen Newland, co-founder and senior fellow with the Migration Policy Institute, said refugees face a multi-stage gantlet: navigating the war-ravaged homeland; crossing the border to temporary shelter; and finding an accepting destination for resettlement, acclimation and assimilation.

The scenario is nothing new for Ukraine, which was an epicenter for migrations in two World Wars, and generational refugee stories have passed down through families.

It is too early to say what lies ahead for the current wave, but experts told Paste BN that displaced Ukrainians seem to have some advantages over predecessors.

Among them:

• Although fleeing Ukrainians risked becoming war casualties, the escape was less perilous for some, thanks to evacuation corridors. “That didn’t exist in World War II,” Brown said. “Everybody was taking their chances.” 
• Unlike other refugees in history, Ukrainians hold visas that automatically allow them to travel freely in Western Europe, and the European Union for the first time adopted a Temporary Protection Directive granting displaced Ukrainians asylum for a year or more. The latter decision “was stunning and marks a very different degree of welcome” from what’s been offered to other populations in Europe, said Michelle Mittelstadt, communication director for the Migration Policy Institute.
• Surrounding nations and their citizens have been uncharacteristically helpful to displaced Ukrainians – including Poland, which has shunned refugees from Africa and the Middle East. In England, where anti-immigrant politics are entrenched, the government offered a reward to anyone who opens a home to Ukrainian families. More than 100,000 Brits signed up within days. 
• The global relief system eight decades ago was feeble and disorganized. Today, the United Nations, European Union and national governments interact according to global protocols developed after chaotic and painful failures during World War II. 
• Nonprofit relief agencies are better coordinated and have greater resources. Amid the surge of Ukrainians, religious and humanitarian groups rallied with volunteers to provide relatively smooth processing and to supply food, shelter and transportation. 

The outlook for Ukraine’s refugees remains unclear as the war and its ramifications unfold. 

“What happens after the initial period is, I think, the real question now,” Newland said. “That’s particularly true if the numbers continue to grow.”

Brown said, “It’s in flux. World War II was what, six years long? This could become a much bigger issue.”

Nasaw's advice to Ukrainian refugees: "The end is not in sight. ... Speak loudly and continuously. Don't let the world forget you're there."