Marina adopted Bercik, what is now her cat, when she found him lost during a pilgrimage to the Carmelite monastery in Berdyčiv, Ukraine. That's why she named him after the monastery, and she hasn't been separated from him since. When war broke out on February 24, and she decided to run for safety, she didn't think twice about carrying her cat.
In Kyiv, Marina worked with the Franciscans and cooked for 95 people every day. "I also worked in the Kyiv Cathedral and knew the Salesian bishop of Kyiv, Bishop Vitaliy Krivitskiy," she recalls. The war changed everything, for the worse: "The windows were closed and boarded up, there was no light, no water, and when Ukrainian tanks passed nearby it felt like an earthquake."
"On March 10," she further explains, "I was able to go five minutes away to pick up some clothes and from there to the train station. I lived in a 17-story building and all the windows were broken. Life was very stressful, because of the air-raid warnings, and it was impossible to cross the river in the city because one’s life was in danger. After a very long journey, it took 17 more hours to cross the border."
Sofia and her three sons, Oleh, 16, Pavlo, 13, and Stanislaus, 7, left Kyiv on March 17. She, too, worked with the church at Radio Maria, and also knew the bishop of the Ukrainian capital. "On March 15 there was a huge explosion and my husband told us to leave the country," she says. "You couldn’t buy anything in the shops, you couldn’t withdraw any money from the banks... Two days later we left Kyiv. We traveled to Lviv by train and then reached Krakow by bus."
Marina and her friend Sofia met again at the Salesian Seminary in Krakow. "They told us about this place that welcomes Ukrainian families. We spoke to Father Marcin and were very well received. We are a big family, the 50 of us refugees who are here. We have our moments of prayer and socializing and the children can play," Sofia says.
"We are afraid for Kyiv because many people are still leaving the city and we hear about the atrocities committed in nearby cities; so, we can only forgive Russia for what it is doing and thank Poland for its help," Marina says emotionally.
What is clear to both of them is hope: "When the war is over we will return home; but for now we are thinking about today, not tomorrow," Sofia concludes.
