I am a Dominican nun, and I have been serving in Zhovkva, Ukraine, for 30 years. I left because it was necessary. After the war broke out, when people told us, “Come back,” we stayed. We had no other choice.
Learning Freedom
I came to Ukraine in 1995, in the first years after the country regained its independence (this officially happened on August 24, 1991). Ukraine was not really prepared for this freedom. Suddenly all the state structures of the Soviet Union ceased to exist, and new ones had not yet been created. The simplest example: suddenly money disappeared. Literally. The ruble disappeared, and some little coupons called karbovanets remained. People carried them in plastic bags, because payments were made in millions. It was a strange world. Here on the periphery (Zhovkva is a small town), barter trade was practically the only thing that functioned. There was no electricity. Employees were not paid. People did not receive pensions.
Almost 30 years have passed since then. Before the war, Ukraine had already become a modern country. Perhaps not as highly developed as the member states of the European Union, but it was nevertheless a democratic country. It had all the basic institutions, its own political elite, and a generation of people raised in freedom. People who strove for self-development, who no longer remembered, or had never even known, the Soviet Union. It was already a different quality of thinking, judging, and valuing.
And that was our goal back then, in the 1990s – to come here and take part in building a society that is patriotic but, above all, reflects higher values in its life. The system that had passed left behind spiritual devastation. The Church as such - or rather the Greek Catholic Church (let us remember that Roman Catholics make up only about 1% in Ukraine) - officially did not exist. And since there was no Church, there was also no catechesis or transmission of faith except in an almost secret way - only grandmothers in homes told stories about God.
When we arrived in Zhovkva, these were the first attempts to reclaim churches, gather people, and show what catechesis actually was. At that time it was a very missionary Church; we were building it from scratch. This missionary spirit - although today the Church is already formed and has structures - remains very much alive here. Now, when many people come to us from eastern Ukraine, which is completely deprived of Christian roots, the need to proclaim Christ and the Gospel does not diminish. They ask who we are and why we help. They cannot understand it. In their mentality, kindness is weakness.
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“Teach Our Grandchildren the Polish Language”
Zhovkva is a small town; before the war it had fewer than 14,000 inhabitants. I think that today perhaps two-thirds of that number remain. These are our mother territories, from which our foundress, the Venerable Servant of God Rose Kolumba Bialecka, came. Our first convents were here. In the 1990s we began our work precisely with catechesis.
The church building had already been reclaimed, but it was a ruin. We had a priest from Riga who celebrated Holy Mass. People were very willing to cooperate. We asked what their expectations were. These were people over fifty. We heard: “Teach our grandchildren the Polish language, Polish traditions, and the faith, because we did not pass this on to them.”
Zhovkva is actually the last town before the Yavoriv military training ground. It was created in an area where more than 128 villages had once existed, at least 50 of which helped Ukrainian partisans. It was a very nationalist, Ukrainian environment. People were afraid to pass Polish traditions on to their children so as not to expose them to Siberia or death. Older people went to the cathedral because it was important to them that their children and grandchildren receive Holy Baptism and First Holy Communion. However, they did not teach their relatives anything else. They passed on only Polish traditions and did not explain where they came from. Simply: this is how it is done.
It was then that the idea was born to create a Saturday school of the Polish language, where, in addition to the language, we would also teach the history, culture, and geography of Poland. From the very beginning the school was very popular. We started with seven students; soon there were already fifteen. By the end of the year there were about ninety. Not all the children had Polish roots, but they were drawn to us because they felt that this was not the Soviet “sojuz,” but something completely different. A different way of treating people. A different approach to the child. Here you could speak up, talk with an adult as “an equal with an equal.”
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Our Saturday school continues to operate to this day. In this school year we had almost 180 children. There are many more willing to attend, but we are not able to accept everyone. The students are divided into nine groups; each group has two hours of Polish language and one hour of catechesis per week. To this day we also take care of the collegiate church in which members of the Zolkiewski, Daniłowicz, and Sobieski families are buried. Among them are Hetman Stanisław Żółkiewski (the founder of Zhovkva) and Jakub Sobieski, the father of John III Sobieski. We take care of the altars and the cleanliness of the altar linens. Before the Second World War, this church was one of the three most important temples of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Over time we also took on the care of the sick and the poor from our parish. It was difficult not to help, since we had contacts in Poland. However, our work was first limited by the pandemic and then by the war, which changed everything. That world passed away.
February 24, 2022
To this day it is hard to believe that it is happening. We went to morning Mass and learned from the pulpit that there was war. For some time we had known that the situation was tense; there had already been some military movements. We ourselves had taken our house archive abroad. No one knew what would happen. And that information struck us that morning. At home we held consultations; immediately the consulate called, asking whether we were leaving and whether they should help with evacuation. Our religious superiors contacted us right away.
There were four of us. Three older sisters and one young sister. We decided ourselves that the youngest should leave and that we would stay. Of course she did not want to. But we told her she had to obey. War is not for the young.
That very same day I took her to the border. We stood in line for 17 hours. At that time I thought it was long. Later life showed that it was very fast. The town of Rava-Ruska, where the border crossing is located, was so packed with cars that if I had not known the topography of the town, I probably would not have been able to leave it and return. After coming back I told the sisters what was happening. What a crowd of people there was on that road. We concluded: “We must cook borscht, we must go to these people.”
It was as if someone had turned a page in a book - that there had been a certain life and that life had ended. It was something completely different. There was no talk of school, shopping, or regular religious life. Simply a world from another planet began in a single day, in a single moment.
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Soup for Everyone
We live by the road leading to the border; it is only 46 kilometers away. Through our town runs the route from both Lviv and Kyiv to the border. In those days many people passed through in various conditions. It did not matter whether they had money or not - nothing could be bought anyway. In the first weeks of the war the banking system stopped functioning. It did not matter how much money someone had or what kind of car they were driving. Everyone equally needed soup, bread, and tea. In our shops there was nothing left; everything had been bought up. But as it happens in life, the locals always find something. Our good people delivered bread and water to us. We did not pay for the bread at all. We made sandwiches and took them to the border.
At the end of March something had to be done, because it could not go on like that. It had already been more than a month of such a life. We concluded that we had to regain some control over the situation in order to somehow survive it. There was still no talk of reopening the school. We knew there would be no occupation. That was the worst uncertainty - whether there would be an occupation or not, whether those troops would stop or reach us. The feeling of panic is something terrible. It is an experience as if two realities exist in a person. The body and the mind act separately. We somehow had to become whole again in order to sleep and to eat. And also to act in a more organized way, so that everything would not be so spontaneous - so that it would not be the same whether it was day or night, always ready to run to help.
Refugees
Not everyone wanted to go abroad. In the border region all the schools quickly filled with refugees from the east. First from Mariupol, then Berdyansk, Melitopol, Zaporizhzhia. Kharkiv emptied within three days, and all those people flowed toward us. The journey lasted ages. There was no fuel; you could refuel only five liters at a time, so it was a kind of pilgrimage from one station to another. The queues were unbelievable. One had to wait for the next tanker truck to arrive in order to get another five liters. These were Dantean scenes. Many women were behind the wheel - after all, the men had gone to war. There were many volunteers. The army was not able to accept everyone; they were not prepared for such an influx. The roads filled with cars driven by women without driver’s licenses, traveling with children. It is impossible to describe what those women were doing on the roads, but they were saving themselves as best they could.
Eventually the border traffic stabilized and we began to take care of the refugees. In the surrounding villages there were 2,500 of them in four schools. Together with volunteers we transported aid to them on pallets. The schools were not prepared to receive such a number of people. There were no beds, mattresses, duvets, blankets - nothing. Our Foundation of the Sisters of Saint Dominic received tons of supplies from Europe and Poland, packed them onto trucks in Greater Poland, and transported them to Zhovkva. There were 14 trucks within three months. We had refugees and volunteers to help us, as well as the parents of our students, who responded very generously to our requests. Some of them still help us today.
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Help
After the outbreak of the war, the Ukrainian state paid 2,000 hryvnias (less than 200 PLN) per person. Children and people with disabilities received 3,000 hryvnias (about 300 PLN). After two years only benefits for the disabled and for single mothers remained. Pensioners and the unemployed were left without means of support. The intention was to encourage them to seek work. But the brutal reality is that at least 40% of them are not able to take up any work. They all need treatment, therapy, and help in returning to society.
“We have everything from you - from shoes and underwear to jackets. I dressed my child here as well. If it were not for the food from you, we would have nothing to eat. I am a teacher, but there is no work here for a teacher. I clean in a school. What I earn goes toward rent. Nothing remains for living or clothing.” Stories like these are our purpose. We help as best we can. And they say: “You make a feast for us.” They come to us for help, and it is packed in a single bag. After three years we know everyone by name and surname. We more or less know where they live and what their families are like. We approach them gently, ask about their health and their children. Then they begin to talk. It turns out that very often we are the only people in this environment who take an interest in them. For them it means a great deal that someone has asked about their family and health at all, because, as they say: “After all, nobody here cares about me.”
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I would like to tell the benefactors of the Priests of the Sacred Heart that you are wonderful, dear, and truly generous people. We thank you very, very much. You are the only ones who continue to help us. The Secretariat for Foreign Missions of the Priests of the Sacred Heart is the only organization that still supports us regularly. And the people who come to us always express great gratitude, because they know that without you they would not manage. They would not survive. Unfortunately, no state institutions are interested in them. In fact, we are the only organization that helps them. This means that you, dear benefactors, are their only source of hope and life. I know that it is very difficult - after all, this is already the fourth year of the war and the fourth year of helping. But we ask you, please do not stop. At least so that we can give hope to those who cannot cope with trauma - that when nothing works out for them, when nothing can be arranged, and when there is nothing to put in the pot, they will know that if they come to us, they will receive something. At least some groats and a can of food so they have something to eat.
The Trauma of War
At the moment we are constantly distributing food and clothing. In Zhovkva there are still about 700 refugees - people who truly need this help because they have still not coped with the loss of their property. It is a very deep trauma. Older people fall ill most often, and they are the ones who pass away the quickest. It is painful, but this is our experience: many people in their eighties were not able to survive the loss of their entire life’s work and the fact that their families had scattered across Europe. It was simply too traumatic for them, and they passed away very quickly. We even organized the transport of bodies so that they could be buried with their families in their own cemeteries. Those were difficult moments…
Some mothers who were left alone with small children have coped wonderfully - they found apartments and their children go to kindergarten. But there are also those who need not only psychological help but psychiatric care as well. Their children, too, often need therapy. There are people who still live in hope that they will return. They still have the strength to fight for themselves. But there are also those who know that they will never return home. These are the ones who most often break down. I know that we are no longer the same either - through sharing in all these experiences, through what people tell us and show us…
Those who went abroad were people who had some savings, but also the courage to take a risk and a certain dynamism in life. But those who remained with us are people from villages who had never left them before. For them, a change of environment is like going abroad. Far from home they cannot find their place. They have no acquaintances, no family. There are not enough psychologists or psychotherapists to explain to these people what is happening to them, at what moment in life they find themselves, and how they can help themselves. In our Roman Catholic Church throughout all of Ukraine we probably have only three specialists who have such experience because they themselves were at the front. They know what it looks like and how people react when they lose everything in a single moment. Everything breaks off - friendships, family bonds, school, work—everything simply ceases to exist. And a person is left as if suspended in the universe without any relationships.
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A Sense of Transcendence
We are a Roman Catholic congregation and we speak about this openly to everyone. For people from the east it is something abstract. It is difficult to say whether these people have an experience of God, but they certainly have a sense of transcendence - the conviction that some higher power exists. In war this is visible as clearly as in the palm of your hand. No one can answer the question: “Why is my house still standing while my neighbor’s collapsed to its very foundations? Why did my husband die while my neighbor’s husband survived, even though they were in the same brigade?” It is difficult to accept that it is only blind fate, that everything is mere coincidence. Such an approach would probably completely strip life of motivation and meaning.
However, it is clear that people who have foundations of faith - even if they once left it and forgot it - return to it. This is especially visible among soldiers. As they themselves say, in war it is impossible to be an unbeliever. There are many beautiful testimonies written by these men sitting in the trenches. One of them told how, being the only Catholic - and even the only Christian - in his entire unit, he sat with the others in a concrete shelter somewhere beneath the slabs of a collapsed building and taught them the rosary prayer throughout the entire night. We always send them rosaries. They often wear them around their necks or attach them to their vests. They live as soldiers live - that is the nature of a soldier’s life. But when they come home on leave, they go to confession. There are even special training sessions for priests so that they understand what changes occur in the psyche of a person who has been on the front line.
Visits from our graduates who are fighting are particularly difficult. We always thank them and tell them that we admire them. We thank them for the fact that we can live in our own home. Because if they were not holding their ground there, in that earth, in those dugouts dug with their own hands, we would not be able to remain here either - we would also have to flee. They become emotional. And so do we.
We also have such a village - Zvanivka. It lies in the direction of Donetsk. In connection with the implementation of the border exchange agreement of 1951, the entire village had once been resettled from the village of Liskowate near Ustrzyki Dolne. Together with their parish priest, Poles from mixed families also went there. They preserved their language, which is why they understand us perfectly. Although they believe that it is we who speak their language, not they ours. They also preserved their faith and traditions. The entire village came to us here in Zhovkva. These people truly have deep faith; they have no doubt that God guides the whole of history. And just as their fathers were expelled from Liskowate, so they themselves had to leave their Zvanivka, which they loved. They had a beautiful village, truly. Beautiful houses built from scratch with their own hands by their parents. A beautiful church with a monastery of the Basilian Fathers. Now very little remains. It is simply one great ruin. And they look at it, they see it, they experience it. Yet they still hope that perhaps this exodus will end, that perhaps they will finally reach a place that will be their own.
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Pray for Us
We all live thanks to people’s prayers. When Odessa is being bombed, a married couple we know - he is Georgian and she is Jewish - always calls us asking for prayer. It may sound funny because they are not Christians, but they believe in the power of prayer. We all need it very much. This is the first and most important thing - we ask everyone to pray for us. Not only for a just peace, but also for our safety. That somehow we may return to normality after all this. That the bombings may stop. People in cities closer to the front spend entire nights in basements. We do not desire much - imply some normality. That at least they could sleep in their own beds.
“We had it so good, and we thought we had it so bad.” Everyone says this now. Unfortunately those times will not return. Every day we pray with the children. We pray the rosary at the beginning of every lesson. We pray for benefactors, for soldiers, and for the fallen. And we also ask you for this one most important thing - for prayer.
Sr. Mateusza Trynda OP
Photos: Missions of the Priests of the Sacred Heart and Robert Bąk.