By: Randi Weingarten
President
American Federation of Teachers
April 17, 2022
I have had a hard time trying to summarize my trip to Poland last week. It is infuriating and sobering and heartbreaking. We were watching Putin’s barbaric and heinous decisions, in Bucha and elsewhere in Ukraine; while, during the same 72 hours, talking to refugee teachers, moms, young adults and small children who had fled Ukraine, while in most instances their husbands and grandfathers and boyfriends had stayed back to fight.
It’s a humanitarian crisis and a democracy and sovereignty crisis simultaneously.
It’s David vs Goliath…
And it’s watching Poland, a country so victimized by tyranny and autocrats and dictators throughout the 1900s -- be it Czars or Monarchs or Nazis or Soviets -- now being so generous to the Ukrainian victims of Putin.
Poland, by the way, is going thru it’s own fight with autocracy, but in this moment, particularly in the municipalities we saw, and the local leaders we met with.. is so generous and compassionate, and so willing to devote significant resources to help Ukrainians.
Think about it -- more Ukrainian children are in Polish Public Schools now than are in the whole LA school system. And that is since the end of February.
I am so grateful to our colleagues at ZPN for the invitation. Slawomir Broniarz, ZPN’s President, and I travelled to Ukraine in 2014, in solidarity with the Ukrainian unions then fighting for freedom, after their building was bombed. (I’ve included a picture below from our 2014 visit to BabiYar, in Kiev, which is now destroyed...)
I am also grateful to the US Ambassador to Poland, Mark Brzezinski, for his friendship, knowledge and hospitality... ( and, of course, petting of his great dog).
I am also so grateful for the visit to Medyka, the Ukrainian-Polish border, and the nearby town of Przemysl (Shemish). Hearing what teachers did, like so many, housing refugees, in their homes and at schools. And seeing what healthcare workers are doing on the border, making sure to attend to the needs of refugees.
I will take up the offer by the Mayor of Przemysl, Mayor Baku, to visit his sister city in Ukraine, Kamnest Podolsk, in western Ukraine, when Ukraine, we hope, wins this war. Mayor Baku knows contemporary Kamnest Podulsk; I know it only from my grandparents' conversations about the place they spent their childhood.
And yes, I have complicated feelings as the granddaughter of Jews who escaped the programs of the Pale of Settlement.
And the reminders of my Eastern European-Ukrainian and Polish family were everywhere, particularly the food, particularly the Parogan (potato dumplings).
I have so much more to say, but my column this week talks about the power of relationships between children and their teachers and I tell a story of one of our school visits here.
Polish and Ukrainian teachers singing songs and painting with their hands with young refugees and their mothers: go to rb.gy/xegsij.
But what sticks with me over and over are my conversations with the Ukrainian high school students I met at Boguslaw Limanowski Secondary School in Warsaw. They don’t know Polish; the Poles don’t know Ukrainian; I don’t know either, but we could all speak some English… and we could all speak with our eyes and with gestures.
These kids -- they understood. The teen helping to translate for me whispered to me, "Bucha, Bucha, did you see?"
And the last teen who spoke, stood up and said, in English, to me words to this effect, “Please tell American students to be grateful... Last month, I had what they have.”
This weekend as Ramadan, Passover and Easter converge...
The fight for emancipation, the rising up, helping others and the remembering what we have, and having gratitude seem like pretty good lessons to remember and practice.
President
American Federation of Teachers
April 17, 2022
I have had a hard time trying to summarize my trip to Poland last week. It is infuriating and sobering and heartbreaking. We were watching Putin’s barbaric and heinous decisions, in Bucha and elsewhere in Ukraine; while, during the same 72 hours, talking to refugee teachers, moms, young adults and small children who had fled Ukraine, while in most instances their husbands and grandfathers and boyfriends had stayed back to fight.
It’s a humanitarian crisis and a democracy and sovereignty crisis simultaneously.
It’s David vs Goliath…
And it’s watching Poland, a country so victimized by tyranny and autocrats and dictators throughout the 1900s -- be it Czars or Monarchs or Nazis or Soviets -- now being so generous to the Ukrainian victims of Putin.
Poland, by the way, is going thru it’s own fight with autocracy, but in this moment, particularly in the municipalities we saw, and the local leaders we met with.. is so generous and compassionate, and so willing to devote significant resources to help Ukrainians.
Think about it -- more Ukrainian children are in Polish Public Schools now than are in the whole LA school system. And that is since the end of February.
I am so grateful to our colleagues at ZPN for the invitation. Slawomir Broniarz, ZPN’s President, and I travelled to Ukraine in 2014, in solidarity with the Ukrainian unions then fighting for freedom, after their building was bombed. (I’ve included a picture below from our 2014 visit to BabiYar, in Kiev, which is now destroyed...)
I am also grateful to the US Ambassador to Poland, Mark Brzezinski, for his friendship, knowledge and hospitality... ( and, of course, petting of his great dog).
I am also so grateful for the visit to Medyka, the Ukrainian-Polish border, and the nearby town of Przemysl (Shemish). Hearing what teachers did, like so many, housing refugees, in their homes and at schools. And seeing what healthcare workers are doing on the border, making sure to attend to the needs of refugees.
I will take up the offer by the Mayor of Przemysl, Mayor Baku, to visit his sister city in Ukraine, Kamnest Podolsk, in western Ukraine, when Ukraine, we hope, wins this war. Mayor Baku knows contemporary Kamnest Podulsk; I know it only from my grandparents' conversations about the place they spent their childhood.
And yes, I have complicated feelings as the granddaughter of Jews who escaped the programs of the Pale of Settlement.
And the reminders of my Eastern European-Ukrainian and Polish family were everywhere, particularly the food, particularly the Parogan (potato dumplings).
I have so much more to say, but my column this week talks about the power of relationships between children and their teachers and I tell a story of one of our school visits here.
Polish and Ukrainian teachers singing songs and painting with their hands with young refugees and their mothers: go to rb.gy/xegsij.
But what sticks with me over and over are my conversations with the Ukrainian high school students I met at Boguslaw Limanowski Secondary School in Warsaw. They don’t know Polish; the Poles don’t know Ukrainian; I don’t know either, but we could all speak some English… and we could all speak with our eyes and with gestures.
These kids -- they understood. The teen helping to translate for me whispered to me, "Bucha, Bucha, did you see?"
And the last teen who spoke, stood up and said, in English, to me words to this effect, “Please tell American students to be grateful... Last month, I had what they have.”
This weekend as Ramadan, Passover and Easter converge...
The fight for emancipation, the rising up, helping others and the remembering what we have, and having gratitude seem like pretty good lessons to remember and practice.
