WARSAW, POLAND (AP) – Hoping to restore some normalcy after fleeing the war in Ukraine, thousands of refugees waited in long lines on Saturday in the Polish capital of Warsaw to get identification cards that will allow them to get on with their lives – at least for now.

Refugees started queuing by Warsaw’s National Stadium overnight to get the coveted PESEL identity cards that will allow them to work, live, go to school and get medical care or social benefits for the next 18 months.

Still, by mid-morning, many were told to come back another day, the demand was too high even though Polish authorities had simplified the process.

“We are looking for a job now,” said 30-year-old Kateryna Lohvyn, who was standing in the line with her mother, adding it took a bit of time to recover from the shock of the Russian invasion.

“We don’t yet know (what to do),” she added. “But we are thankful to the Poles. They fantastically welcome us.”

Maryna Liashuk said the warm welcome from Poland has made her feel at home already. If the situation worsens, Liashuk said she would like to stay permanently in Poland with her family. “If the war ends and if there is someplace to return to, we will do that. And if not, then we simply will remain here,” said Liashuk.

Poland has so far taken in more than two million refugees from Ukraine – the bulk of more than 3.3 million people that the United Nations (UN) said have fled since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24. Hundreds of thousands more have also streamed into Hungary, Slovakia, Moldova and Romania.

Most of the refugees fleeing Ukraine have been women and children, because men aged 18 to 60 are forbidden from leaving the country and have stayed to fight.

Polish authorities said more than 123,000 refugees have been given the ID numbers – including more than 1,000 each day in Warsaw – since the programme was launched last Wednesday.

Svetlana, a Ukrainian woman from Ivano-Frankivsk who has lived and worked in Poland for over 10 years, has had relatives come now to Poland.

She said receiving the Polish ID numbers will make a huge difference for everyone from Ukraine.

“This is really so important to us that we can officially look for work, send children to school and be active here,” Svetlana said. “It really changes the way we feel here.”

Refugees can receive one-time benefit of PLN300 (USD70) per person and a monthly benefit for each child under 18 of PLN500 (USD117). Those who find jobs will have to pay taxes just like Polish workers.

Pavlo Masechko, a 17-year-old from Novovolynsk in the Volyn region of western Ukraine, has been trying to rebuild his life in the southeastern Polish city of Rzeszow. Before the war, Masechko had plans to come to Poland to study when he finished high school, but he says being forced out of his country by war is something completely different.

“This is so stressful to leave your country in this moment like this,” said Masechko, who has joined a local school in Poland since arriving. Now, Masechko’s Ukrainian teacher is seeking to organise classes online that were suspended when Russia attacked.

“When the situation started, it was very difficult for me to focus on other things. But time passed and now the situation is more stable and stable in my head also,” he said. “I have started to focus again on other things in my life.”

Many of the refugees from Ukraine have since moved on to other countries in Europe, mostly to stay with friends and family. Some, however, have chosen to go back home even as the end of the conflict is nowhere in sight.

Among them was 41-year-old Viktoria, who was waiting on Saturday with her teenage daughter Alisa to board a train back to Zhitomyr in central Ukraine.

“For the last five days it has been quiet,” said Viktoria. “Our local authorities are good. They prepared everything for us there so we can go back to work, have normal life and children can have online education.”

Alisa said she is not afraid to return and wants to reunite with the rest of the family who are still in Ukraine.

“My relatives are there,” she said.

Kirsten Grieshaber

BERLIN (AP) – Ukrainian refugee Mariia Kerashchenko tightly clasped the hands of her two children as she walked them through the courtyard of a seedy Berlin building, up a graffiti-covered stairway, and into a modern, sunlit classroom.

Her seven-year-old son, Myroslav, is one of 40 children who started their first day of school on Monday, only weeks after joining the millions flooding into Europe to flee the war in Ukraine.

Daughter Zoriana, who is three, is still too young for the class, which is being taught by two Ukrainians who also fled to the German capital. The lessons, part of a volunteer initiative, will prepare the children for entering Berlin’s regular school system.

“It gets me emotional when I see all the help and solidarity here,” the 30-year-old Kerashchenko, from Vinnytsia in central Ukraine, told The Associated Press (AP), her eyes welling with tears.

“Every day, I hope that we can go back to Ukraine, but it is too dangerous for now, so in the meantime it is wonderful that my son can go to school in Germany,” she added.

The classes for the refugees were put together by Burcak Sevilgen and Faina Karlitski, who in only two weeks raised the funds, organised the rent-free classrooms and advertised their programme on the messaging service Telegram.

The children nervously clutched their new exercise books, sharpened pencils and erasers as their new teachers welcomed them in Ukrainian on the third floor of the former factory. They will follow their curriculum from back home and also take German language classes. The three hours of school each weekday will be followed by activities such as playacting, painting or handicrafts.

Natalia Khalil, 33, from Rivne in western Ukraine, is teaching the third and fourth graders, while Tatjana Gubskaya, 56, will be in charge of the first and second graders. Gubskaya fled Ukraine with her daughter and a seven-year-old grandson, who is in her classroom.

“The kids are grateful to have some kind of routine again and meet other children from Ukraine – they and their mothers have all been very stressed lately,” said Gubskaya, who also taught second grade classes before the February 24 Russian invasion.

The teachers will be paid EUR500 per month in donations until they have work permits and can be officially hired.

Sevilgen, 36, one of the two people behind the refugee classes, is a Berlin teacher herself. She and her 31-year-old friend Karlitski, a management consultant, decided to do what they could to get at least some of the refugee children back into school quickly.

“We both have always had an eye for social issues and wanted to help here as well,” Sevilgen said, explaining why they have spent every free minute to organise the classes.

They started raising funds and arranged with the Berlin youth support programme Arche – “ark” in English – to take over the sponsorship for the classes. They got an offer from online search engine Ecosia to use the rent-free rooms in Berlin’s immigrant neighbourhood of Wedding and quickly connected via Telegram with Ukrainian mothers who had recently arrived in Berlin.

More than three million Ukrainians have fled abroad, most of them to Poland. The majority are mothers and their children, with men of military age not allowed to leave Ukraine. Inside the country, over six million have been displaced, according to the United Nations (UN).

Germany has registered 225,357 Ukrainian refugees as of Monday, although the real numbers are expected to be much higher, since they don’t need a visa to enter the country, and federal police only keep records of refugees arriving by train or bus. Those Ukrainians entering Germany from Poland by car usually are not registered.

Up to 10,000 refugees have been arriving by train daily in Berlin since the start of the war, and thousands more have come by car. Many are staying at shelters in the city’s convention centre and at a former airport, while others are with relatives who immigrated years ago and belong to a 300,000-member Ukrainian diaspora.

The government estimates that about half of the refugees are children and teenagers who will need to attend schools and kindergartens. It has established a task force to coordinate their school attendance in Germany’s 16 states.

Several Berlin schools, including some private institutions, already have taken in a few refugees, and city officials are in the process of establishing up to 50 special welcome classes to bring them up to speed in language skills. The authorities can draw from their experience from 2015-16, when about one million people fled conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Those children eventually entered the school system.

Until the welcome classes are up and running, the two classes organised by Sevilgen and Karlitski will help ease the children’s transition to their new lives, teach them German and enable them to make new friends.

“A new routine and other children – those are the most important things for them right now,” Sevilgen said. “And if we get more donations, we hope that we will be able to keep this project running as long as it takes to get the kids into the regular Berlin schools.”