Ukraine war: in the limbo between arrival and departure

When the war in Ukraine began, the vacant school in Grochowa 13, in the very southwest of Wroclaw, was quickly filled: the neighbors brought mattresses into the former classrooms. A television with Playstation for the children was attached to the former changing room of the gym. And the adults set up in the courtyard, a retreat for smoking.

The old school was a temporary in need and gave many people a warm sleeping place in a short time. You should not stay for more than two weeks, then move on to a host family or your own apartment.

But three years after the start of the war, around 200 people still live in the accommodation, too tenth in a room, some of them have been for months.

While most other emergency accommodation in Breslau has already been closed, the school in Grochowa 13 remains open – and becomes permanent accommodation for people who are sick or old, or simply cannot afford their own apartment on the crowded Polish housing market.

The photographer Katerina Kouzmitchva says: “Time is frozen for the residents of the school. They are between heaven and earth, do not know their fate, long for their loved ones and an early return home.”

Kouzmitcheva has been accommodating regularly for two years and documents life in the old school with her camera. Above all, she wants to capture the emotional condition of the residents. Sometimes she comes back after two weeks and a family that she accompanied closely is suddenly gone.

Kouzmitcheva calls her documentary “Limbo”. She says: “As a migrant, you are constantly in the floating, everything is uncertain. You leave your home and arrive in a new, foreign place.”

The photographer even left her Belarusian homeland five years ago and went to Poland to study. But then it was elected in Belarus in 2020, followed by violent protests and strikes, Kouzmitcheva’s homeland developed into a totalitarian state under Lukaschko. The photographer is now a migrant in Poland.