Frank Pichel provides a safe ride to Ukrainian refugees he met at the Warsaw train station in Poland.
Frank Pichel flew to Poland on March 4 with no firm plan other than to help the Ukrainian people.
“I didn’t know what I was going to do,” he says. “I went with the understanding that the project would define itself as it goes along.”
It did.
Once he arrived in Warsaw, Poland, on March 5, Pichel, who was on spring break from his job teaching kinetic imaging at Virginia Commonwealth University, got a rental car from Europcar, an agency that doesn’t require an international driver’s license, which he didn’t have. He soon discovered that while he couldn’t go into Ukraine — the rental agreement prohibited him taking the car into a non-European Union nation — there was much he could do to help in Poland.
He started by going to the Warsaw train station, which was packed with refugees, and “did an Uber thing” by simply driving people to where they planned to stay in the city. He did the same at the Krakow train station. On another day, in Przemyśl, he transported relief workers, as they finished their shifts at the train station, to their accommodations.
He also made four “big, cross-country rides,” helping refugees he found at border crossings at Hrebenne, Medyka, Budomierz and Mlyny. “Every [entry] point was run differently,” he says. “People like me were just showing up. I just had a sign offering transportation. I used Google Translate to say I could transport three people and pets, and I didn’t speak anything but English.”
Most of the time, he says, other volunteers who could speak both Ukrainian and English helped connect him with refugees. With only two processing centers and one border crossing run by the Polish government, the volunteers were essential. “One of the most interesting crossings was solely run by journalists who had come to report [on the invasion],” he says. “They dropped their laptops and cameras and just started helping people.”
Pichel used Google Translate to create a sign saying he could transport three people and pets, and he only spoke English.
Not long after he arrived in Poland, Pichel began documenting his efforts on his Facebook page. His posts got the attention of a woman he knew through a 2020 project in which he sold “Charlie Brown” Christmas trees, cut from his property in Nelson County. He donated the proceeds to the Anna Julia Cooper Episcopal School, a tuition-free private school on Church Hill. His neighbor began sharing his posts from Poland and provided a link to Pichel’s Venmo page, for donations.
“I was reticent to give that [Venmo] information out right away,” Pichel says. “I wasn’t totally sure I wanted to collect money; I wanted to be a good steward.” But, he says, the money was useful. “Every refugee I gave a ride to, I handed them money,” he says, noting that he used U.S. currency and Euros as much as he could, because the Ukrainian hryvnia is losing value by the day. “One family had stacks of currency that looked like three bricks, and it was only worth about $200 [in U.S. dollars],” he noted. “I’m a very fortunate person; I can afford to spend whatever it costs to go over there and stay. That’s my contribution. But it’s a direct action for me to stand there and hand someone money that came directly from someone in Richmond.”
Pichel returned to the U.S. on March 13, but his work to aid refugees isn’t over. He estimates he has $5,000 remaining in his Venmo account (he collected $10,000 in donations and couldn’t hand it directly to Ukrainians fast enough) and plans to pass those funds to local organizations that aid refugees. “We need to prepare our hearts for the idea that this displacement will be ongoing,” he says. “This is going to be our existence for years.”
While Pichel acknowledges that he has family members who worried about him making the journey, he had the support of his “wonderful” ex-wife, Sarah Legare, who was in the Republic of Georgia at the time, working on COVID-19 response via a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention grant. Together, the two were able to help a Georgian family who had been living in Ukraine escape to France.
The bottom line, he says, is that he knew he had to act.
“I’m a creative, and I’m not a great team player,” he says. “I want to do all the parts myself. I’m doing this because I don’t have kids … but I’m embracing humanity. I love all people. There’s a liberation to the action. It’s a feeling like you have to do something, and you don’t have to question your motives. You’re in this mode where you feel like you’re doing exactly what you’re supposed to be doing.”
