When a bus drops off Zinaida (85) with her daughter and grandson at Hervensebaan 1 in Den Bosch in 2022, she knows she is finally safe. But when she lies in her bunk bed at night during those first weeks, it is difficult for her to get used to the silence. Between the chipboard walls of the office that is now her bedroom and living room, she can’t fall asleep. Carefully suppressed memories of a terrible journey force themselves upon her. She is on edge at every sound; a remnant of weeks of life between bombings. During those first months, she only gets rest thanks to sleeping pills from a Dutch doctor.
Since April last year, 450 Ukrainian refugees have arrived in the former KPN office. They now live between suspended ceilings, dark blue carpet and abandoned desks and filing cabinets. Photographer Isabelle de Groot has been photographing them since they arrived here. They sleep in bunk beds and eat together in the canteen, where, in the absence of their own kitchens, a catering service provides three meals a day. Residents who miss cooking too much or who are ready for the next step can be transferred to one of the five smaller locations, where the ‘Ukrainian Bosschenaren’ live in groups of twenty to thirty people.
Location manager Natasja van de Wetering still remembers the first bus with Ukrainian refugees that arrived: ‘Everything came out of that bus: men, women, children, dogs, parrots, rabbits.’ The shelters in Den Bosch had to be built in a hurry in the spring of 2022. ‘The first registration of residents was an Excel file,’ says Van de Wetering. The shelter is now out of the crisis phase and the municipality is focusing on more long-term shelter. The focus is on the mental health of the residents. The building, on the edge of an office district, has facilities such as a gym, bicycles and a gift shop. How long the shelter is needed depends on the course of the war in Ukraine. Some residents have now been living in the office building for a year. The temporary nature of the emergency shelter is therefore sometimes chafing.
The tensions between the more than four hundred housemates sometimes run high. ‘Let’s be honest, this is obviously not a dream home for anyone. The walls are thin and many residents are stressed and worried about family members at home,’ explains Van de Wetering. Still, according to her, she succeeds in resolving the quarrels. ‘We also always have a room free to cool off in.’
Provisional living rooms have also been set up in the building. A living room is a square space, with the same dark blue carpet and gray office walls as the rest of the building. The office building has been empty for nine years and it feels like time has stood still here since the nineties. One of the four walls is completely taken up by a huge flat screen television, proving that time has indeed passed here. Two brown leather sofas are perpendicular to each other against the other walls. There are two houseplants and a table.
At the end of February 2022, Zinaida’s family made preparations in her hometown of Mariupol. Her daughter Vita (56) went shopping and withdrew money. Her grandson Konstantin (39) came over from his home town of Zaporizhia and left behind his wife and daughter. When the bombings began, the people of Mariupol, including Zinaida and her family, thought the situation would be temporary. Temporary or not: the situation was difficult to live with. Konstantin stayed in Vita’s apartment, on the 12th floor of an apartment building in the middle of the line of fire. Bombs and rockets flew overhead for days as the family struggled to survive without electricity or running water in their home. The sustained blasts had blown out windows and doors, sending the freezing cold deep into the building.
Huge mountain of embroideries
Vita and Zinaida tell their story in the packed office space that has been their home for a year now. Together with Konstantin they were dropped off in front of the building by a bus and they moved into the makeshift room. The pile of packages of things ordered online on two filing cabinets and the huge mountain of embroideries by Vita betray that people live here. Two gray bunk beds stand next to each other against a gray chipboard wall. All four beds have the same faded yellow bedding. No one sleeps on one of the lower beds, on this improvised couch Zinaida sits between the different colors of yarn and medical pillows. She fiddles with a handkerchief. Beside her is her cane. Due to a lack of space, a visiting housing supervisor has to take a seat in the wheelchair that Zinaida uses for longer distances.
‘We felt powerless in Mariupol and were always afraid,’ says Vita. There were few or no internet and telephone connections, Konstantin could not contact his wife. They and the sixteen others tried to survive on their floor in the apartment building. The residents scooped rainwater from puddles to flush the toilets and collected wood for outdoor cooking over a fire. ‘It was like a game. We spent all day collecting water, food and wood. But as soon as we started cooking, the bombs came again. They wanted to tire us out.’ If there was water and food, Konstantin had to risk his life to take it to Zinaida, who lived 10 minutes away.
On March 20, the family was finally able to leave Mariupol. They locked what was left of the front door and handed over the keys to the neighbours. The bus that would take them to a safe place left 10 kilometers away. Because Zinaida has difficulty walking, Konstantin put his grandmother in a shopping cart from a nearby hardware store. This hike was the start of a month-long journey to Krakow, Poland, with checks along the way, and always fear and uncertainty. Vita ended up in hospital with covid for two weeks and Zinaida’s health also deteriorated during this flight. Through many detours, the family was reunited in Krakow on April 20, just in time to celebrate Konstantin’s daughter’s 6th birthday. Konstantin’s wife and daughter were issued visas for the United Kingdom. Not Konstantin, he went to the Netherlands with his mother and grandmother. Staying in Poland was not an option for him. Because of everything he has seen, his faith in a safe Eastern Europe has disappeared.
Alter clothes
The three generations manage to find their way in the Netherlands. Konstantin works for a transport company in Den Bosch, which gives Vita and Zinaida a little more space in their shared room during the day. Zinaida works in the shelter’s giveaway shop, where she advises people on clothing. She has been given a sewing machine and can now also make clothes for residents, staff and visitors of the shelter. Vita worked at a smartphone repair company, but was fired because she was sick too often. She now fills her free time with embroidery, proudly showing an embroidery with a windmill, tulips and a bicycle: ‘This is the Netherlands.’ The family has bought a car, which gives them the space to discover the rest of their new homeland. A few weeks ago the three of them went to Keukenhof.
Fellow resident Iryna also visited Keukenhof. In July she decided to flee to the Netherlands with her 4-year-old daughter. She is very pleased with the shelter at the Hervensebaan. Besides the help she receives from the employees, she is also happy with the community of Ukrainians in the building: ‘It is very difficult for a woman to live alone in a foreign country.’ She fled without her husband. Men are not allowed to leave Ukraine just like that and Iryna’s husband did not want to leave the country either. “He thinks he should stay there to do something for the country,” she says. ‘I feel guilty that I came to the Netherlands, but I have to protect my daughter.’ Two months ago, Iryna’s mother also came to the Netherlands, so that Iryna can work. She now does voluntary work at a primary school, takes Dutch lessons and does the washing up in a restaurant in the evenings. Now that she works, she can take her mother and daughter on trips in the Netherlands. Her mother cried in Keukenhof: ‘She wanted to continue living there, she loved it so much.’
On the walls on the ground floor there are pictures of the activities organized by the neighborhood manager for the residents. There is a picture of Ukrainian children in orange tutus, with hair sprayed orange and red-white-blue flags on their cheeks: King’s Day. In another photo, the children happily pose with former basketball international Henk Pieterse.
In the office room overlooking the treetops, Zinaida has not stopped folding her handkerchief over and over again. At the end of her story, the Ukrainian sounds of Zinaida and her daughter Vita tumble over each other. It takes a while before the translator has unraveled everything: ‘They are so grateful to this country and happy with all the good people who have crossed their path in the Netherlands. Here they have finally found peace.’