KRAKÒW, Poland – It was late night on Feb. 26 when a few minivans pulled into the driveway of the Dominican sisters’ “Dom Chłopaków” (“Home of the Boys”) in Broniszewice, in central Poland. Minivans full of supplies for refugees who are starting to pour to Poland from Ukraine.

“One orphanage from Kharkiv was already evacuated. 35 kids are in Poland with their caregivers. They left with what they had on themselves. They don’t have other clothes, underwear, nothing,” Dominican Sister Tymoteusza Gil told Crux.

The Dominican sisters took a decision that their foundation will from now on run what used to be the Kharkiv orphanage.

“We will not divide the children, they will stay with their Ukrainian caregivers at one location, we will support them with more teachers and staff,” Gil said.

As of Sunday morning, she was trying to contact another orphanage from Kharkiv .

“They were supposed to leave this morning, the buses were ready. But they’re stuck.”

In Sunday’s early morning conversation, she learned from Crux that the fighting was intense in Kharkiv: “Dear Lord, we need to get them out,” she said.

On Sunday afternoon, when news broke that Kharkiv was taken back by Ukrainian soldiers, Gil was on the phone one more time trying to organize safe passage for the children.

Shelters organized by the Dominican sisters in the Polish city of Kraków and Wielowieś at Podkarpackie region at the Ukrainian border are ready to host 40 more people.

“Our sisters in Żólkiew and Czortków in Ukraine are running a community club for children and the school of Polish language. They refused to leave but one of the sisters is trying to move those that want to leave towards the border,” the Dominican said.

Lines of Polish cars were waiting in the outskirts of the city of Przemyśl in southeastern Poland throughout the weekend – Polish citizens picking up families of their Ukrainian friends, nannies, students, carpenters, hairdressers and cleaning ladies, but also those who came not knowing anyone, just wanting to help and give a lift.

The response of ordinary Poles was so overwhelming, the mayor of the city of Przemyśl asked that people don’t come unless they know exactly who they are picking up.

Among the cars waiting to pick up the families there was one of Tomasz Wolny, a Polish journalist and a Catholic. With a group of friends, he organized transportation to the border for a Ukrainian family.

Wolny and his friends answered the appeal of Vasyl Vasiliev, husband and father of 3 children, who, along with 2 million Ukrainians, worked in Poland before the Russian invasion.

It was a desperate call – Lida, Vasyl’s wife, was back in Ukraine when the bombing and shelling of Ukrainian cities started. She managed to escape the war with their three children. They reached safety late at night on Saturday and are now in an apartment secured by Wolny and his friends.

“We just did what we ought to do. Can’t imagine doing otherwise. Our grandmothers taught us that. No one was there for our grandparents in 1939, now we are here for the Ukrainians,” Wolny told Crux.

Wolny, who volunteers for a charity for elderly veterans of World War II’s Warsaw uprising against the Nazis, added: “I do it for the love of the brother, I do it for a stranger, we just have it in our Gospel DNA.”

As of Sunday afternoon, according to the Polish Prime Minister, 200,000 thousand Ukrainian citizens had crossed the Polish-Ukrainian border crossings. Television images across the country showed locals in the border cities preparing food, Polish military carrying children, and social media was filled with images of private apartments ready to receive Ukrainian refugees.

The pilgrim house in Jasna Góra, the main Marian shrine in Poland, can host up to 400 refugees.

Father Michał Legan, spokesman of the Paulin brothers of Jasna Góra told Crux: “We are praying after every mass at 3:30 with supplication for peace in Ukraine,”

It matters ever more, “because we know the faces of this war. It is our people, it is our friends, it is families we see saying goodbye at the bus stops because daddy is going to war,” the priest added.

Parishes across the country are preparing places of shelter for those escaping the war, and the Polish bishops on Sunday spread their support for Poles’ help for Ukrainians across the country. The Primate of Poland, Archbishop Wojciech Polak, told Ukrainians at an ecumenical prayer service in Inowrocław, Poland, “You have the right to live. No dictator, no mad man, no Russian occupant has the right to take it away from you, steal your hopes and dreams, to damage and kill.”

Caritas Poland has secured 3000 beds for refugees, and all Churches across the country collected money on Sunday to help the charitable organization assist Ukrainians. Another collection will be taken up on Ash Wednesday.

The Polish branch of the Knights of Columbus is organizing supply collection in three Polish cities – Kraków, Radom and Tomaszów Lubelski. Medical supplies, generators, l sleeping bags and other essentials were scheduled to be sent to Lviv in western Ukraine on Monday.  Distribution will be coordinated with the archbishop Mieczyslaw Mokrzycki of Lviv, the Ukraine Greek Catholic Church, and local Knights in Ukraine.

“It is important that we also help people that stayed, millions of Ukrainians who are under attack right now, we collect items that will help them survive in basements, places of shelter,” said Szymon Czyszek of the Knights of Columbus in Poland.

“It is a new Aleppo, this time in Europe, and it is time to act,” he told Crux.

Follow Paulina Guzik on Twitter: @Guzik_Paulina