Clothes are stored in the rooms to the right of the hallway.

Jackets, coats, protection against the cold packed in plastic bags.

One room is for children's clothes, the other is for adult's clothes.

And the groceries are piling up in the living room.

Jars of baby food, packets of tea and coffee, tins.

Two men and a woman sit there and put everything in boxes, seal the packages with wide adhesive tape.

In between is Halina, a Ukrainian married to a Pole who has lived in Germany since 2008 and in Frankfurt since 2015.

Alexander Juergs

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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Halina has the overview, directs the helpers, gives instructions.

She knows what is stored where, she knows what to pack, her energy is impressive.

Halina wants to help the people in her home country who are suffering so terribly from Putin's war of aggression.

Everything else doesn't count for them right now.

Jan Klasen, who works for the Frankfurt-Römer Lions Club, made his apartment available to her for this purpose.

Until Monday evening people lived here as normal, since Tuesday the ground floor apartment in Frankfurt's Westend has been a warehouse for relief supplies that are to be brought to the Ukraine as quickly as possible.

Five trucks have already been loaded and driven to the Polish-Ukrainian border.

There, the relief supplies are taken over by relatives and friends of Halina and distributed further in the west of the attacked country.

Hospitals, retirement homes, day care centers and soup kitchens are supplied with the supplies.

“Ukrainians are sticking their necks out for our freedom”

Everything should now go as quickly as possible, because Halina and her helpers are afraid that if the war continues to spread, the transports could no longer be possible from one moment to the next.

That's why they don't want to waste time, that's why they work almost without a break.

It is important to Halina and her husband Wojciech that her last name is not mentioned in the newspaper.

They say that those who are as committed to Ukraine as they are are quickly making enemies these days.

A woman from the Lions Club mediated the contact between the Ukrainian-Polish couple and Jan Klasen, who cleared his apartment so that a warehouse for relief supplies could be set up there.

The 55-year-old Klasen used to work for the Johanniter-Unfall-Hilfe and is familiar with civil protection.

For him too, when the war broke out, there was no question that he wanted to help those in need in Ukraine.

At first he considered reactivating his contacts with the Johanniter, then he met Halina and her husband.

"The Ukrainians are sticking their necks out for our freedom," says Klasen.

"It is they who stand up to the criminal Putin." crisis ashamed.

"Volodymyr Zelenskyj has warned for years that such a situation will come," says Klasen.

And that it was hypocritical to be surprised about it.

"We can help and we must help," says Klasen.