BIALYSTOK, Poland, November 25 (Reuters) – Lilla Swierblewska, a Tatar Muslim minority in eastern Poland, has always wanted migrants to feel at home in her country. Today, after mobilizing the kitchen of a restaurant she opened in Bialystok a year ago, she cooks to support the cause.

This means dinners of turkey meatballs in carrot sauce and chicken with green beans, pasteurized and sealed in jars, then shipped to charities traveling to the forests of Poland to help migrants who have crossed the river. Belarus.

Hundreds of people were stranded for weeks in Polish forests. Aid agencies say at least 13 migrants died at the border, where many suffered from the cold with little food or water.

“I have to ask myself what would I do in this situation? Is there someone who would help me? Because I don’t know if tomorrow or in a few years I will not be in this kind of situation,” said Swierblewska. Reuters.

Much of her mission is linked to her faith and her place within Poland’s ethnic Tatar community.

Descendants of warriors who were awarded land by Polish kings for protecting the country’s eastern border centuries ago, the Tatars provided food for migrants and held funerals for Muslims who died on the border.

“As Muslims we should help, no matter what religion or background of the person. We should just help those in need,” Swierblewska said.

Swierblewska, whose meals for migrants do not contain pork to respect their faith, works with a charity called the Raft Association which in turn works with an Orthodox church in Siemiatycze near the border to bring food to migrants in the forests.

She called on Poles not to be afraid to help, adding that support for migrants was essential amid deepening societal divisions caused by the policies of the Polish nationalist government.

Poland, a predominantly Catholic and ethnically homogeneous country, is ruled by the ruling Law and Justice party whose leader has spoken out against migration from the Middle East, saying migrants could bring disease and parasites.

“We are creating categories of people. We should not divide and mark a person on the basis of their religion, nationality or orientation,” Swierblewska said.

Reporting by Joanna Plucinska, Yara Abi Nader, Fedja Grulovic, Stephan Schepers, Lukasz Glowala

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