“Free Ukraine,” he repeated as he struck a handpan drum.

Szwed plans to be there every day at 7 p.m., at least as often as he can, until the war ends.

On Friday, it was just him. He’s not active on social media, so word hadn’t spread far yet. He hopes more people join him. On Saturday, he was joined by Anna Hoyt.

Hoyt grew up in Poland under the Russian regime. When the country gained its freedom in 1990, she moved to Lake Placid to open a Polish store. Her whole family still lives back there. She went to visit her mother back in March and arrived in Warsaw, Poland on the 13th day of the invasion. Thousands of Ukrainian refugees were crossing into Poland every day.

Photos show some of the supplies Anna Hoyt, of Saranac Lake, bought in Poland to give to Ukrainian refugees in March. (Enterprise photo — Aaron Cerbone)

Before she had left, her students at Fitness Revolution in Lake Placid raised $2,000 in two days because they knew she could “put their money to work.”

In Poland, she went around with her family, buying medicine, bandages, clothes, drinks, headlamps, candles and enough food for 20 families for Easter dinner, complete with chocolate bunnies.

If she mentioned that the supplies were going to Ukraine, stores would give her up to a 25% discount.

“It didn’t matter where I went, if it was a street vendor … or a pharmacy … the immediate question was ‘If it is for Ukraine, we will give you a discount,” Hoyt said. “That money went so much further.”

Hoyt said the will to help in Poland is “tremendous.”

Her mother is 90 and remembers World War II. She was seven years old when Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland and 13 when the war ended.

Hoyt said the people of Poland know the destruction of war and see Ukraine’s fight for freedom as one they once successfully fought. She said Ukrainians are fighting and dying for freedom around the world.

“Poland is so involved,” she said. “You don’t hear in the news about tent cities for refugees. They are at homes. They are welcomed to people’s houses.”

Szwed’s family also came from Poland. Szwed means “man from Sweden” in Polish, he said. His great-grandparents were born in Ukraine in a region that is now in Poland.

He said he’s proud of the Polish people’s response to the war.

Here, he said he wants to keep the atrocities happening there in people’s minds. People can tire of news sometimes, he said, but he said it is important to remember the suffering there, and that people here can still directly help those displaced by the war through local connections like Hoyt.

Hoyt will return to Poland on June 1 and plans to bring more money with her. She said if people want to contribute, they can meet Szwed at his 7 p.m. bell ringing. She also said St. Agnes Church in Lake Placid is sending money to a group of Dominican monks in Poland.

Szwed first rang his bells at his home on Thursday. He got permission from the village to set up at the sidewalk by Riverside Park every day. He said if people want to join him with bells of their own, they are invited.