A volunteer distributes food to refugees near the village Miratovac, Serbia, near the border with Macedonia, Aug. 23, 2015. Igor Pavicevic / AFP / Getty Images

Echoing Orban’s claims of “a clear link between illegal migrants coming to Europe and the spread of terrorism,” Czech President Milos Zeman has said that “by accepting the migrants, we strongly facilitate Islamic State’s expansion to Europe.”

After police fired tear gas to stop asylum seekers breaking out of a refugee camp last month, Zeman said, “Nobody invited you here … If you are already here, you have to respect our rules. And if you don’t like it, go away.”

Central Europe’s leaders say such statements reflect the views and defend the interests of their people, but civil society keeps telling them otherwise.

In Slovakia, more than 10,000 people have signed an online Plea for Humanity, which was created after 71 refugees, thought to be Syrians, were found dead Aug. 27 in Austria in the back of a truck abandoned by suspected people smugglers.

“This tragedy shows that refugee’s crisis is not some abstract political problem. It is a matter of life and death of real people,” the petition states. “We call on the Slovak government to immediately take measures to ease the burden of countries most affected by the influx of refugees and to alleviate the suffering of people. Hundreds of individuals and communities have offered to help. These people can be the cornerstone of our effort.”

In the Hungarian town of Szeged, 10 miles from the border with Serbia, refugees are met at the train station by volunteers from a group called Migrant Solidarity.

“This is the most divisive issue in Hungarian society today,” said Mark Kekesi, a psychology professor and volunteer. “We can work well in Szeged because it is the only major Hungarian city run by the liberal opposition party. But the country is split on this question.”

Orban’s fence, Kekesi explained, has done nothing to reduce the number of refugees from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Eritrea, Somalia, Bangladesh and many other countries who seek help as they pass through Szeged.

“It’s ridiculous,” he said. “Anyone can crawl under or over the fence in a couple of minutes. It is very expensive and will never stop anything. But this is a political statement. Orban wants to project the idea that he is protecting Hungary and Europe from invaders.”

Ahmad Rashid, 28, crawled under the razor wire on Sunday and hoped to be on the one train that took refugees west from Budapest on Thursday.

Its passengers did not get far, however.

Just 20 miles outside Budapest, the train stopped at the town of Bicske, where police tried to take the passengers to a camp for asylum seekers.

Some scuffled with police, ran away or refused to leave the carriages, while others threw themselves on the rails in front of the train — which was painted to celebrate a borderless Europe and 25 years since the fall of the Iron Curtain and showed people running free past a watchtower and broken barbed-wire fence.

When news filtered back to the train station, many refugees said they would not trust anything they were told Hungarian police or officials after what they called a trick.

“What the authorities did with that train was very dangerous,” said Zsohar. “As far as we know, many people were stuck inside the train in baking heat, without any volunteers there to help them. It was like a trap.”

On Friday afternoon, hundreds of refugees left the train and broke through police lines at Bicske, setting off down the tracks toward Austria; at about the same time, hundreds of people at Keleti station packed their bags, rounded up their children and walked out of Budapest and along a westbound highway.

In the end, they may not have to walk the full 120 miles to Austria, because more than 2,000 people there have joined a social media campaign to find drivers who are willing to use their cars to go to Hungary to transport refugees.

“The Austrian government and the EU stand by idly and watch as people on the streets of Budapest — without any appropriate supplies — have to endure appalling conditions,” the project’s organizers wrote on its Facebook page. “That’s why we are intervening and starting a convoy of buses and cars to bring the refugees to safety.”

As Orban and other central European leaders turn their backs on the refugees, volunteers across the region are showing what activism can achieve in countries where civil society often faces strong pressure.

“Volunteering is a perfectly natural thing to do,” said Evelina Politidou, a council official in northern Greece, where she handed out food and drinks to weary refugees following a rail line into Macedonia near the village of Idomeni. “I couldn’t do anything else, seeing this situation,” she said.

“And anyway, my surname shows that my ancestors came here from Asia Minor at some point. We were all migrants once.”