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Campaign URL Copy * Twitter 0 tweets * Subscribe * Past Issues * RSS * Translate * English * العربية * Afrikaans * беларуская мова * български * català * 中文(简体) * 中文(繁體) * Hrvatski * Česky * Dansk * eesti keel * Nederlands * Suomi * Français * Deutsch * Ελληνική * हिन्दी * Magyar * Gaeilge * Indonesia * íslenska * Italiano * 日本語 * ភាសាខ្មែរ * 한국어 * македонски јазик * بهاس ملايو * Malti * Norsk * Polski * Português * Português - Portugal * Română * Русский * Español * Kiswahili * Svenska * עברית * Lietuvių * latviešu * slovenčina * slovenščina * српски * தமிழ் * ภาษาไทย * Türkçe * Filipino * украї́нська * Tiếng Việt A child's bicycle View this email in your browser A BICYCLE Not long after arriving in Ukraine, over a year and a half ago, I filmed my interview with famous Ukrainian film director Oleg Sentsov here in. Kyiv at the “National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War’, otherwise referred to as the “War Museum” Sentsov was kidnapped by the Russians in 2014 while bringing food and supplies to Crimea. He spent five years held in Russian goals illegally and was tortured. As a result of our interview Sentsov donated his personal archives to the museum and these are part of the permanent display, as is my interview. Oleh has returned to the front and seen some of the heaviest fighting in the Bakhmut area. Since then, he has been seriously injured twice and each time returned to the front to defend his homeland. His wife gave birth to their son, who he has only seen on three short trips home in the last year and a half. I donated a copy of the interview to the museum collection from myself and on behalf of the Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations representing Ukrainian diaspora in Australia. As a result a formal invitation was issued to Stefan Romaniw OAM, to visit the Museum and meet the museum Director Dr Yurij Savchuk. What is it? Imagine The War Memorial in Canberra marries MCA Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney, but much, much bigger. It is a huge complex indoors and outdoors and incorporates the Motherland Monument and the largest Ukrainian flag in Ukraine. On this visit to Kyiv, Stefan Romaniw was taken by our frineds Dmytro and Olena from Rotary International Kyiv to visit the temporary shelters for internally displaced people at Irpin that are supported by Australian Rotary and Ukraine Crisis Appeal, I couldn’t attend this day so I caught up with them the next day for the organised visit to the museum and a meeting with museum director Yurij Savchuk. We met at the entrance as Yurij was waiting for us outside and welcomed us enthusiastically and warmly. He was presented with a book about the history of Ukrainian settlement and community in Australia. He proceeded to guide us through the various exhibitions explaining many details within the exhibits. ‘This war has changed everything; he said. A museum is not only an exhibition, it is a territory, it is its monuments but more importantly it is a place of memory.” The museum embodies the need to ‘never forget.’ When the Russian attack began, members of the Museum team joined Territorial Defence and the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Some of the women with children evacuated to the western part of the country or abroad, others actively joined volunteer initiatives. From the first day of the invasion the museum workers began to document the full-scale invasion by Russia of Ukraine which highlighted the military aggression through the museum projects. Thus, as early as in the first month of the Russian invasion, the museum had already created the first photo exhibition dedicated to one day of the defence of Kyiv and presented it at the World Centre for Peace, Liberty and Human Rights in Verdun(France). The drawing of poet Taras Shevchenko was rescued from a school that had been bombed. Once the battle of Kyiv was over and the Ukrainian army liberated the settlements of Kyiv and Chernihiv regions, museum workers went on further expeditions to witness the brutal crimes of the occupants. Some of the most distinctive material evidence of russian atrocities was collected and brought to the Museum. This is how the exhibition “Ukraine -Crucifixion” appeared, the worlds’ first stationary exhibition dedicated to an ongoing war in real time. With the help of original artifacts, photos and oral testimonies of eyewitnesses, the exhibit reveals the terrible realities of the full-scale Russian invasion. The exhibition has been continuously evolving and tragically has new artefacts added. The information about the exhibits was highlighted and published by the worlds’ media, including: The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, Neue Zurcher Zeitung, CBC, etc. The multi-vector approach in the work and modern socio-political situation turned the War Museum not only into a place of preserving the memory of tragedies of the past and present, but also into a place of consolidation and unification of Ukrainians around the idea of fighting against external imperial expansion for their freedom and independence. “In this exhibition, you can see the war. Through the original artefacts, through the stories of the objects, through the artistic interpretation of today’s emotions. Today’s war” explains Director, Yurij Savchuk. Some local visitors have said, it’s very difficult to look at this, they understand how fortunate they may have been to avoid occupation which was only a matter of kilometres away. On a screen on the wall, a baby’s mother gives a chilling video testimony. On the first floor a church gate ripped open by shrapnel opens to reveal a room displaying artwork inspired by the conflict. Burnt-out candles beneath a war-torn painting of Christ pay tribute to the dead, as well as to Ukraine’s damaged religious heritage. A grenade hidden under a toy in a sandpit recalls what the childhoods of millions of young Ukrainians have lost. One of the visitors who was with his son was reported to say “it is necessary to explain to our children what is happening in Ukraine now“ As Savchuk climbed the stairs to the second floor, he pointed to a metal gate that had been sprayed with bullets. It belonged to a wooden church from a town on the outskirts of Kyiv called PEREMOHA which means “victory” in Ukrainian. In the centre of the room hangs a cross salvaged from another church that had been destroyed. Under it is displayed an icon of Jesus being taken off the cross. The glass covering of the painting has been pierced by shrapnel over the face. Portraits of deceased soldiers painted on panels from ammunition boxes The most poignant exhibition in the museum is in the basement, itself having to be used as a bomb shelter by staff and visitors. A sign points to the “ukritya” (shelter), a ubiquitous sign in wartime Ukraine – the wails of air raid sirens still shriek almost every day in Kyiv. A handwritten sign on paper torn from a school pupils exercise book is taped to the door. In Ukrainian & russian it advises that only civilians and children are inside. The sign, and everything else in the basement, was taken from a basement bomb shelter in a Kyiv suburb, Hostomel, the site of the airport that russian soldiers tried to take in the first days of the invasion. Savchuk and his team have painstakingly reproduced the three rooms and adjacent corridors, including the graffiti on the walls, in which 120 people spent 37 days underground. The one historical inaccuracy in the shelter is the absence of the five buckets that stood in the hallway where the people who lived underground for more than a month relieved themselves. The children’s drawings were enthusiastically and pragmatically donated by the families For some visitors it is powerful to see their own experiences reflected in a museum. Some lived in a basement like this in Bucha, others have come from Kharkiv, The spirit of the way people survived is preserved. Drawngs by children who had to live underground for over a month After this stage of our tour Stefan related the story of the Bicycle and presented it to Yuri. Returning from his visit of DP shelters to Kyiv Stefan and friends stopped by the Bridge at Irpin. This was the site where the Bridge had been blown up to stop further advances by the russian invaders on their way to Kyiv. As civilians were trying to escape the russians kept shelling them. The images shocked the world. Near the bridge there remains a church that was also bombed. Stefan noticed a rusted and damaged children’s’ bicycle leaning on mangled metal that used to be the fence around the Church. His thoughts turned towards home and grandchildren. “Some kid got up early in the morning to play just like any normal playful child anywhere in the world, just going for a happy ride and have some fun… We don’t know what happened. We have no way of knowing what might of happened – is this child dead or alive?” Was this child one of the over 560 known to have been killed according to the United Nations Rights Monitoring Mission which admits that this number is what they have verified and the true numbers are much higher. Was he/she one of the children on the Ukrainian list of nearly 20000 that were kidnapped and forcibly deported to Russia? Ukraine believes that the true number could be far higher. The kremlins campaign to eradicate Ukrainian national identity has been the mass abduction and then indoctrination of Ukrainian children at an extensive network of re-educational camps inside russia itself. This has led to war crime charges against Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova where the International Criminal Court in the Hague issued an arrest warrant. According to the UNs Genocide Convention “forcible transferring children of a group to another group” is one of five recognized acts of genocide. russian children’s commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova has boasted more than 700 000 Ukrainian children have been deported from Ukraine to russia since February 2022, the start of russia's full scale invasion. On the 19 December 2023 the United Nations General Assembly by resolution “Strongly condemns the forcible transfer of Ukrainian children…” In the mean time the loss of children in these numbers (amounting to approximately two years of births) will affect future growth potential of Ukraine and teh psychological toll enormous Yuri immediately decided that the child's bicycle and the story of its finding is an appropriate and evocative addition to the museum’s display where the actual parts of a children’s playground that had been damaged by bombed blasts sits as a display of the brutality of indiscriminate civilian targeting by russia. He invited Stefan to place it in the exhibit where it now remains. The staff have carefully catalogued it. It has now been witnessed by people visiting from all over Kyiv, from international journalists, heads of state and international dignitaries. It will remain a compelling reminder of missing children and Ukraine’s lost childhoods. This day we were here, the military allowed us to pat the German shepherd service dogs who were sniffing out the site in preparation for the visit by Lithuanian Foreign minister. High resolution digitisation is preserving cultural heritage directly under threat by russia. The Official State Seal, coins, stamps and military regalia from Ukrainian National Republic (UNR 1917 - 1921) prove Ukraine's Independence & disprove Putin's claims of Ukraine being "a soviet invention". The museum as a focal point amongst many, highlights the importance of preserving historic and living culture. These are the very values and ideals that the soldiers are willing to give their lives for.When russia occupies a territory the first thing it does is strip the area and people of everything representing Ukraine. Exhibitions at the museum have included Art Armour, Objects from UNR (Ukrainian National Republic 1917-1921) Stefan said to me, "I now understand what you have been saying about the cultural front and the military fronts are inseparable". The museum itself and thus Kyiv’s city skyline have undergone a further transformation after 30 years of independence. While controversial because of the money spent, it was seen as an appropriate and poignant point of decolonisation & decommunization to finally replace the soviet symbol on the shield of the Motherland Monument with Ukraine’s ancient symbol of statehood, the Tryzub. Exhibitions: .https://warmuseum.kyiv.ua/_eng/expositions/current_exhibitions/ Share Share Forward +1 Share “There are 44 million stories that need to be told!” Please support the ongoing documentation of life in russia’s war on Ukraine.. BSB:112-879 Account: 459 495 123 Or for tax deductible donations go to: Australian Cultural Fund Project: Documenting Ukraine Link: https://tinyurl.com/documentingua Thank you: Sviatoslav and Angel Knysh Lily and Ivan Smeciw, Giuseppi Mediati, Ruedolf Ott, Henry Green, John Maronese, Fay Zybenko, Danylo Stefyn, Tanya Dus, Dr Graham Manning, Dominic & Suzanne Kelly, Copyright © 2024 Eutropia Films, All rights reserved. Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.