News

On July 16, the Day of Proclamation of State Sovereignty of Ukraine, the participants of the “Summer Studies” took part in the Museum Workshop, which was prepared by the employees of the Tkuma Institute, educators and museum workers of the Rivne region. It is important that the workshop itself became a logical continuation of the lectures and discussions of the previous day, when the information and theses presented by the scientists were directly embodied in the locus of the cities of Volyn – significant for Jewish, Ukrainian, Polish, Czech and generally European history.

First, the studio participants visited Zdolbuniv – “the city of cement sidewalks and beautiful flowers”, as it remained in the memories of one of its residents – a Jew who miraculously managed to survive in the flames of war and the Holocaust. Today it is the district center of the Rivne region, known primarily as an important railway junction. At the beginning of the last century, the city was also known for a factory that produced the best samples of cement. Zdolbuniv, unlike most of the small settlements in the region, was not a classic stele town. None of the ethnic and religious communities (Ukrainians, Poles, Jews, Czechs, Germans and Russians) had a quantitative advantage. Thanks to Dr. Petro Dolganov's research on life and death in Zdolbuniv, we now have a much better idea of the specifics of the Holocaust in Western Volyn, as well as the palette of extremely dramatic events and the search for ways to survive under Nazi occupation. It is worth noting that the research became the basis for updating the museum exhibition of the local history museum – a modern and extremely interesting cultural institution that can be envied by the city's much larger residents. As often happens, we look at a successful institution, and behind it the work of specific people or individuals. In this case, we are talking about Oleg Tyshchenko, unfortunately now deceased, a native of Zdolbunov, who literally breathed life and meaning into the building at 9 Fabrychna Street, which for a long time was associated exclusively with pain. Here, in turn, was located the imperial gendarmerie department, a department of the Polish police, and later the NKVD department. In 1941-1944, it was jointly used by the German field gendarmerie and the local auxiliary police. After the Nazis were expelled, the Soviet state security department was located, etc. Currently, O. Tyshchenko's work is continued by his colleague and, to some extent, student Oleksandr Chyzhevsky.

In the basements of the building, under the plaster, inscriptions, appeals and names scratched out by prisoners of various totalitarian regimes have been preserved. For many of them, the building on Fabrychnaya Street was only the beginning of their ordeals, for some it was a place of farewell, because executions took place in the courtyard of the building, as well as directly in the basements themselves.

Right next to Zdolbunov is Ostroh, an ancient Ukrainian city, an inseparable part of national memory. I think it is not worth listing all the virtues of the Ostroh princes' family and their influence on the life of Ukrainian lands in the 16th-17th centuries. However, I would like to draw attention to Ostroh as a city of intersection of various cultural components - Ukrainian, Polish, Tatar, Jewish and Russian. The latter, at the end of the 19th century, extremely insistently sought to fit itself into the local cultural landscape by creating a narrative about the city of Prince Ostroh – “a zealous defender of Ostroh”. An immanent characteristic of Russian imperialism is not only the glorification of the empire, but also the imposition of a xenophobic attitude towards everything that falls outside its expansionist ideas. Because of this, and because of the Holocaust and decades of Soviet erasure of the memory of Ostroh as a multicultural city, other non-imperial versions of the past were seemingly buried forever. However, as in the case of Zdolbunov, Ostroh was lucky to find a caring Person. Thanks to the efforts of local entrepreneur Hryhoriy Arshinov, the ancient Jewish cemetery was restored, conservation and restoration work began on the local synagogue – a classic example of Renaissance architecture, memorial signs were installed at the sites of the mass murder of Jews in the vicinity of Ostroh, etc. The role of this person, who prematurely departed this earthly life in 2020, the material and, more importantly, the moral legacy of her good deeds, was written extremely warmly by Professor Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, long-time partner of “Tkuma” Institute. We recommend reading it.

Well, the cultural excursions of the “Summer Studies” participants continued the next day, July 17, in Rivne. Together with Olena Huminska, the head of the local history department of the Rivne Regional Universal Scientific Library, they were able to see the remains of Jewish life in the city and recreate the landscape of Zuzana Ginchanka's life - a gifted poetess, a significant period of whose life related to Rivne. Here, in the city of her grandparents, her own childhood and youth, Zuzana was caught by World War II. Unfortunately, like many residents of Rivne, the poetess did not see its end, as she became one of the victims of the Holocaust in 1944.

The logical conclusion of the Studios was a pedagogical workshop, where teachers and methodologists not only presented their students' achievements and their own developments, but also had the opportunity to reflect on the issues of teaching complex pages of Ukrainian history in a direct dialogue. The program “History of the Holocaust” of the elective course for students in grades 10-11, developed by Igor Shchupak and Vyacheslav Mayorsky, caused a lively discussion. “Tkuma” Institute is always ready to provide partner assistance to those creative teachers and educational institutions that wish to offer this course to their students.

We sincerely thank the Defenders of Ukraine, thanks to whom we had the opportunity to hold this extraordinary seminar. Special thanks to all the participants of the Summer Studios and we hope that next year the Studios will again unite like-minded people.

long-time partner of “Tkuma” Institute. We recommend reading it.

• Next