Memory of Ukraine

In March 2020, the team of the Museum “Territory of Terror” implemented a large project with the educational public organization “Post Bellum” “Memory of Ukraine”, thanks to the support of the Transition program from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic.

The purpose of the joint activity was to network two leading institutions that work with oral history. Through the recording of oral historical testimonies of people who survived Nazi and Soviet violence, this project showed the difference and at the same time the common experience in Central and Eastern Europe during the twentieth century. An important goal of the project was to digitize and promote this evidence – by making it available in the European online archive and creating media narratives based on it.

We recorded 20 oral historical interviews with eyewitnesses from different parts of Western Ukraine; conducted an online seminar “Oral history: educational component”, published guidelines for teachers “History of our neighbors” and conducted joint educational work with students and teachers.

The project team worked and managed to cover several vectors:

Collecting stories

Between June and November 2020, the team recorded 20 interviews. Most of the recordings took place in Lviv due to challenges and restrictions during quarantine. However, recordings were also made in Ternopil, Morshyn, Sambor, and Kyiv. All 20 stories are available online on the Memory of Nations platform.

Education

An important part of the project was education. The team managed to gather teachers from different parts of Ukraine (50+ participants). The museum team presented their work on the oral history project #Unheard and shared their experience of creating an exhibition based on oral history.

There was also a presentation of a unique methodology from educators from the NGO “Post Bellum” on the example of the project “History of our neighbors” to involve students in the collection of oral history materials. Thanks to this project, these recommendations are now available in Ukrainian online.

Continuation of work with teachers was the development of a prototype and testing of cooperation with students, thanks to which students were able to record their own oral history interview.

Creating media stories

Based on the recorded testimonies, 8 media stories were created dedicated to individual witnesses and testimonies. These stories are published in Ukrainian-language publications – unique oral history interviews, photos and videos.

Finalization of project results in an art exhibition

The final act of the project was an artistic reflection from the performer Victoria Romanchuk.

Read the stories