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10 November 2008 15:13

Kateryna Yushchenko Unveils the Ukrainian Forced Workers in Rhineland Oral History Exhibition

November 10, 2008, Head of the Supervisory Board of the Ukraine 3000 International Charitable Foundation Kateryna Yushchenko took part in the unveiling ceremony of the Rift through Life exhibition of witness accounts by Ukrainian female forced workers from Rhineland. Among the participants of the event, hosted by the Ukrainian House, were Minister for Culture and Tourism of Ukraine Vasyl Vovkun, Acting Head of the SSU Valentyn Nalyvaychenko, Director of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory Ihor Yukhnovsky, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Germany to Ukraine Hans-Jürgen Heimsoeth, People’s Deputy of Ukraine Oksana Bilozir, women who were used as forced workers in Germany, representatives of the Provincial Rhineland Alliance and Ukraine 3000 Foundation.

The Rift through Life exhibition is the first joint project by Ukraine 3000 Foundation and Provincial Rhineland Alliance.

“Every one of the two million people working as forced labor has a unique fate, hard and at the same time interesting,” Mrs. Yushchenko said in her opening speech. “I am convinced that one day their children and grandchildren will write books and make films based on their life stories.”

Mrs. Yushchenko thanked the Provincial Rhineland Alliance for their initiative aimed at renewing these sad pages of Ukrainian history. “It is very gratifying to see people coming to us a generation or two after those events to tell the truth. This is just another evidence of the fact that by telling the truth one can change history,” she said.

Mrs. Yushchenko described the Foundation’s initiatives aimed at reestablishing the historical justice, in part, the History Lessons: Manmade Famine of 1932-1933 program. She announced the start of a new program based on the Ostarbeiters’ tragedy. The program envisages collecting witness accounts, exhibitions, publishing books, etc.

At the presentation, an agreement was signed between the Ukraine 3000 International Charitable Foundation and Provincial Rhineland Alliance, envisaging cooperation on a broad range of medical, cultural, and educational projects, along with programs for helping children with impaired development. The document was signed by Head of the Board of Directors of the Ukraine 3000 International Charitable Foundation Oleksandr Maksymchuk and Director of the Provincial Rhineland Alliance Harry K. Voigtsberger.

The Rift through Life exhibition of witness accounts by Ukrainian female forced workers from Rhineland was premiered in November 2007 at the Provincial Rhineland Alliance’s Federal House. It consists of 20 posters narrating the stories of ten women, whose lives were profoundly affected by the years of forced labor. Every fate is presented in two posters: childhood years and life in the post-war Ukraine as a repatriate, split apart by the deportation and years of forced labor, connected with indelible horrible memories. The exhibition resulted from a Ukrainian-German project, establishing connections with former forced workers whose names were found in the books of the Provincial Women’s Hospital in Wuppertal, at the time part of the  Provincial Rhineland Alliance.