The Evacuation Train. Rescue and a Humanitarian Mission

The evacuation train carries you ever further from your home. Alongside the carriages, villages, fields and forests rush past and fly away. The views beyond the window bring no joy at all, as they would in peacetime on a journey. In the half-darkness of the compartment mothers lull their children to sleep; ahead lies the unknown, but with it a deep faith in Victory and a hope of a swift return.

 

Mykulychyn. The Kirkut. A Memorial Site and Jewish Historical Heritage in Neglect

The Jewish cemetery in Mykulychyn holds a cultural and historical heritage and a landmark place in this village in the Ivano-Frankivsk region. A kirkut — that is what Jewish burial grounds are called in Western Ukraine — lies in the central part of the village, to the east of the main road. A place of memory and mourning for the former Jewish community, on the verge of vanishing. 

Mykulychyn. The kirkut

The Dobropillia Area. From Sviatohorivka to Dobropillia via Kryvorizhzhia and Zelene. The Most Important Things

The history of our people and our state has been denied and silenced since time immemorial, and to this day the enemy destroys our cultural heritage. Even the smallest village, the humblest of houses, has its own master and its own story, one that bears witness to the past and to memory, to the dignity and the morality of a person. We do not always treat our history with awe and respect; through rebuildings and innovations we destroy our moral bearings and our national traditions, and from generation to generation we pass on a deformed and distorted understanding and perception of our roots. 

Through the example of the villages of the Dobropillia area, let us look at how the historical and cultural monuments are being preserved, and at what the community has managed to keep alongside powerful agricultural and industrial enterprises.

 

The village of Dobropillia. Donetsk region

Lviv. The Museum of Father Blazheiovskyi's Embroidered Icons and Patterns — a Spiritual and Exhibition Centre

Museums come in many kinds. There are museums of icons, of the history of religion, of church heritage and of church vessels. Ethnographic and local-history museums keep collections of embroidered works, and in the Ivano-Frankivsk region there is a museum of embroidered shirts. But the only museum collection of embroidered icons in Ukraine can be seen in Lviv alone.

 

Lviv. The Museum of Embroidered Icons