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24 March 2009 15:24

Rift through Life Exhibition Presented in Donetsk

March 24, 2009, Donetsk Oblast Local History Museum hosted a presentation of the Rift through Life exhibition of witness accounts by Ukrainian female forced workers from Rhineland. The exhibition was prepared by the Provincial Rhineland Alliance (Germany) and presented as part of the History Lessons program by Ukraine 3000 International Charitable Foundation.

Among the participants of the event were Head of the Board of Directors of the Ukraine 3000 International Charitable Foundation Oleksandr Maksymchuk, Provincial Rhineland Alliance’s project manager Betina Bures, First Deputy Head of the Donetsk Oblast State Administration Olena Petriayeva, Director of the Ukraine 3000 Foundation’s Cultural Projects Dept. Vyacheslav Pioro, Head of the History Lessons Program Olesia Stasiuk, museum workers of Eastern Ukraine. Also, the presentation was attended by one of the heroes of the exhibition, Yelyzaveta Hiznichenko.

The Rift through Life: Memoirs of Ukrainian Female Forced Workers in Rhineland are 20 posters, guiding us through the lives of ten women, which were deeply affected by the years of forced labor. Every life story is presented on two posters: childhood and adult life in Ukraine as a repatriate on the one hand and deportation and forced labor years, connected with indelible horrible memories, on the other hand.

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.

The Donetsk event opened the Rift through Life project’s Ukrainian tour. Starting today, the exhibition is available for viewing, in addition to Donetsk Oblast Local History Museum, at Dnipropetrovsk Yavornytsky History Museum and Zaporizhzhia Oblast Local History Museum. The next region to host the exhibition will be the south of Ukraine, in part, Mykolayiv, Kherson, and Odesa. The project will be finished and summed up in October 2009 in Kharkiv.

The Rift through Life exhibition was premiered in November 2007 at the Provincial Rhineland Alliance’s Federal House and presented in October 2008 at the Ukrainian House in Kyiv. It was the first joint project by the Ukraine 3000 International Charitable Foundation and Provincial Rhineland Alliance, based on the Memorandum on Cooperation between the two organizations signed November 10, 2008.