Forgotten Places of Memories Documentation of the study trip The focus of the study trip to Charkiv, Mirgorod and Kiev in October 2017 was the reflexion of the reconditioning of Ukraine’s past amidst the current situation of the country. The main emphasis of the trip was the working up of the communist heritage. The current conflicts of history discourses and impacts of the so called “Law of decommunization”, historic workup of the 2nd World War were on the agenda. The study trip took the group to unknown, forgotten places of memories. Talks with scientists, history experts, representatives of NGOs and governmental institutions granted insights into the addressed topics and offered various aspects on the current political, economical, social and cultural state of the country. The studytrip included the participation at the international conference “Babyn Jar and other ‘forgotten’ sites of the Holocaust in Ukraine and Eastern Europe” in Kiev. Besides Babyn Jar there were lots of other places in the Ukraine were mass executions happened. Those execution sites and mass graves are widely unknown – geographically and historic-culturally. In the frame of the conference those “forgotten” sites were addressed to close in into more public awareness. The conference provided an overview of the current state of research, historical discourses and current lines of conflict in political- historical debates. It also provided an opportunity for networking and exchange between actors working in the field of remembrance. More informations about the conference: http://www.bpb.de/veranstaltungen/dokumentation/260537/babyn-jar-and-other-forgotten-sites-of-the- holocaust The available documentation of the study trip includes reports by the participants. The orthography was mostly retained. Content: 1. The Socialist Heritage: Curse or Blessing I. by Gundula Werger 2. Jewish life today 3. Slightly different art… by Bärbel Schmidt- Šakić 4. Political Situation: Meeting with Dmytro Bulakh 5. The Socialist Heritage: Curse or Blessing II by Dr. Zbigniew Wilkiewicz 6. Forgotten History: House Slovo by Elise Landschek 7. Between Playground and Front Line by Christian Splett 8. Current political situation: The war in Eastern Ukraine and it’s aftermath by Stefanie Fink With kind support of the Federal Foreign Office Mit finanzieller Unterstützung durch das Auswärtige Amt, Deutschland 9. De-communisation and communal daily routine by Annette Schneider-Solis 10. Drobitsky Yar – uncomfortable places of rememberance by Bernhard Schütz 11. Mirgorod – the peaceful city that has hot water even in summer by Judith Seitz 12. My rendezvous with Mrs Knobochka by Bernd Schellenberg 13. Kiev's modernist architecture and monumental art by Sophie Heller 14. Museum of monumental propaganda by Joachim Göres 15. Art: a mirror image of social wounds by Anina Valle Thiele 16. Museum of the Second World War and state-run rememberance culture by Maximilian Lütgens 17. The difficult path towards Ukraine’s own history by Manfred Dieterle-Jöchle 18. Modern art and rememberance work by Kaspar Nürnberg 19. Historico-political guided tour: Babyn Yar and the memory of Holocaust mass extermination sites by Guido Hassel With kind support of the Federal Foreign Office Mit finanzieller Unterstützung durch das Auswärtige Amt, Deutschland Forgotten Places of Memories Documentation of the study trip 1. The Socialist Heritage: Curse or Blessing I. Report about agenda point: The Socialist Heritage: Curse or Blessing I. A guided tour with the architect and researcher Yevgeniya Gubkina on the topic of the “Kharkiv Modern Age” by Gundula Werger Yevgeniya Gubkina completed her Master’s Degree at the National Academy for Economy in Kharkiv specialising in urban planning. Currently, Yevgeniya Gubkina is a scientist at the Centre for Urban History of Eastern and Central Europe in Lviv. She is co-founder of the NGO “Urban Forms Centre” in Kiev. She regards herself as an urban activist and is committed to the preservation of the full architectural heritage of the city. Buildings of the Second Socialist Modern Age, in other words, concrete structures built between the 1960s and 1980s, are particularly threatened in her view. To start our walk, Yevgeniya Gubkina takes us to Sumska Street, a kilometre-long axis that bisects Kharkiv, a city with a population of 1.5 million. This linear axis links the old Tsarist centre to the new administrative centre, hastily constructed between 1925 and 1935 on what used to be “Dzerzhinsky Square”. Feliks Dzerzhinsky founded the Cheka, the precursor of the KGB. Today the square is called “Freedom Square”. The new administrative centre intended to disparage and devalue the old Tsarist centre which was characterised by orthodox churches, the university, the stock exchange, international banks and insurance and trade associations. In recent years the Russian Orthodox churches, the former banks and the stock exchange have been beautifully restored, although they now serve different functions. In the last three decades of the Tsarist Empire, Kharkiv was not only a centre of heavy industry. Science, engineering and art also blossomed here – influences that continue to be visible in the city and still determine its identity. Towards the end of the Tsarist era young architects from St. Petersburg encountered wealthy financiers in Kharkiv who enabled them to showcase their decorative talents in all the various styles of the era – historicism, neo-Renaissance, Gothic Revival, art nouveau and art deco. This is apparent in the series of eclectic stately buildings that line Sumska Street, although this splendid sequence is interrupted by a mall built there in the 2000s. The architect also criticises that, in recent years, nearly all of the original brick-red colouring was replaced with light-yellow paint. As a result, Kharkiv is losing its proletarian shades of red and grey, taking on a false neo-classicist look instead. “New Kharkiv” shows this principle of distortion most strongly. After the Second World War, Stalin had the constructivist buildings lining “Freedom Square” decorated in the style of the Stalinist Empire. Corinthian columns and pilasters now fronted the formerly white, constructivist facades of the buildings on the southern, northern and eastern side of the eleven-hectare square. “Freedom Square” is one of the largest squares in the world and is used as a free car park. Naturally, cars only cover a small part of the square; they look like toys in front of the monumental buildings. The original floating lightness of the flat roofs was lost when Stalin’s architects underpinned them with chunky Renaissance-style cornices. The buildings on the eastern side of the square, the former “Hotel International” and “House of Projects”, were turned into a single ensemble. On the western side of the square the Gosprom building was able to stand its ground as a monument to constructivism. It is the city’s key landmark, much like the cathedral in Cologne. Once again it was three architects from St. Petersburg – or rather Leningrad – namely Sergey Serafimov, Samuel Kravets and Mark Felger who won the 1925 competition for the “House of State Industry” as it is officially called. The Gosprom building was completed in just under three years. Five thousand With kind support of the Federal Foreign Office Mit finanzieller Unterstützung durch das Auswärtige Amt, Deutschland construction workers laboured around the clock in three shifts. The six nested parts of the building are lower at the centre. They are linked to each other by passages, open walls, bridges and roof gardens, so as to enable the workers of different industries to communicate with each other. They met in the shared dining hall, the technical library, the conference rooms and the entrance hall. It was easy to walk from one part of the building to another using the bridges, they were technological masterpieces. In the roof gardens, people were supposed to engage in open discussions while having a smoke. The white constructivist monolith seems to embody the idea that the new Soviet society would be shaped by rationalism and technical skill. This society was to be characterised by the principle of equality; the vertical, hierarchical structure of “closed” Western society had to be overcome. During the German occupation the central square of “New Kharkiv” was called “Adolf Hitler Square”. Parts of the constructivist Gosprom monument were used to stable horses. When the Germans withdrew from the advancing Red Army in summer 1943, they attempted to blow up the building and failed. Windows, doors and floors had already been destroyed in the earlier fighting. After the Second World War the building was restored to its original form. Another renovation took place within the last ten years. Unfortunately, so Yevgeniya Gubkina, steel frames were used for the windows instead of the original wooden frames. Today the building is used by the city authorities responsible for social and child care facilities and care homes for the elderly. The bridges and roof gardens are no longer used and access points have been bricked up. Eight to ten years ago, Yevgeniya Gubkina concludes at the end of our walk, conditions were still favourable for managing the heritage of the First and Second Socialist Modern Age in a responsible way. More recently, the interests of corrupt investors have prevailed. 2. Jewish life today Report about the visit of the synagogue in Charkiv The synagogue in Kharkiv was built in 1920. It was closed down in the late 1930s under the communist system. The building as such remained but was given another function. In 1990 the political leaders returned it to the Jewish community; at that point a new rabbi was also appointed. Originally, the rabbi is from Venezuela, he moved to the United States and was then sent to Kharkiv by the Chabad community. Chabad Lubavitch is an Orthodox Jewish Hasidic movement. Founded in the 18th century, it sends specially trained rabbis all over the world.