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. Some observers criticise this as a form of “missionary work within the Jewish community”.

The rabbi of Kharkiv was sent over after the collapse of the Soviet Union in order to build a new community here. Today this consists of 30,000 members, representing one of the largest Jewish communities in Ukraine. According to the rabbi, it has not always been easy to win back the local Jewish people. The period of atheism affected all churches, he explains. Many Jews were afraid to live their religion. But, so the Rabbi, everyone has their own faith, even though they may not be able to show it. Chabad builds on this hidden inner faith. Rather than converting non-Jews to Judaism, the idea is to actively engage with non-believing Jews in order to guide them back to their faith. An important prerequisite for this is an open synagogue. In the widest sense this is about being open to visitors. After having hidden their Jewish faith for so long, it is difficult for people to open up to Judaism again; any barriers should therefore be as low as possible.

There are three services per day. On weekdays, each is attended by about 30 worshippers. On weekends, the congregation may number up to 300. The synagogue has also been refurbished. Stone slabs line the walls showing the festive days and basic rules of Judaism. Particularly festive days are used by the Jewish community to celebrate together. During our visit the Feast of Tabernacles was being celebrated; the sukkah had been erected at the back of the synagogue.

The anti-Semitic resentment that was actively fuelled by the Soviet Union was not mentioned. As part of the “Mapping Memories” presentations, scientists have shown that the Soviets did not list Jews

With kind support of the Federal Foreign Office Mit finanzieller Unterstützung durch das Auswärtige Amt, Deutschland

amongst the victims of National Socialism. Crimes committed by German soldiers were documented, but the victims were merely described as ‘peaceful Soviet citizens’. Pogroms carried out by non- Jewish citizens in some places, often for economic reasons, were not mentioned either. In their everyday lives Jews were subject to much discrimination and exclusion. In the 1980s this became so acute that Germany, among others, allowed some to enter the country. As so-called Jewish ‘contingency refugees’, they were able to settle in several German towns that had Jewish communities.

The rabbi only briefly touched upon this anti-Semitism. When asked about cooperation between the city of Kharkiv and the Jewish community, he spoke of a good and friendly relationship. He emphasised that Jews were well integrated into the city’s activities. Kharkiv was a tolerant city, and there was no anti-Semitism, he said. But what of wider anti-Semitic sentiments in the country today? Only recently, two Jewish communities in Lviv became victims of anti-Semitic attacks.

3. Slightly different art…

Report of the guided tour about street art with the artist Gamlet Zinkovskij Charkiv

by Bärbel Schmidt- Šakić

The artist: a slight, almost lanky young man of about 30. A high, delicate face with large blue eyes in a shaved head. Entirely dressed in black, a tight, quilted leather jacket, solid leather boots and silver rings on his hands and in his left ear. He introduces himself almost bashfully, speaking quietly, although he often meets foreign groups to walk them through his town; recently, for the first time, he received a sizeable sponsoring deal from a German painting supplies company. Aged 22 he was given responsibility for imported paint worth 13,000 US$ for a street art festival in the city. Afterwards, he realised he only wanted to work individually and did not need a festival. He did not go to war in 2014 either, as rifle and body armour seemed too heavy to him for his slight frame. It is obvious he finds it difficult to present himself and his work as this reveals his inner thoughts and what moves him. Some images appear to be self-portraits, but they show an older, even very old version of him, a tall, slim figure without a smile. As usual, there is a short aphorism, which is found on nearly all of his paintings. These are placed on garage doors, walls and gateways in Kharkiv’s inner city, thrown there in coarse, black or white letters on black or white ground. We did not probe whether these were composed by himself or Stanislaw Lem. So, a shadowy figure as tall as a person, running towards the light, seeking to escape the dark shadows of the past, accompanied by only two words, in Russian and remarkably never in Ukrainian, “Proshchai proshloye”, which means “Farewell to the past”. He wants to escape the past, that much is clear; the past is socialist in his memory. He completed his studies at the Ukrainian successor institution to the Soviet College for Monumental Art, which still taught Soviet propaganda as painting. From this he adopted a simple, concise style but instead of official ideology he now gives us personal messages. These he illustrates in a bare, almost Spartan way on previously cleaned and smoothened, large or small surfaces in public spaces. A small, faintly coloured Earth in infinite black space, accompanied by, “Look how small our global problems are.” “My infinite boundaries are about this big” – yet the wall painting depicts the extraordinarily limited reach of a single hand. His aphorisms encourage viewers to think about themselves and call on residents, passers-by and Russian-speaking tourists to critically analyse themselves, their world views and their behaviour.

Right at the beginning of the guided tour, Gamlet takes us to a garage door that had been “neutralised” a few days previously, i.e. painted over. His aphorism there had been, “If heaven starts on earth, we all live in heaven” – perhaps a little too poetic for the people driving in and out of the garage every day? Or too provocative? Gamlet’s images do give rise to objections and discussions and draw responses by the city administration, although he is quick to point out that he will never be in their pocket. He has repeatedly refused their offers for publicly funded art projects His aim is to turn

With kind support of the Federal Foreign Office Mit finanzieller Unterstützung durch das Auswärtige Amt, Deutschland

places that are unsightly, squalid, decaying and dismal, and which are unlikely to inspire the people that live there, into different, more worthy places. For this reason he selects urban spaces he can clean and beautify. A wall painting is completed in a few hours or a day at most; the material investment is very low as he only uses black and white paint. He paints in full public, anyone can watch. In the early days the state police sometimes took him in for questioning; now they know each other, and occasionally an autograph is asked for/provided.

Sometimes, people hit upon the idea of adding to a painting or commenting on it. In most cases, he paints over such scribbles, in black, unless they represent a truly witty reply to his art. He himself, in contrast, is a man of few words. A wall, painted full of letters, draws the comment, “How many words we waste on our life...” A particularly accomplished piece is the round pair of glasses, about 70x120 cm in size, painted on a wall in Pushkin Street, to which he added mirrored glass and the sentence, “I try to see the truth”. This “installation” got him 5,000 selfies on Instagram within three days. After all, “a mirror is a place of self-love, but a rather strange place for street art”, he admits. How does he finance himself? He sells smaller paintings to those interested; presently he is illustrating a new book by the Nuremberg-based philosopher Reinhard Knodt.

The two hours of our walk led us to many picturesque, abandoned places in the centre of Kharkiv, places we would not have come across ourselves, never mind entered. Gamlet shows us 25 of his works in total. The last one is a small-format painting on a junction box on a street corner opposite his favourite cafe. A few white brush strokes depict a narrow bed, the commentary reads, “5.30. Too early to go to bed.”

We have come to the end of our political educational journey through Kharkiv’s street art. Within two short hours, we have taken on board much more than would have seemed possible. Our walk with Gamlet was a guided tour through the dreary, exciting everyday life in post-Soviet Ukraine and its young, creative and positive characters, in a town that is marked by the charm of decay, a mere 27 km from the deathly border of the war being waged to the north and east of Kharkiv.

Youtube has a fitting documentary on Gamlet made in 2014: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYTDDc2OYu0

4. Political situation

Meeting with Dmytro Bulakh

A meeting with Dmytro Bulakh, Member of the Kharkiv Regional Council and Board Member of the NGO Anti-Corruption Centre Kharkiv, 10 October 2017 With his small NGO Dmytro Bulakh attempts to reveal local cases of corruption and take them to court. He sees the city administration and the mayor as deeply mired in corruption, in particular when it comes to the sale of building plots and renovation contracts. To him, an inefficient judicial system and the lack of enforcement of constitutional principles – e.g. by the police – are the main reasons for the galloping corruption in the country. Corruption is the main challenge for Ukraine as a whole as well as for Kharkiv. In his view, Euromaidan was a first uprising against this wide-ranging problem. To his mind, radical reforms are necessary; the police force and judicial system need to be completely restructured. His engagement in the fight against corruption carries personal risks; he has already fallen victim to an attack.

According to Bulakh, the geographical proximity to Russia puts Kharkiv in a particularly difficult situation; the “echo of the war” can clearly be heard here. In 2014 there were several obvious attempts at political destabilisation; back then everyone was waiting for Russian tanks to appear any day. The war in eastern Ukraine has also had badly affected the city’s economic situation, as economic links to Russia have traditionally been strong but are now lying idle. Kharkiv is also affected by the large number of internally displaced people that have sought refuge here since 2014. Many have moved on

With kind support of the Federal Foreign Office Mit finanzieller Unterstützung durch das Auswärtige Amt, Deutschland

further west, but the share of refugees is still high within the overall population. It is difficult to integrate them into the labour market.

At the same time, Kharkiv is strongly influenced by the Moscow patriarchy which rules over the great majority of churches in Kharkiv. The “gospel” taught there is that the annexation of Crimea and the war in eastern Ukraine as such are not the result of Russian intervention or attack, but represent a Ukrainian civil war.

As far as de-communisation is concerned, Bulakh favours a rigorous approach: The communist regime is on a par with the Nazi regime; therefore it is high time to get rid of any corresponding symbols, re-name streets etc.

5. The Socialist Heritage: Curse or Blessing II

Participating in a conference held at the Ermilov Centre, Kharkiv, with NGO representatives on the topic “Protecting the heritage of Modernism in and near Kharkiv”

by Dr. Zbigniew Wilkiewicz

Unfortunately, local opposition member (Dmytro Bulakh, member of the Oblast Council, active in the anti-corruption committee and determined opponent of the head of the Kharkiv municipality Kernes), did not attend the panel discussion. We had had the opportunity to speak to him before and learned he was generally in favour of implementing the De-Communisation Act. Apart from the facilitator, the architect Yevgenya Nagubina, who also accompanied our group through Kharkiv, only two others thus participated in the debate. On the whole, they all agreed that Soviet modernist monuments and architecture had to be dealt with sensitively, as long as they represented aesthetically, historically or socially important or even valuable objects.

Using the example of a worker’s monument from the Soviet era that has fallen victim to the De- Communisation Act, film maker Mykola Rydny, who takes a neo-Marxist position, highlighted how in his view, the Act had been implemented in a harmful way. He argued that the Soviet era is part of Ukrainian history; it is not just the Holodomor that took place then but also industrialisation and Ukrainisation - in other words, positive factors. It is also difficult to grasp why, as part of de- communisation, an Engels monument has been taken down and exported to the UK, or Rosa- Luxemburg-Street has been renamed Kharkiv Street.

Ukrainian historian Iryna Skolnina (Center of Urban History, Lviv) used a (non-representative) survey of pensioners, workers and intellectuals in a quarter with post-Soviet monuments and modernist buildings to explain that more public participation is necessary when deciding whether to remove such objects or keep them. Long-term residents of such quarters should not be alienated, and their views should be taken into account.

In the lively plenary discussion that followed, everyone agreed that the De-Communisation Act had to be applied more carefully. Rather than simply destroying the Lenin monument, as happened in Kharkiv, this could mean relocating monuments to a park of “former idols”, as was done in Russia, the Baltic States or Poland. Adequate solutions need to be found that are not ideologically charged or national-patriotic, and de-communisation should not turn into a new burning of books. Monuments and memorial sites should not simply be decided on by the municipality in a top-down fashion and without consulting the public (as happened with the memorial to the Holodomor). How the city administration is using public space should also be questioned. Abuse is obvious, as is the corrupt allocation of building land and projects that makes short shrift of valuable places of remembrance (e.g. the former Jewish cemetery) and ignores the general public. Another issue was the “green zone” of Kharkiv that is not being sufficiently used and protected; parks must be preserved and waters kept clean much more decisively.

With kind support of the Federal Foreign Office Mit finanzieller Unterstützung durch das Auswärtige Amt, Deutschland

6. Forgotten History: House Slovo

Going for a walk in Kharkiv to see “House Slovo” (Word)

by Elise Landschek

A dark autumn evening in Charkiv. The wind is whistling through the streets lined with high-rise buildings, a few street lamps cast pools of yellow light onto the tarmac. Number 9 is unremarkable, a house like all the others. Eight floors, high windows, crumbling plasterwork. On the wall, separated from the pavement by a row of stones and a muddy lawn, there is a nondescript plaque with about two dozen names on it. Just this. It is easy to overlook.

House number 9 is “House Slovo”. The names are those of many well-known writers who lived here – and went to their deaths from here. The State consciously invited them to live in this house in 1933, offering them large, new flats at fabulous prices. Should they have become suspicious? Writers were regarded as a danger to the Stalinist system, and it was rare to be given privileges such as this. A prison cell was more common than a luxury flat. Rumours have it that the entire house was bugged. Every flat was monitored, every writer put under surveillance. The entire literary elite was gathered together for Stalin within a single house.

On 27 October 1937, twenty years after the October Revolution, the dictator began his great purge in Ukraine. 1,111 writers were shot. The entire Ukrainian Writers Union was wiped out. By November 1937 the house stood deserted.

On the internet: Nothing. Not a word about the house. Flats are very expensive there today, it is said, only the wealthy can afford them. Many, we were told, don’t even know what kind of house they are living in and what happened here. On this dark October evening in 2017, exactly 80 years after the terror, many windows are brightly lit.

7. Between Playground and Front Line

Meeting volunteers of the Cultural Adaptation Centre in Kharkiv: The war in eastern Ukraine and its consequences No. 1 Prospekt Gagarina, 11 October 2017

by Christian Splett

Kharkiv, 11 October 2017 – Two strong women are holding their own in eastern Ukraine. One of them meets and helps internally displaced people coming to Kharkiv by train or car from the Donbas region. The other dares to go to the "grey zone", where families with children are caught between the Ukrainian armed forces and pro-Russian separatists – and all they want is to play, laugh and forget the danger in which they live. Tatyana Tokmilenko and Yekaterina Shutaleva are two of several women (and a few men) who provide humanitarian assistance in the association calling itself Kharkiv Station – and they do so with great personal dedication, often putting their own lives at risk. Their meeting rooms are in Prospekt Gagarina in the south of the city with over a million inhabitants, where the Cultural Adaptation Centre has its headquarters on the second floor of a light-coloured brick building. In the playroom, children can decorate plates, the language lab offers English lessons to young people, and adults learn computer skills in the PC cabinet. The idea is to enable the internally displaced people to better come to terms with the tragedies they have gone through by being together.

“Things are not better at home, because there is shooting at home,” Tatyana Tokmilenko, the older of the two women and a university lecturer, heard students say who fled from Donetsk and now live in a gymnasium in Kharkiv. A petite woman wearing a pink cardigan with matching scarf, she has worked from the start to enable them to sit their exams at the university here. A friend of hers had served tea

With kind support of the Federal Foreign Office Mit finanzieller Unterstützung durch das Auswärtige Amt, Deutschland

to newcomers arriving in the railway station. A room was found; local people brought bowls of soup and rice. This was how Kharkiv Station was born. All those not going on directly to nearby Russia or western Ukraine were given food and sanitary products. “Initially, we thought people would only be here for a short period of time. Later we learned they would stay for a while.” Emergency shelters are no longer needed. “Competition between the drivers of minivans was huge, but the situation has eased now.” A current project that supports internally displaced people to become self-employed has attracted a lot of attention, Tokmilenko says.

"We play with the children, so that they can feel like children," Yekaterina Shutaleva says to describe her work in the "grey zone" between the front lines. Thousands of children need to cross them because they live close to the line of fire. "We did not want to wait for help coming from somewhere else," the young psychologist, who wears a black sweater emblazoned with the words Dramatic Pause, says to describe her motivation. Parents are also traumatised and need help. A number of young girls have relationships with fighters and soldiers – in exchange for money or because they want protection. Shutaleva herself goes largely unprotected on her missions: “If I wore a helmet or a protective vest, this would be like a wall between me and my children.” Accidental fire or a thoughtless step on a landmine hidden in the grass are the greatest dangers. She is more worried about the funding of the project: “We do not have enough money to go there more often than once a month for a couple of days.” Yet stopping it all is no option. Together with Tatyana Tokmilenko and Kharkiv Station, she is determined to carry on and show human, perhaps even female, strength to confront war, escape and fear.

8. Current political situation: The war in Eastern Ukraine and it’s aftermath

The war in eastern Ukraine and its consequences: Talking to volunteers of the Akzent Refugee Assistance Group from Kharkiv (11 October 2017)

by Stefanie Fink

Yekatarina has meticulously manicured fingernails sporting a striking polish with a bit of glitter. Light brown wavy hair frames her narrow face. A pretty young woman, you might think, who likes to go dancing and has no interest in politics. Then she starts speaking, with great seriousness and for a long time: of children living in cold underground dugouts, of women who prostitute themselves out of need, of crying men.

We are sitting in a small room on the first floor of a former commercial building located in Prospekt Gagarina, on the edge of Kharkiv, just 40 kilometres from the border with Russia. Akzent, a refugee assistance group, has rented half a floor here. There is a long, dark corridor with a pink doll's pram. In the room on the right are glasses holding brushes and paints. The pictures children paint here probably show their bleak reality. Opposite is the room for therapy sessions furnished with a cosy sofa, light-coloured curtains and a huge teddy bear. You can guess that it was not easy to make the former offices look a bit more friendly. And also that the women of Akzent have done all they could. Women such as Yekatarina, who works here as a psychologist on a voluntary basis. When she speaks of her protégés, our group falls silent.

Traumatised children left adrift because their parents are busy day in day out fighting for their very existence. A small boy who no longer speaks, a little girl climbing into bed with her stepfather, because she has “no other” family left and no place to stay.

According to the Ukrainian Interior Ministry, 1.8 million people fled the war in eastern Ukraine and annexed Crimea. GIZ, the German Agency for International Cooperation, even puts the number at 2.5 million.

With kind support of the Federal Foreign Office Mit finanzieller Unterstützung durch das Auswärtige Amt, Deutschland

Tetyana, university lecturer and founder of Akzent, tells us that 85,000 internally displaced people from the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk live in Kharkiv today, among them 18,000 school-age children. Many have not even applied for that status, which means they officially do not exist and receive no government support at all. “Solidarity among the general public has been huge from the start,” says Tetyana, who mobilised the academic community in 2014 when the first refugees came to the university town. The people of Kharkiv brought clothing and food; some even offered their flats. She speaks matter-of-factly, but you cannot help noticing that she is very much involved emotionally. “A two-week-old baby from the Donbass region saw the sun here for the first time; his mother had hidden with him in the basement for fear of violence and shooting.”

Over many months, refugees received their only support from civil-society groups such as Akzent. It took a second wave of refugees in 2015 to secure government funding and assistance from international organisations such as the Red Cross or UNICEF.

Yekatarina has been working with Akzent for nearly two years now; initially, she carried her three- month-old daughter in a sling on her tummy. She is one of seven psychologists working in a mobile brigade that visits traumatised families, above all children, in their temporary shelters, such as a former holiday home or a container village in a former children's camp in the woods.

Yekatarina also goes to the “grey zone” regularly. This is the name for the area between kilometres 0 to 5 along both sides of the front line (running between government-controlled and occupied territory), a mere 250 kilometres east of Kharkiv. Some 14,000 children, she tells us, move regularly through that danger zone; some schools (provided they have not been closed) are right in the line of fire, so that the children on their way to school have to go past mine markers and through checkpoints – with Ukrainian soldiers on one side and pro-Russian separatists on the other. Many children have seen worse things; they experienced violence, were in fear of death, lost parents, relatives or friends. For them, Yekatarina is a glimmer of hope. She plays with them, listens and tries to take their fears away.

The young woman looks sad when she speaks of children who have just started school, being able to recognise the different types of projectiles by the noise they make. Or very young girls in the occupied areas getting involved with armed men in the hope that this will give them protection and security – freedom from bodily harm re-defined.

She does not think about herself a lot, although a colleague has developed psychosomatic disorders because of the emotional stress. The men carrying weapons, she says, are not drunk quite as often now. There are almost only women working in the mobile brigade; they attract less mistrust on the part of the soldiers and are let through more easily. Is she afraid? Well, there was an uneasy feeling at the start, but now she is used to the long trips through her de facto divided country. “The children are waiting for me, especially on holidays. We celebrated the New Year together, because I promised them we would.”

Does she have a wish? Yekatarina would like to see her protégés once a week rather than once a month, as she currently does, but this is impossible for her as a volunteer in terms of time and money. Her biggest wish would be to make the wishes of the children come true. Their wishes are humble, but often difficult to fulfil. “A girl wanted to have a Spanish flag, because she now learns Spanish. We eventually got one from Spain, because we could not find one here.”

In January 2018, UNICEF's temporary support for the mobile brigade of Akzent will end. The organisation has criticised the work Yekatarina and her colleagues do. “The project description spoke of 300 people to undergo therapy; the money was there. Yet it turns out that we treated 500 people. Was that wrong?”

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

Minutes of the meeting with Maksim Museev on 11 October 2017

Maksim Museev is Head of Administration in the District of Kholodna Gora, which is the district of Kharkiv most strongly affected by de-communisation. He is in his early thirties and seemed very determined and strong when entering the room. He has been a member of the city council for 12 years and has worked for the administration for four years. Amongst others, he is responsible for the budget that funds the town’s programmes.

A total of 1.5 million people live in Kharkiv, of which about 250,000 are students.

Maksim Museev informs us on the financial situation of the district. In 2012 the total budget amounted to about 8 bn hryvnia; back then, the exchange rate to the euro was 1:8. Currently, the budget is around 12 bn hryvnia, but the exchange rate is 1:30 – meaning a drastic loss of purchasing power. The economic situation is getting progressively worse. Kharkiv is only 40 km from the Russian border, so that exports to the neighbouring country are an important source of income for local enterprises. A few years ago Kharkiv still had more than 30 large companies with more than 1,000 employees. Today it is three times less. Many people have lost their jobs and need financial support. Incomes are thus falling while expenditures are rising.

Question by Bärbel on de-communisation:

M.M. does not hide the fact he is against this form of de-communisation, not least for financial reasons.

The district is relatively strongly affected by de-communisation. At first, the entire rayon (district) was re-named (from formerly Leninsky Rayon), and many streets were given new names. Research was carried out in archives together with historians and organisations to trace any historical names that could perhaps be re-used. Proposals for new names were then put forward by the working group and the district assembly, but the administration did not always take them up. One of the streets, for example, used to be named after the Red Army; here the working group suggested naming it for a railway pioneer who was instrumental in attracting the railway to Kharkiv and helped build it. He is well known in the town and contributes to its sense of identity. The governor refused this, however, and the street was eventually named after an 18-year-old who died during the Maidan protests.

Question by (can’t remember who): Why are you against de-communisation?

M.M. is not against de-communisation per se. Seven to eight years ago the former Karl Marx Square was renamed, long before the law on de-communisation. Everything has its time. Parliaments today are confronted with many problems that need to be solved. The question is therefore whether re- naming is really so important.

Guido asks what qualifies him for his work.

M.M. does not regard himself as part of an elite, but as an active citizen. He was elected to the city council for the first time aged 21, and now, aged 32, he heads the administration. He has worked for various city authorities and holds a PhD in public administration.

Annette: What is the share of residents in favour of de-communisation?

Eighty percent are against de-communisation. People have written complaints and came to the administration in groups. People have made proposals, the working group then worked on those, and

With kind support of the Federal Foreign Office Mit finanzieller Unterstützung durch das Auswärtige Amt, Deutschland

finally the city council took a vote. Much has to be changed as a result of re-naming, including street signs, stamps and passports.

Question by Svetlana on the process.

The district was sub-divided into small parts; residents were invited to meetings where they were given information. Social media and newspapers also carried information on the proposals. Suggestions were put up for discussion. The proposals with the highest level of support were passed on to the city council. This also meant that some proposals could not be considered.

Question by Johanna on citizen’s participation.

There was no vote, but in the five micro-rayons everyone was able to get involved. The halls were always full at the residents’ meetings. An estimated 1,500 to 2,000 people have taken part. M.M. calls the toppling of monuments barbaric. Neglected soldiers’ graves have been destroyed with the aid of nationalist forces. Some stood up against this, but people generally were not that interested. Still, whole busloads of iconoclasts were brought here from western Ukraine who destroyed monuments and soldiers’ graves in the town.

Bärbel asks what de-communisation means to him personally.

He sees this as the problem of a certain period. When a new regime developed in 1917, Tsarist monuments were destroyed in exactly the same barbaric fashion. In the 1950s Stalinist monuments were destroyed. In 1991-2004, many more monuments were toppled and streets re-named. It is history that is being gotten rid of. Yet those who do not know history do not have a future.

Claire asks why the law was passed at this particular point in time and how one should deal with the symbols.

The law was adopted by the Ukrainian parliament where nationalist forces hold the majority. To M.M., the most urgent task is to support companies and improve the country’s infrastructure. He would solve the problem of symbols as follows: Kharkiv was destroyed in the Second World War; during the 1950s masses of buildings were created with socialist symbols. These buildings have historical value and are cultural monuments. The symbols should be removed from the houses, like in the Baltic States. There, parks were created where this heritage is collected and preserved. Here, in contrast, it was destroyed like in medieval times, supported by the police.

Kaspar notes that many streets are named after men. Are ways being found to give more attention to women?

M.M. gives the example of Rosa Luxemburg Square which was re-named after a man. He is not sure how many streets are now named after women.

Elise asks whether corruption is an issue.

It’s a big issue, especially since wages are very low and there are bad laws without proper regulatory function. Wages in the public sector should be increased to make civil servants less susceptible to corruption.

Taras asks how 20th-century architectural heritage is being dealt with.

We are responsible for how our city and our buildings look. One building, now a bank, has not had any money spent on it for seven years. A year ago the bank paid a fine of eight euros because of this neglect. There is no law that could be used to put pressure on owners.

With kind support of the Federal Foreign Office Mit finanzieller Unterstützung durch das Auswärtige Amt, Deutschland

10. Drobitsky Yar – uncomfortable places of rememberance

A visit to a memorial site near Kharkiv

by Bernhard Schütz, History Workshop Darmstadt/Bertolt Brecht School

To the south-east of Kharkiv, not far from today’s road to Chuhuiv, lies a memorial park dedicated to the murdered Jews of the city: At Drobitsky Yar, more than 16,000 people were murdered from late December 1941 to January 1942. From the path that takes us to the memorial, steps lead up to a towering, rusty brown Menorah: “Hic locus ubi mortui docent vivos” is inscribed into a plaque at its feet, translated also into Ukrainian and Hebrew.

A stone plaque along the way is inscribed with “Nazis exterminated the prisoners of the Jewish ghetto in Kharkiv ... the elderly, children and women, just because they were Jews.” On a hilltop, then, a bright white gateway. Below it, large slabs cut from the same white stone: the 5th commandment – “Thou shalt not kill” – in several languages. In an underground room, we read the names of the victims who are known to have died. The building is encircled by open, sloping and hilly terrain that resembles a landscape park. Information panels give details on the preparation and implementation of the mass murder. The Kharkiv-based Drobitsky Yar Committee had the complex erected here between 1998 and 2002. The original ravine, which had been chosen by the German occupying forces for the shootings in 1941, can only be guessed at; like Babyn Yar, the sides were blown up after the deed was committed. Also like Babyn Yar, a decisive role was played by Einsatzkommando 4a under Paul Blobel, supported by the members of a police battalion and in tried and tested cooperation with the Wehrmacht.

Units of the 6th Army had occupied Kharkiv as early as October 1941; they immediately began to repress the population, especially the Jewish inhabitants. Einsatzkommando 4a and representatives of the Security Service (SD) now had to be brought to the city as quickly as possible: The ‘experts’ of the SS were to elaborate the security policy guidelines used to register the population, thus preparing and implementing the murder of the Jewish citizens. In the view of the occupying forces, however, sufficient personnel for carrying out the executions only became available once the 1st unit of Police Battalion 314 (PRB 314), led by Oskar Christ, arrived on 5 December. On 14 December, the military command ordered all Jews to move to the site of the former tractor works in the south of the city. Simply walking there was a death sentence for many. Lev Nikolayev, a contemporary witness, writes in his diary: “Today the Jews of Kharkiv had to move to the 10th district foreseen for them. I saw them walk down Pushkinskaya Street and assemble in groups at Hotel ‘Krasnaya’. A pitiful sight! Skinny, pale people in torn clothes carrying suitcases, baskets and parcels. (...) Two policemen, healthy lads, bullied them. They beat women, pulled the ears of four-year-old children and drove very old women in front of them by kicking them in the butt! All the while they laughed. I’ll never forget the woman with her child. The four-year-old boy started to scream for sheer fear of the approaching policemen. The mother kissed the hands of her tormenters to protect the boy from the beating.” (15.12.1941; in: The persecution and murder of the European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933 – 1945 (VEJ), Vol. 7, Munich 2011, Doc. 130 p. 398f.).

German police officer Anton B. rejoices in the suffering of the victims in a letter to his sister: “Many of the Jewish vermin of course didn’t reach their assigned barracks but died beforehand. We owe the whole war to this rabble so it’s good they should now be locked up together and left to perish by themselves. This saves bullets and makes the job easier for supplies. In that sense you must never show mercy.” (25.12.1941; ibid, Doc. 133, p. 401f)

Hundreds of children, elderly and disabled people were crammed into the synagogue at Meshchanskaya Street and left there to freeze or starve to death. PRB 314 men guarded the “ghetto” on the site of the former tractor works. There was no need to install a camp administration, for example for organising forced labour. This ghetto solely served to hold people until they could be

With kind support of the Federal Foreign Office Mit finanzieller Unterstützung durch das Auswärtige Amt, Deutschland

killed. The mentally disabled were “treated according to custom in war” – in other words, killed right away.

The massacre began in the final days of 1941. With some interruptions, it lasted until early January. Temperatures had fallen to way below freezing by then. People were driven to Drobitsky Yar in these bitterly cold conditions and shot there. Many babies and pregnant women were thrown into the ravine alive. Women and children were asphyxiated in a gas van, probably also to “relieve” the shooting commandos. Einsatzkommandos and police battalions had already gained experience with this technique in other places such as Dnyepropetrovsk: mass murder as a field of experimentation for the Holocaust.

The flats of the murdered were appropriated; their belongings taken from pockets, collected, registered and sent to Berlin. Wehrmacht and SS also worked together well in these matters. In December 1943, about four months after the city was re-captured by the Soviet army, some members of the German occupying force were put on trial in the former opera house. They were hanged in the centre of town, together with the Russian driver of the gas van. Others escaped – Oskar Christ for example, who had a bright career after the war as the head of the Wiesbaden protective police.

In 1955 a first memorial was erected, without however referring to the Jews as a group of victims. This was standard practice in the Soviet Union at the time. “To the victims of fascist terror 1941-1942”, the inscription read, correctly but in a levelling way. In 1992, shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union, the Drobitsky Yar Committee designed a memorial wall for the murdered Jews on the edge of the former ghetto. The same initiative also maintains the memorial today.

We drove back to Kharkiv in the evening. Drobitsky Yar is one of many places where Jewish life was deliberately exterminated. The memorial park is one of few places of remembrance in Ukraine that commemorates the victims in an appropriate way.

11. Mirgorod – the peaceful city that has hot water even in summer

by Judith Seitz

Directly after arriving in Mirgorod (“City of Peace”) and following a quick lunch we went to meet representatives of the city administration. We were received in the municipal museum, a two-storey building housing a patchwork of local art and artefacts from different eras. Apart from the mayor and his deputy, the meeting was attended by the museum’s director and two research assistants, two representatives of the town’s cultural department and two journalists. The entire meeting was recorded by a regional television crew.

Notably, the mayor spoke very openly and answered questions in considerable detail. When asked whether he could be quoted, he said “of course” as he had to stand by what he said. Instead of giving a presentation, he directly began to answer our questions. Most were related to the significance of Mirgorod as a spa, a bicycle town and a pioneer of energy efficiency. Other topics were de- communisation, demographic change and the impact of the war in eastern Ukraine.

The essence of Mirgorod as a brand is its spa facilities. According to the mayor, all businesses in the town are geared towards health or linked to the spa. Added to this is the prominence of the writer Gogol who immortalised the town in a collection of short stories. Mirgorod was already well known and much loved as a spa during the Soviet period. With the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the spa also experienced a downturn. Operations have been re-built since 1995, quite successfully so, according to the mayor. By now, full occupancy is being achieved; 95% of all visitors are from Ukraine, especially the industrial parts of the country, but the remaining visitors hail from 30 other countries. The spa has a leading position in the treatment of diabetes and fertility, relying on the tried and tested principle of

With kind support of the Federal Foreign Office Mit finanzieller Unterstützung durch das Auswärtige Amt, Deutschland

diagnosis, healing and rehabilitation. Mirgorod is not a health resort in the sense of offering wellness facilities.

Mirgorod has been a pilot town in Ukraine with respect to energy efficiency since 2008; it is the only town in Ukraine with an energy efficiency strategy. Staff working for the city administration were trained in Germany, among others, and there is ongoing co-operation with the GIZ. By 2020, Mirgorod aims to have lowered its energy consumption by 20%. There is the possibility to digitally monitor and manage the daily usage of gas, water and electricity. A nursery and two schools have been made more energy-efficient; street lighting was switched to LED lamps. A waste separation system was introduced together with the surrounding villages; about 20% of all waste is now sorted. Nevertheless, the mayor put these measures into perspective: Although the town is a forerunner in Ukraine, achievements are on a par with Germany’s back in the 1990s.

In Ukraine, Mirgorod is also known as a bicycle town. The deputy mayor “always cycles” too. Until recently, however, there had been no infrastructure for cycling. This year, the first bicycle paths are being built, as well as eight bicycle parks. A survey has shown that 95% of all cyclists are women, an indication of the safety in town.

Like most other parts of Ukraine, Mirgorod is also affected by the tendency of young people to leave villages and small towns. For the first time, the population has actually decreased this year. The mayor puts this down to the introduction of visa-free travel to the EU for Ukrainian citizens, as he suspects that some citizens might travel there to work (illegally). Overall, Mirgorod with its 40,000 inhabitants is a popular place to live, as the air quality is high and the town the “cleanest area in the entire Ukraine”. A total of 1,600 of the 40,000 inhabitants are internally displaced people from eastern Ukraine. At one point this figure was as high as 2,000. On a percentage basis, Mirgorod thus has the highest share of internally displaced people in the province (“oblast”) of Poltava. The mayor does not see this as a problem as the people have settled well and integrated, even to the point of identifying with the town. They were easily able to find initial accommodation because of the high proportion of holiday flats. Due to the spa facilities, the town also has hot water during the summer – which is unusual for small towns in Ukraine and is much to the delight of the new arrivals. After all, Mirgorod has always been open to guests.

The mayor brushed aside the topic of de-communisation with a laugh. This was irrelevant for the town, he said; streets had been re-named as long as 20 years ago.

12. My rendezvous with Mrs Knobochka

An essay on intercultural misunderstandings

by Bernd Schellenberg

Before I begin with my factual account, I would like to emphasise that everything happened exactly as I am about to describe. Only some very minor adaptations have been made for ease of understanding but these are of no importance to the reader whatsoever.

It all began in Mirhorod, northern Ukraine, when I and other members of the tour group made up of journalists were standing in front of our hotel. We were waiting for the others to arrive so that we could walk to the discussion round that had been arranged with the mayor of Mirhorod. This was when I spotted a pharmacy next to the hotel and decided to purchase a blister plaster for my right foot which had become sore from walking. A mere 45 seconds later, when I re-emerged from the pharmacy holding my new Ukrainian blister plaster, the entire group of 25 journalists had vanished into thin air.

I turned right and followed the main road, which would prove to be the wrong direction, and walked as far as a large bus stop directly by the entrance to the spa gardens.

With kind support of the Federal Foreign Office Mit finanzieller Unterstützung durch das Auswärtige Amt, Deutschland

I am still puzzled by this, but apparently, everyone in Mirhorod was able to tell just by looking at me that I was a journalist and from Germany. Anyway, a smartly dressed woman waiting at the bus stop approached me and spoke to me in fluent Russian-coloured English. She asked whether I was part of the doubtlessly excellent group of top German journalists who were being received by the mayor at this very moment. She added that the town hall was in the opposite direction, but easy to find; I should cross the road at the next traffic lights; the entrance to the town hall was a mere 50 metres from there on the left.

I had not yet had a chance to speak when the woman launched into a complaint that she had become a “victim” of the German press. Weeks ago, she, a local representative of an international charity, had arranged a meeting with the mayor. For this purpose, she had travelled to Mirhorod from Kiev this very morning, only to learn that the meeting had been cancelled due to the arrival of some very excellent representatives of the German guild of journalists. As a result, she now had to return to Kiev empty- handed.

Then a slightly less well-dressed man, sporting a shiny golden tooth, approached who had also been waiting for the bus. He added that the original plan had been to put up road blocks between the hotel and town hall so that crossing the four-lane road would be more comfortable for the journalists (who were doubtlessly spoilt by the precision of German traffic lights) and to prevent strays like me from taking a wrong turn.

The thing with the road blocks would definitely have worked if it hadn’t been for the director of the municipal utility company who also happens to be a self-employed entrepreneur and the commercial lessor of the city-owned road blocks. He had already promised those very road blocks to a splinter group of ultra-national Ukrainians for an anti-Russian demonstration; not only had he received an advance payment but he had already firmly committed this same income.

I followed the directions the woman had given me and easily reached the town hall in three minutes. But the building was shut; only one lamp still lit the ground floor where I soon found myself tapping against a window. An elderly town hall employee rose from behind a computer screen, sporting shoulder-length blond hair, bright red lip gloss, rimless glasses, a stark white blouse with a multitude of golden buttons in a double-breasted army look, a worryingly tight miniskirt and high heels. She told a less glamorously dressed, well-built woman holding a scrubbing brush to open the window so that I could present my problem in English.

“Knobochka there, wait at entrance,” I was told. Some righteous indignation rose within me at how Ukrainians seemed to be treating each other, especially women – just addressing them by their surname, no Mr or Mrs or at least a Miss – almost like a former women’s prison or in the style of female municipal rubbish collectors or something.

But I restricted myself to a polite, “Outside wait for Misses Knobochka?”, receiving a terse, “Yes, yes – Misses? – go, go,” in reply. The window closed with a bang. I followed the sparse instructions and waited in the covered hallway by the entrance to the town hall, in front of gilded orientation panels that seemed to indicate a multitude of administrative divisions. I waited for 15 minutes, 30 minutes. When still nothing happened, I cautiously returned to the window of the smart 70-year-old. I was just starting to explain about the most excellent, worthy and highly privileged guild of journalists from Germ... when the window flew open, and before I could say anything at all, a fierce voice told me to “Wait, wait like everybody else. Go, go.” Upon which I proceeded back to the waiting room.

After another 45 minutes, at least one familiar face appeared, namely the cleaning lady who had initially opened the window. This friendly lady with the round face weighed at least as much as our blessed former chancellor Helmut of Palatinate, although she was only half his height. She carried a scrubbing brush with a neon green handle and wore very large grey felt slippers, together with a formerly white apron that covered her chest and belly. This apron was special, as some of the good

With kind support of the Federal Foreign Office Mit finanzieller Unterstützung durch das Auswärtige Amt, Deutschland

lady’s enormously protuberant body parts had caused it to become blackened in places that now gave the impression of two large round eyes and a smiling mouth. Below her own pretty, round face, this lady thus wore a second smiling face on her apron which made me like her even more. I often experience this with likeable people in foreign countries where I don’t speak a word of the respective language; somehow, merely through their sensitive mimics and gestures, I am able to understand everything they are telling me.

And so it happened that I learned quite a bit about Mrs Knobochka from the cleaning lady. Apparently, everyone knew Mrs Knobochka; after the mayor she had to be most important person in Mirhorod. Indeed, in some respects she probably outranked the mayor, representing some sort of “grey eminence” without being old and ugly. Quite the opposite.

The cleaning lady proceeded to tell me about an event that must have occurred a mere week ago. In expectation of the most excellent group of journalists from Germany – an event that (as stated before) had been turning the place upside down for days – the mayor came to the town hall very early one day in order to prepare. Because of all the understandable excitement, he had left the keys to the town hall at home. This early in the morning, no-one else had yet arrived, with the exception of Mrs Knobochka who appears to keep an eye on everything and already knew of the mayor’s predicament. At this point, the cleaning lady was waving the handle of her neon-coloured scrubbing brush as if it were a rolling pin and wore a stern expression. The situation back then must have been threatening indeed for the mayor.

Then, the cleaning lady continued with her report, the mayor had to atone for his faux pas, standing in front of Mrs Knobochka for nearly half an hour. Eventually, he was saved by the advocacy of the stoker of the town hall’s heating system, who was allowed to let the mayor into the town hall on the instruction of Mrs Knobochka.

I gradually became interested in this Mrs Knobochka and enquired how I might recognise this lady, just in case I might bump into her.

Immediately, the cleaning lady began to artfully gesticulate with her scrubber. A cascade of words washed over me, outlining the most excellent and delightful attributes any woman in Ukraine could ever own. She then stood her scrubbing brush against the wall and used her hands to further delineate the well rounded proportions of this special and, to top it all, extraordinarily pretty Mrs Knobochka. I nearly fainted when the cleaning lady added that the all-knowing Mrs Knobochka had already noticed my presence and that I might be about to meet her.

But – the cleaning lady added – Mrs Knobochka insisted on a strange ritual of welcome which I suspect is Russian. At first, I was truly puzzled by this. It emerged that Mrs Knobochka expected a “press”, as the cleaning lady put it, especially from men she might subsequently favour. This seemed to be the only English word the cleaning lady was familiar with as she kept repeating it: “Press – press – press Knobochka .” This was explicit enough for me as “press” suddenly struck me like lightening.

I was immediately reminded of a night I had spent in Shanghai with Udo Lindenberg many years ago. Back then, in 2004 or 2005, our provincial newspaper, the Heidelberg-based Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung had given me the unique opportunity to accompany Udo Lindenberg on his promotional Volkswagen tour of China. I thus agreed to do the reporting for a lousy price per line and paid for my own flight to Shanghai to join Udo. One evening, after a tiring day full of TV shoots, stage rehearsals, light and sound checks and arrangements with Udo’s Chinese singer colleague Cui Jian, the ever generous Udo invited me on an after-work pub crawl through Shanghai. The invitation went as follows: Udo looked me in the eye and began to hum, “I have a little bottle of whisky which tastes very nice and I’ll drink this with Erich Ho... ahem, with Bernd of course!” Still at the venue, the “Chinese Theatre” in the old town of Shanghai, we warmed ourselves with the whisky Udo had personally brought over from Germany. Conveniently, Udo had had a well-stocked bar installed directly on the stage.

With kind support of the Federal Foreign Office Mit finanzieller Unterstützung durch das Auswärtige Amt, Deutschland

Afterwards we called in at other bars in the old town, close to the so-called Bund, until late at night, only slightly unsteady, we arrived at the elegant Nanjing Road, dominated by the bright neon glow of advertising. A beautiful Chinese girl walked up to Udo and asked, in a charming voice, whether the Long Nose from Germany, now well known throughout China after his TV appearance on the previous night, might feel the need to “press” the devout Li for a whole night in exchange for a mere US$500. Here she was using the English word “press” which is probably well-known internationally to all men except myself, and which I was now encountering again right here in Ukraine. Udo felt honoured, bowed politely and refused with thanks, and then launched into a philosophical discourse on the differences between him and me. This led from one thing to another, until we had established beyond any reasonable doubt that Udo had received many more such offers from Li’s colleagues than I. I must have looked a little dejected at this, because Udo, borrowing a melody from a competitor, hummed, “Take it easy old chap,” while patting me on the shoulder understandingly. This was an unforgettable event, and from then on I knew what “press” means to real cosmopolitans. This was to prove very useful here in Ukraine.

In Mirhorod, darkness had now fallen, the clock showing ten to ten. I was still in the covered waiting area in front of the town hall and none the wiser. Along the wall were some chairs on which the cleaning lady had sat during her presentation; by now she had spread out a little. She fell quiet, pulling a sandwich filled with quail’s eggs and tongue sausage from the depths of her apron and visibly enjoying this. When the clock struck ten, this ceremony was over. The cleaning lady looked at me, folded her hands, placed them below her right ear, and gently rocked them from side to side. Sleeping time for me and time for the cleaning lady to go home.

P.S.: Only later did I become aware of the significance of the last words of the cleaning lady with respect to Mrs Knobochka’s global influence. The cleaning lady had reported that one time, before the Maidan revolution, a secret crisis meeting took place at the town hall in Mirhorod with Russian President Putin, mediated by Mrs Knobochka. The visit came as a surprise to Mirhorod, and there was a danger that the city administration would once again mess up everything.

The telephone call reached the director of the city’s utility company, as nobody else could be reached in the town hall at 10:30 in the morning. The director was in the process of hiring out the city-owned digger to a civil engineering company for at least six months, for good dollars of course. Some digging was needed around a subterranean Russian gas transit pipeline on Ukrainian territory, to enable a Ukrainian T-piece to be inserted in order to directly connect the pipeline to the heating system of the dacha and private residence of the mayor. In any case, pleased with the good business deal with the digger, the director forgot to tell the mayor about the phone call from the Kremlin’s chief of protocol about the secret meeting that was to be held at short notice at the town hall.

In the end, the meeting was so secret that Putin, like me, also found himself in front of locked doors, and nearly would have had to wait as long as I had on one of these same chairs. But I was quite surprised: Putin appeared to have some prior experience with Mrs Knobochka. He knew her peculiarities and knew exactly what to do. He acted and was soon granted entry to the town hall, where this time everything ran beautifully.

13. Kiev's modernist architecture and monumental art

Experiencing history: Guided bicycle tour to see “Kiev's modernist architecture and monumental art”

by Sophie Heller

Participating in a Central and Eastern European study tour organised by the Federal Agency for Civic Education, I went on a guided bicycle tour in Kiev to see “Kiev's modernist architecture and monumental art”. It was a slow ride because of the weather, but it enabled us to stop frequently to see

With kind support of the Federal Foreign Office Mit finanzieller Unterstützung durch das Auswärtige Amt, Deutschland

illuminating and interesting sites. Konstantin, our guide, is a musician and takes groups like ours around in his free time. He also writes reports for a journal to draw attention to architectural highlights and remarkable buildings in Kiev.

Kiev's modernism and monumental art covers the 1930s, 1970s and 1980s. However, many inhabitants of Kiev still fail to grasp the relevance of architecture built in that style and do not see in what way it could be useful. I would like to describe a few of the most exciting buildings in greater detail.

The House of Architects (Fig. 1) calls to mind constructivism of the 1920s, but the difference lies in the decorative elements. All craft guilds in the city had their own building. Most of them were extravagant projects. The House of Architects contains different types of studios for painters situated on differently designed floors.

Another example is the House of Tram Drivers (Fig. 2). Tram drivers used it during breaks and to socialise. There are several of these small buildings scattered around the city. The round windows indicate that it dates back to the 1970s. At the time, people were very much interested in outer space, and futuristic architecture was on the rise. Because of the strategic location of the building, it is still in use, for example as a club. According to the latest plans of the municipal metropolitan railway, the area around the building will be part of a new station. The underground station was completed 20 years ago, but it has no exit yet. It could now be built exactly here.

The House of Artists and Cultural Workers (Fig. 3) built in 1932 is unique. The building has two entrances on two sides, each with a small front garden. The architects wanted to make sure that people, when stepping out of the house, would not stand directly on the road. Considering the standards of the time, the building and the flats in it had all modern conveniences. There were lots of windows and recesses for built-in furniture. The rooftop was also open for use by the residents. It even had its own launderette. Yet when politics changed, so did architecture. It was now forbidden to design houses in that way. Those in power put the focus on new “socialist” buildings. Architects, previously respected and very much in demand, were arrested; some were even shot. Since the house we were shown was listed in an English lexicon as “special”, the architect was spared death and gained fame and recognition instead. At the moment, the building is under a preservation order. Thanks to its prominent location, rental prices there are above average.

Another residential building (Fig. 4) was also built in 1932, this time in the style of Constructivism. The architect ignored the arrangement of the other houses lining the street and had the windows face the sun instead.

Hotel Kiev (Fig. 5) was built in the late 1970s, early 1980s in the neo-modernist style. There was a veritable building boom going on then. The inscription Kiev on top is a typical feature of that style. Another hotel, built in the early 1980s, stands out because of its circular shape (Fig. 6). There used to be a church on that piece of land, which the architect took into consideration when planning the hotel. The original plan had 22 floors, but only 12 were built. Immediately next to it is the Young Pioneers Palace. It is still in operation, offering lots of activities for children and young people.

Until 1991, all buildings in the Soviet Union were government-owned. Only since then can housing property be acquired privately. People bought their flats for little money, but the buildings themselves are still in the hands of the government. Residents pay monthly fees for things such as repairs and sewage, but windows, balconies and some other elements are owned privately. This explains the stark contrasts in terms of shape, look and state of repair of the facades (Fig. 7). “Facades are not so important; what matters is that the flats are in good shape,” our guide said.

Kiev's residents do not really regard modernist architecture as important. After Ukraine became independent, realisation set in gradually that these houses are architectural monuments. Under socialism, there was no sympathy for these special houses. The city's monumental architecture was

With kind support of the Federal Foreign Office Mit finanzieller Unterstützung durch das Auswärtige Amt, Deutschland

largely planned and built by Ukrainian architects. Many residents regard the Soviet era as a time of occupation and have no interest in its legacy – even though many of the buildings were designed by Ukrainian architects and should be respected as belonging to Kiev's heritage.

14. Museum of monumental propaganda

A tour of the former VDNH grounds in Kiev

by Joachim Göres

The poster shows an old man surrounded by pigs. “There are no better birds in the world than pigs”, reads Maksim Derbenev. The poster was used to promote pig breeding in the 1950s. Derbenev is our guide to the grounds of the former “Exhibition of Achievements of National Economy” (VDNH) in Kiev. Commissioned by Stalin in 1949 and opened in 1958 by Khrushchev, its intention was to show the people that heavy industry and agriculture were on the rise, so that “afterwards, visitors would return to work with fervent hearts”, says Derbenev, a dentist with a sense of humour. He works as a guide in his free time to take groups on tours of the 20-hectare area with its many pavilions.

In a 25-metres-high hall, we stand in front of four gigantic mosaics showing optimistic people with fiercely determined faces. Men and women in uniforms are carrying red banners, embodying the October revolution. Women in traditional dress represent the different Soviet republics and their respective traditions. Villagers in their Sunday best are rejoicing at a rich harvest. Workers and engineers are standing shoulder to build a new industrial site.

One of the pavilions displays coal mining in the 1960s, another the awards given to Heroes of Labour, who were portrayed in great detail in the past. One pavilion used to be devoted to housing construction showing a standard flat with information on how to furnish it nicely; one pavilion explained aircraft construction and many others exhibited agricultural produce. “When visitors asked where they could buy all this, they were told to wait for the future. Everyone understood they had to be patient”, says Derbenev. The grounds used to be a favourite for school trips; one-hour tours often ended with a swim in the lake. “For me as a child, this was a great experience”, our translater Oleksiy Obolenskiy recalls. All pavilions were built in antique style. Some have now taken on other functions. Pavilion 10 once showed bulging sacks of grain; today it houses a 360-degree cinema. The former greenhouse is now a venue for weddings. A horse stable – the exhibition also used to show animals – is now part of a private riding school. There is also a mini-zoo, a ropes course, a concert hall, an open air cinema and, in winter, an ice rink. The income from hosting the various events is used to maintain the historical buildings.

The former “Exhibition of the Achievements of National Economy” – which also existed in Moscow in a similar format – continues to be a popular visitor attraction, in particular for families coming at weekends. “Young people are interested in what life used to be like and sometimes also make fun of the pathos of the presentations. Older visitors, in contrast, often yearn for the past when they encounter the supposed achievements of socialism here”, says Derbenev.

For the future, a “museum of monumental propaganda” is being debated – socialist art and decommissioned monuments from all over Ukraine could find a home here. Hammer and sickle or the Soviet star, which are banned from public space as communist symbols under the De-Communisation Act, will be left alone here.

With kind support of the Federal Foreign Office Mit finanzieller Unterstützung durch das Auswärtige Amt, Deutschland

15. Art: a mirror image of social wounds

by Anina Valle Thiele

Art Arsenal – a glance at the art scene of Kiev and the works of contemporary Ukrainian artists reveals a multifaceted, creative approach and the potential to help come to grips with the past and war.

The old arms factory “Mystetsky Arsenal”, built by Ivan Meller in the historic inner city, offers a large exhibition space. There is some resemblance to the Arsenale in Venice with its shipyards and repair shops, and it was the first building built in the neo-classical style in Kiev. A spacious centre of art and culture today, it shows predominantly modern art, but also stages theatre plays, literary events and film screenings. Walking around the exhibition, our group was able to see that it is particularly contemporary artists that respond to social developments and national traumas such as the war in Ukraine. Above all, the exhibition brings together socio-critical works of young Ukrainian artists who are dealing with the political upheavals, social developments and identity issues in Ukraine in a variety of ways.

“For more than three years, Ukraine has been in a state of war – an undeclared war,” a board at the entrance to the exhibition reads. It goes on: “The indistinctness of borders, the unknown names and numbers of those who died in the war or are missing, the insecurity of the state – all this is a burden on people day in day out.” The absence of an effective social policy leaves it to every individual to deal with their traumatic experiences on their own. The artists know that art cannot be the sole therapy, but it creates, at the very least, a space in which war is called war rather than being disguised as “armed conflict” or “anti-terror operation”. The exhibition in Art Arsenal offers a space in which the internally displaced citizens have a face and a name, or where the Donbass region is not just a piece of land that has nothing to do with Ukraine as a state, but the place many Ukrainians call home because it stands for their childhood or their memories of the sea.

In her short film “Vicious Circle” (2013), Viktoria Myroniuk questions identity and the restrictions and opportunities that go with it. The video shows five women standing in a circle cheerfully dancing the traditional Hutsul Arkan. The dance used to be part of a “social initiation ceremony” of young Hutsul boys that gave them the right to become fighters. When women decide to dance it, they symbolically break with the social order in which all roles have always been clearly allocated. Shown in a historic place, the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War, the dancers of Arkan raise the issue of excluding all those from public memory that do not belong to the dominant social groups.

The photographs taken by Vitaly Homenko are distressing by comparison. His “Wall of Honour” (2015), a series of portraits of soldiers on Crimea, does not only capture their empty faces, but also visible disfigurements and war scars.

In his photographic series “On Republic’s Monuments” (2014-2017), Yevgen Nikiforov reflects on the government's de-communisation policy that has been in place since April 2015 and its impact on public space. His photos show how the environment and public space have become a battlefield of ideologies and social tension. Over the past four years, the photographer has put together an archive of Soviet cultural heritage in modern Ukraine's public spaces. He travelled around the country to take pictures of Soviet-era monuments – partly destroyed, partly intact, with plinths of Lenin figures half torn down and statues knocked over. The photographs selected for the exhibition show “the diversity of the monuments in public space subjected to de-communisation and reveal the frivolousness of the authorities,” the text covering the exhibition says. Nikiforov’s project thus addresses the “hidden agenda” of the official policy of remembrance and puts the focus on the absence of civilian mechanisms and initiatives to mindfully deal with the past.

With kind support of the Federal Foreign Office Mit finanzieller Unterstützung durch das Auswärtige Amt, Deutschland

In his work “We are Here” (2017), Mitya Churikov argues for a fresh approach to using public space even more provocatively. His photomontage shows how activists symbolically occupy the Ministry of Culture – which the artist sees as a form of protest and active involvement in official cultural policies.

“Babushka in Space” (2017), a video made by Yuliana Holub, looks critically at ageing people and their social isolation: her grandmother, who in reality lives in a shabby flat in Kiev, floats through outer space, as if the old lady has decided to flee her drab existence. The pictures showing the woman in her dingy kitchen making soup are in stark contrast with those showing her floating in the universe. It is a reference to the film “The Space Race” made in 1960 when her grandmother was young, as well as a reflection of the situation and yearning of old people on the margins of society, who sometimes lead a secluded life as if in a space capsule.

Maria Plotnikova chose an interactive approach. “Stick Apart” is the interaction between the artist, her work and the viewers. It was shown first in Oxford while she studied at Brookes University. In Kiev, it was shown spontaneously in Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square) – without prior announcement. It requires participants to balance wooden sticks with their bodies – until everyone have lost theirs. It is a collective performance that appeals to people to stand together in society.

The artistic approaches and forms of expression on view in Art Arsenal are varied. They show that a socio-critical debate on the major social conflicts and tensions is, indeed, taking place in Kiev's young art scene. Complementing the official programme of the study tour, the visit to Art Arsenal was significant in that it showed that contemporary artists and their works are a step ahead of some politicians and other officials. Their works reflect the big issues of Ukrainian identity and touch the sore point of war. While some state institutions appear to be frozen in time or let historical narratives neutralise or fight one another, the art scene is a free space in which social issues raised by war and the policy of history are taken up and reflected creatively against different ideological backgrounds.

16. Museum of the Second World War and state-run rememberance culture

Report on the visit to the Museum of the Second World War in Kiev

by Maximilian Lütgens

The study tour to Ukraine ended with the conference entitled “Mapping Memories” in Kiev. I had an occasion during the conference to talk to Jewish historian Boris Zabaka, who survived the Czernowitz ghetto. I used the opportunity to ask him about his view of the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War in Kiev. Zabaka told me that he was disappointed because the museum hardly mentioned the Holocaust. That, too, was one of my impressions when I visited the museum on 15 October 2017 together with a group of conference participants.

An instructor of the museum first took us outside and explained the meaning of the different sculptures on display there. The sculptures were commissioned in the post-war years and reflect the Soviet view of the Second World War. In the Soviet Union, the Second World War was referred to as the Great Patriotic War; the monuments and statutes erected mainly commemorate the victorious Red Army. That is also the case in Kiev, where mainly soldiers in combative poses are shown rather than the civilian population. Our instructor was critical of that, because it was, above all, the civilian population that had suffered in the war. Moreover, the war – although it had ended in victory – had been a catastrophe because it had claimed 8 million victims in Ukraine. He also told us that the Motherland Monument would be maintained as a landmark despite the policy of de-communisation; today, it is mainly used as a viewing point. After that, we went inside.

The museum was opened in 1992. The first room is devoted to the current war on Crimea and in eastern Ukraine. It exhibited a number of shocking photographs, many Ukrainian flags and Russian propaganda books about Putin issued by the separatists. The following rooms dealt, in chronological

With kind support of the Federal Foreign Office Mit finanzieller Unterstützung durch das Auswärtige Amt, Deutschland

order, with the developments in the German Reich and the Soviet Union from 1933 to the Second World War. One side of the room is devoted to the events before the war in the German Reich and the other to pre-war events in the Soviet Union. The juxtaposition of artefacts such as weapons, posters and uniforms is maintained in all other rooms as well. In the room on the Holocaust, for example, the Nazi concentration camps are contrasted with the gulags in the Soviet Union. In the middle of most rooms, Ukraine is presented as victim crushed between the two perpetrator nations. The museum ends in a well designed memorial room with pictures remembering the Ukrainian victims among the civilian population. Our instructor mentioned the moving story of a contemporary witness who had survived the Second World War but lost his grandson in the war on Crimea. The museum makes an excellent effort to address the horrors of war, even though the first room devoted to the current war does not necessarily fit in with a museum on the Second World War.

Yet what our instructor had to say about the beginning of the Second World War was completely unacceptable. He was an advocate of the pre-emptive war theory, comparing the German Reich and the Soviet Union to two tennis players poised to hit. He even went as far as to claim that the Soviet Union had been prepared to go to war and that it deliberately let the Wehrmacht invade Ukraine in the summer of 1941. That was followed by a few more arguable theories, for example when he criticised the exhibit of a guillotine together with a concentration camp inmate’s uniform, claiming that groups touring the museum would surely know that guillotines were no longer in use in the Second World War. He also said that more Ukrainians had been killed in the gulags than in concentration camps, and that the gulags had been much worse. The height of his questionable comments was his theory that the vans used as mobile gas chambers had been an invention of Soviet Jews. He obviously tried to qualify Germany’s responsibility for the war and the crimes committed and expose the Soviet Union as a regime of criminals. Putting the blame for the Holocaust on the Jews as alleged inventors of the gas vans was a provocative anti-Semitic statement.

After the tour, I approached the instructor and criticised some of his remarks. He defended them by saying that the three years under Nazi rule had been less bad than the 80 years under Soviet domination. When he went on to say that Hitler had unleashed war only on other nations while Stalin intended to wipe out his own people, it dawned on me that he failed to grasp my criticism completely. The tour became even more dubious when a Ukrainian historian, who also attended the conference, supported the instructor’s comments by providing alleged evidence.

Ten days in Ukraine and the “Mapping Memories” Conference have made it clear that many historians and politicians in Ukraine find it very important to put the terrible time under Soviet occupation in the focus of remembrance. This makes it possible to remember, at long last, the Holodomor (Famine), for example, or to address Stalin’s wars against Poland and the Baltic States, as we saw in the museum. However, the crimes committed by the National Socialists should not be compared with the Soviet crimes under Stalin. Complicity in Nazi crimes on the part of many Ukrainians obviously plays a role here; after all, Ukrainian collaboration with the SS was not mentioned anywhere in the museum. Even though the museum has lots of exhibits and a very impressive memorial room, the tour was rather irritating and some of the comments unacceptable. Should the problematic statements made by our instructor reflect the position of the museum and many Ukrainian historians, then the country’s historiography has also anti-Semitic leanings. This assumption has been confirmed repeatedly on our trip, when historians kept stressing that the victims of Nazi occupation had mainly been Jews rather than Ukrainians.

When I met Abba Naor, a Holocaust survivor from Lithuania, at the Concentration Camp Memorial Site in Dachau and told him about my impressions of the Second World War Museum, he was not surprised at all. He told me that, especially in the countries that used to belong to the Soviet Union, Jews are not regarded as citizens with equal rights. He finds this inconceivable because, as a child, he felt first and foremost to be Lithuanian.

With kind support of the Federal Foreign Office Mit finanzieller Unterstützung durch das Auswärtige Amt, Deutschland

17. The difficult path towards Ukraine’s own history

by Manfred Dieterle-Jöchle

The conversation with Volodimyr Vyatrovich, Director of the Institute of National Memory of Ukraine, mainly focused on the structure of the institute, de-communisation, dealing with the Holocaust, Ukrainian historiography and the neighbouring country of Poland.

The institute was founded in 2006 as a public authority. Since then, it has been shunted between three different Ukrainian ministries depending on the political situation. The institute has a staff of 37 plus a scientific advisory council consisting of five members. The institute is not set up as a research institute. Volodimyr Vyatrovich, himself a historian, regrets there is no time for their own scientific work; although the institute does not carry out its own research, its staff are all experts. Vyatrovich’s main concern is that anyone interested should be able to openly access Ukrainian archives. Some documents of the KGB are still inaccessible as they are kept under lock and key in Moscow. Exhibitions and publications are prepared for memorial days. During the visit of the German study group, the institute was commemorating Ukrainian heroes of the past with large-format images that were publicly displayed.

The institute is also active in parliament: According to the director, four laws were passed successfully in 2015. The first deals with de-communisation, the second regulates access to all KGB material still archived in Ukraine. The third stipulates how the issues of the “Great Patriotic War” and “Victory over Nazism” should be dealt with – according to Vyatrovich, both the form and means were brought up to European standards. In this context, 8 May was set as a day of reconciliation; this is when all victims are to be commemorated. Finally, the last law defines the status of those fighting for Ukrainian independence since 1917. Most politicians are not interested in the work of the institute, Vyatrovich explains. “This is good for us,” he tells the study group from the Federal Agency for Civic Education.

Implementing de-communisation, more than 1,000 places and 50,000 streets in Ukraine have been renamed. There should be no reminders of the “criminal Soviet system”. What to do with the decommissioned Soviet monuments is still unclear. In part, these have been collected, but whether they will be shown in a dedicated exhibition and, if so, in what way is still to be decided. During the conversation, repeated mention was made of the clear rules and deadlines contained in the law, although it is up to the respective communities themselves to decide how to implement it. Where no historical names can be reverted to, local names have been used to replace the communist names. In 90 percent of the cases, the names of Ukrainian freedom fighters have been used. Ukrainian historiography: Referring to the memory of Stepan Andriyovych Bandera, the nationalist politician and partisan leader, Vyatrovich said that Bandera was a typical representative of Ukrainian freedom fighters. Still, scientific research is necessary to conclusively establish Bandera’s role. No serious monography has so far been published on Bandera. As part of de-communisation, about 30 streets have been named after him in western Ukraine. The figure of Bandera is becoming ever more popular in Ukraine, Vyatrovich added in conversation with the study group.

Holocaust: During Soviet times no room was given to the topic of the Holocaust, the director of the Institute of National Memory states. The topic must now be embedded within the overall view of Ukrainian history, Vyatrovich said. At Babyn Yar, not only Jews were murdered by the Nazis, but also prisoners of war. Babyn Yar is a complex place; its entire history should be shown, “not only the Holocaust”. To find a common framework is a huge challenge. The fact that “three Russian oligarchs” want to finance a Holocaust Memorial at Babyn Yar represents a case of “external influence” he finds difficult to deal with, so Vyatrovich. The times when the state was able to influence the commemorative work done at Babyn Yar are over, he emphasised. Still, he added, Ukrainian authorities have neglected Babyn Yar in the past.

The neighbouring country of Poland: Vyatrovich sees a number of historical parallels between Poland and Ukraine. Historians from both countries are engaged in a debate on this, sometimes resulting in

With kind support of the Federal Foreign Office Mit finanzieller Unterstützung durch das Auswärtige Amt, Deutschland

passionate discussions. The rise of nationalist forces in the neighbouring country is of great concern. He observes a “certain poisoning of Polish society”. To only take the role of victim, as partly happens in Poland, is to deny any one's own responsibility for the past. This, he says, is a comfortable status. In part, the relationship between Poland and Ukraine is once again being poisoned. In the past two years, there have been 14 cases of Ukrainian cemeteries being desecrated in Poland.

18. Modern art and remembrance work

by Kaspar Nürnberg

Talking to artist and anarchist Davyd Chychkan, author of the exhibition “The Lost Opportunity” at the Centre for Visual Culture, 44 Hlybochytska Street, which was destroyed by neo-Nazis.

Initially, the meeting did not take place in the Centre for Visual Culture, but started with a walk together with Davyd Chychkan and his girlfriend Natalka to a piece of overgrown land that an independent community of garage tenants had brought to life the summer before last. Soon, it turned into a free space for cultural activities, with graffiti spray paint on sale, rehearsal rooms and all sorts of street art including an open-air stage in the middle of the “jungle”, for which the local group of architects by the name of Philorama had put up wooden stands for spectators. The Centre for Visual Culture had also rented “project space” here. A few weeks ago, the owners decided to speculate with the property and sell it as building land for a high price so that all rentals were terminated. The stage went up in flames in the summer, and everything is destroyed now and has fallen into its previous stupor again.

The Centre for Visual Culture was originally attached to the chair of cultural studies at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. After years of conflict with the university management, which is closely affiliated with Tryzub and Svoboda (Serhiy Kvit), the Centre was removed as a platform for discussions and political education and, after surviving two years without its own project rooms, established as an independent unit at the place where we met (44 Hlybochytska). Projects are organised with funding from abroad, for example from the Austrian private ERSTE Foundation. Kvit, by the way, had referred to the exhibition “Ukrainian body” organised by the Centre as “not an exhibition, but shit and pornography”. Before Davyd eventually spoke about his exhibition “The Lost Opportunity”, Kateryna Mishchenko of the Centre introduced to us a series of writings called “Political Criticism” and gave us an overview of the exhibitions implemented so far, the Centre's participation in the Kiev Biennial in 2015 and the projects on the drawing board for the forthcoming 2017 Biennial.

Davyd Chychkan's exhibition, which was attacked and destroyed presumably by young people belonging to the Svoboda movement, goes back to the demonstrations in Maidan, which Davyd Chychkan had followed closely, carrying his own banner: “Opposing Nationalism, Russia, Homophobic Slogans”. The demonstrations had been a civic, rather than a nationalistic rebellion. Afterwards, his artistic goal had been to unmask Ukraine's rightwing-radical movement through paintings and show it as what it was: a huge problem. Rightwing nationalists, by the way, he says, had been naïve enough to be used by Russia, which then disparaged Ukraine as anti-Semitic and ultra-nationalistic in media propaganda campaigns.

In his paintings shown in the incriminated exhibition, Chychkan mixed banners and symbols of communism and the Orthodox Church with swastikas, Ukrainian uniforms etc. in a provocative manner. The budget for the exhibition was so small that – except for a camera at the entrance to the gallery – no other security measures were possible. After the originally hired private security firm failed to appear, a friend with karate training volunteered as guard. On the second day, captured on camera, 14 armed people arrived on the scene, going on a rampage, firing rubber bullets at the pictures and taking four with them. Everything was recorded, but police investigations were extremely slow, although several offenders could be identified in the recordings. Eventually, the investigations simply petered out.

With kind support of the Federal Foreign Office Mit finanzieller Unterstützung durch das Auswärtige Amt, Deutschland

What the activists of the Centre for Visual Culture had to learn is that it is unbelievably difficult to address the issue of communism in public in Ukraine without provoking a massive backlash, that they cannot count on the police in such cases and that all activists have to fight the desire to go to Western Europe for fear or frustration over the current situation. The Centre for Visual Culture has vowed, despite its recent experience, not to give in to pre-emptive “self-censorship” because of imminent threats from violent right-wingers the artists have to be prepared for.

19. Historico-political guided tour: Babyn Yar and the memory of Holocaust mass extermination sites

By Guido Hassel

The weather was suitable for the theme and place of the tour: it rained, it was cold, a biting wind blew, so that the mood was gloomy, almost depressed. Within minutes, my notes turned into a ball of pulp – which means I have none now, for which I apologise.

First, we went to the place where the Jewish population of Kiev had to assemble on 29 September 1941. At the time, these were nearly exclusively women, children and old men. The young ones had already been conscripted into the Soviet Army. At the assembly point today is the monument shown here. ① 1 Source: Google-Maps

7 8 9

6

5

4 2

3 2 1

With kind support of the Federal Foreign Office Mit finanzieller Unterstützung durch das Auswärtige Amt, Deutschland

We then walked all the way to the place where the mass killings took place – exactly the same way the people then had to walk, unsuspecting of what was due to happen. Since a railway station was nearby, many thought they would be taken to another town. Some of us felt uneasy at the thought of walking the same way as the victims: this is a historic site where the Holocaust took place.

The way led past the Jewish cemetery ②. Later, under the Soviets, the area was completely built up with residential homes and industrial buildings. Nothing was to recall Jewish life in Kiev (political goal of the Soviets / anti-Semitism in the USSR). 2 The crowds had to turn off near the “military” cemetery. Historians believe that up to 40,000 people were killed on the two days of 29 and 30 September 1941. Yet the reality is that no-one knows for sure. Over the entire period of time, historians put the number of people killed there at up to 100,000; during the Soviet era, the estimate was up to 200,000 “peaceful Soviet citizens”.

Again, the crowd had to turn off. People walked past a monastery the entrance gate of which ③ still exists. At that point, they understood that they would not be taken to the railway station. The guards, who used to be nice and friendly and not violent at all, changed their behaviour. People had to undress and were led naked to the scene of the killing. 3

The Soviets built a huge monument to remember the “tragedy of Babyn Yar” ④ at the entrance to the ravine. An interesting detail is that the “Jewish” background of the victims is not mentioned. Nearly all victims were Jews (together with Sinti and Roma, people with disabilities etc.). The official version during Soviet times referred to them as peaceful Soviet citizens (or “citizens of Kiev and prisoners of war”, according to the inscription). The “victims” depicted on the monument with their beards and clothes do not look Jewish at all. The plaque there was initially just in Russian, before later, after the 4 collapse of the USSR, two more were added: one in Ukrainian and one in Yiddish.

Babyn Yar today is a “park” full of “normal life”. You see joggers, people walking their dogs, families with prams. What some of us found disconcerting (myself included) was an underground station, Dorohozhychi, ⑤ opened in 2000. It does not refer to the Holocaust site at all. Coffee stalls play loud music, for example. Some think it’s good that normal life is made possible at such a place, while others, such as me, believe that “normal life” is incompatible with what happened here. This is not the way to remember the victims, I believe.

Speaking about remembrance in Babyn Yar: the area is 5 strewn with monuments each remembering individual groups of victims (e.g. children killed here ⑥, or Sinti and Roma ⑦, the Jewish population in general⑧etc.) The monuments do not relate to each other and there is no convincing concept of why they are here. Unfortunately, there is no museum or other place 7 to present the “history” and the past of the area. Such things are in the “planning stage” and were also addressed at the conference we 6 attended. 8

With kind support of the Federal Foreign Office Mit finanzieller Unterstützung durch das Auswärtige Amt, Deutschland

The park and the paths are clean and well-kept. Off the track, in the ravines still visible today, which are the actual scene of the crime, it looks more like an unofficial rubbish dump. Our instructor, who was more than dissatisfied with the current situation, criticised the condition of the place and the absence of a building that would keep the memory alive. There are not even toilets here, so that visitors relieve themselves on the very ground where people were killed.

Place of the projected “Memorial” ⑨ Ravine in Babyn Yar

For someone like me familiar with remembrance work, the guided tour was the highlight of the trip.

Guido Hassel, Research Consultant, Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial

With kind support of the Federal Foreign Office Mit finanzieller Unterstützung durch das Auswärtige Amt, Deutschland