On February 24, 2022, russia launched an insidious attack on the territory of Ukraine. Since then, the Museum has received many offers of help and cooperation. Museums and cultural institutions provided their spaces for museum exhibitions about Ukraine’s fight for freedom and democratic values. However, there were artists who donated their works to the Museum. One of them is the French illustrator and cartoonist Regis Hector. He sent the Museum caricatures of his own authorship on the topic of the Russian-Ukrainian war.
These are works that reflect the steadfast resistance of Ukrainians to Russian aggression and their bravery in defending the European future of their country and the futility of the invaders’ plans to dominate Ukraine.
In 2022, warm family holidays in the glow of colored lights intertwined with the roar of war and missile strikes. But even in the darkness of the blackout, Ukrainians are confident of their Victory, their indomitability is getting stronger, and the spirit of Christmas is felt stronger than ever.
Artists from all over Ukraine reflected this mood in their works.
We have collected a series of e-cards and postcards that Ukrainians used to congratulate each other and the whole world on Christmas and New Year 2023. These are works of famous artists, illustrators and designers, including Nikita Titov, Andriy Yermolenko, Beata Kurkul, Mykhailo Skop. Images were published on social networks and on various sites (click the link). The selection is complemented by the covers of New Year’s magazines, which are decorated with Ukrainian-themed images.
This collection is a tribute to Ukrainians, who despite difficult trials and losses, keep the warmth of faith in the best
This exhibition project is about the transformation of the monument’s image in the awareness and perception of Ukrainian society presented to the Independence Day of Ukraine.
From the first days of the open aggression, artists repeatedly used the image of the “Motherland” as a sign of resistance. We witnessed the rapid transformation of the sculpture and its development as a new, reinterpreted symbol of the struggle and the inevitable victory of Ukrainians. The most defining thing for artists and content makers was the geographical orientation of the sculpture towards Moscow, while the sword and shield in its hands turned into an effective anti-ruscist weapon. It was a new patriotic, sometimes satirical, digital content that expressed motivation for resistance and armed struggle against the occupants. The accumulated collection (онлайн версія виставки) is a real art worth seeing.
The exhibition is dedicated to the history of military and economic cooperation of the United Nations during the Second World War and the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war. It actualizes the continuity of mutual assistance traditions of democratic countries in struggling against aggressive dictatorships. The exhibition dispels the myths produced in the USSR and modern Russia about the insignificant impact of the Lend-Lease on the victory over Nazism and militarism.
The exhibition presents the items from collections of the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War, The National Archives and Records Administration (USA), The Library of Congress (USA), the artifacts donated by the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, defenders of the state, and materials taken from open sources. The exhibition covers the period of 1941–1945 and 2021–2022. It highlights the history of the Second World War and the struggle of the Ukrainian people for independence and state sovereignty in our time. A significant number of artifacts will be displayed for the first time.
Unbreakable Mariupol. City-martyr, Сity-fortress, City-hero. The port on the Azov Sea became a symbol of desperate military resistance in the face of constant bombardment and shelling from the Russian horde and an illustration of a profound humanitarian disaster.
The basis of the exhibition is a photo archive made by journalist Vyacheslav Tverdohlib, a Mariupol native who lived in basements during the blockade, filmed and photographed. On the 23rd day of the inhuman ordeal, he left the city on foot. And despite the risks, he took all the footage. The last photo was taken on March, 22. And every next day brought even more terrible trials to the people of Mariupol.
Humanity did see the truth. The photos became the basis of an international museum photo exhibition, which was presented in different versions in the cities of Ankara and Alanya (Turkey), as well as in the city of Gdansk (Poland).
We offer to view it online
The terrible deja vu. The horrible mimicry of war. The images of the past that had not to return! They came to life. This happens. Right now. To us. This is real. The uncertain and fragile understanding of the future.
This is the project about the essence, sense, similarity and repeatability of the wars. About people and not only people. About fear, uncertainty, despair, anger and exhaustion. And also, despite all, about motivation, fight, courage, invincibility, help, people’s unity, humanity, faith, hope...
This is the project in which the artifacts of the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War, unfortunately, came back to life again...
Curator – Liudmyla Rybchenko, content – Volodymyr Tretiak, design – Andrii Moiseyenko, animation and programing – Oleksii Raldugin.
see online проєкту
From the beginning of the invasion, the Museum documents the Russian-Ukrainian war. On March 8, the 13th day of the armed confrontation, our team took a photo camera and went into the wartime streets of Kyiv. That is how the first museum photo exhibition “Kyiv: One-Day Report. March 8, 2022” was created. 44 pictures demonstrate how instantly and greedily the war devoured the life space of the Ukrainian capital, erasing the boundaries between war and peaceful life.
The photo exhibition was presented in the World Center for Peace, Freedom and Human Rights in Verdun (France), Jeju International Peace Center (Republic of Korea), on the square near the National Theater in Mannheim (Germany) and in the central part of Cetinje (Montenegro). The project received new formats, in particular, the video version was prepared.
Idea by Yurii Savchuk, photos by Olena Shovkoplias, sound direction by Olesia Stefanyk.
This exhibition project is about the transformation of the monument’s image in the awareness and perception of Ukrainian society presented to the Independence Day of Ukraine.
From the first days of the open aggression, artists repeatedly used the image of the “Motherland” as a sign of resistance. The most defining thing for artists and content makers was the geographical orientation of the sculpture towards Moscow, while the sword and shield in its hands turned into an effective anti-ruscist weapon. It was a new patriotic, sometimes satirical, digital content that expressed motivation for resistance and armed struggle against the occupants. The accumulated collection is a real art worth seeing.
The exhibition-intervention «Art» as a part of Museum digital cycle «Life VS War» is an attempt of immersion in mutual inversion captivity, invasion in deeply individual and general space of two, seemingly, incompatible meanings: war-destruction and art-creation, which shape peculiar dichotomy of life.
The exhibition "FREE" tells about our citizens who were arrested and convicted by the Russian Federation and the quasi-state formations "DPR" and "LPR" due to pro-Ukrainian views, public position, belonging to patriotic organizations. They went through torture, show trials, prisons, but did not break. They came back to their homeland during the exchanges between the Russian Federation, ORDLO and Ukraine. Their names are Stanislav Aseyev, Volodymyr Balukh, Edem Bekirov, Mykola Karpyuk, Oleksandr Kolchenko, Vitaliy Markiv, Anastasia Mukhina, Yevhen Panov, Bohdan Pantyushenko, Oleh Sentsov, Oleksiy Syzonovych, Olena Sorokina and Roman Sushchenko.
Despite the fact that not all of the heroes of the exhibition have been released yet, we still call them FREE for their FREE spirit, thoughts, aspirations, actions, struggle. Valentyn Vyhivskyi and hundreds of other prisoners are still in jails.
Personal belongings, correspondence, photos, banners and other evidences of the struggle give a binary feeling: joy for those for whom slavery has become a thing of the past, and disturbance for those for whom it remains the present. The struggle for them continues! І Вставляємо нове речення - We offer to familiarize with online-version of the museum exhibition.
Another museum initiative of the online project "Life vs War" is a story about a Woman who survived the flames of war. About her titanic work and everyday life, suffering and understanding of war life, survival strategies and constant spiritual and physical struggle for ideological and human values.
The wartime photo documents from the Museum's collection, most of which are exhibited for the first time, reflect women's personal registers of struggle and mercy, which express the all-encompassing humanitarian disaster, the establishment of human as a resource of geopolitics and the object for satisfaction of the physical needs, complete vulnerability to the prevailing systems of violence.
The trials, through which the Women have gone, whose stories we present, demonstrate the incomprehensible feminine endurance, wisdom and strength of spirit that have helped them to survive and to revive life.
«The camp of a Drop of Water and a Slow Death»
The exhibition of the history of Stalag 325is an attempt to remind us about the key human values: life, freedom, dignity, sanctity of international treaties and inviolability of borders, the rule of law, freedom of conscience, 75 years since the end of one of the bloodiest wars in history. These undoubted achievements of European civilization, which in the twentieth century suffered through the virus of racial domination, hypocrisy, and collaboration with the evil, are important today more than ever before, when Ukraine must overcome the "expansionist infection" spreading from the Kremlin.
The history of the Nazi camp in Rava-Ruska is one of the episodes of European collective memory of World War II. Its main formula is that remembering these events brings painful, sometimes uncomfortable, but valuable lessons, full of traumatic experiences that need to be discussed, realized and accepted in order to establish humanistic ideals and values towards the development of civil society and democracy.
After the outbreak of the war in Western Europe in 1940, about 2 million French and Belgian combatants were captured. However, even behind barbed wire, they tried to resist, so in 1942 some of them were transferred to Stalag 325 in Rava-Ruska in the Lviv region, where the influence of the International Committee of the Red Cross and the statements of the Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War was limited. Due to the appalling conditions of detention, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Winston Churchill called the place “the camp of a drop of water and a slow death."
The documentary and narrative basis of the exhibition are unique photos, documents, awards from the collection of the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War, the “Territory of Terror” Memorial Museum of Totalitarian Regimes", the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Arolsen Archives, the Central State Archives of Public Organizations of Ukraine, the State Archive of Lviv region, private collection of Dmytro Pirkl, as well as materials from open sources.
The semantic refrain of the exhibition consists of drawings by Eugène Vanderheyde, a former prisoner of Stalag 325.
World War II until today remains the most global human-made apocalypse in history. It confined the general humanistic dimension to the space of concentrated violence and the negation of the inherent value of life. At the same time, it has rallied the world into an all-embracing counterstand to such a radically distorted value system, forcing the international community to seek mutual understanding, unity and cooperation.
Despite the fact that Ukrainians chose different political landmarks and life strategies at that historic period, they became an integral part of this international and interstate consensus. Wearing uniforms of the Red Army, the Armed Forces of the United States, Canada, Great Britain, France, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and other states, more than 7 million of our compatriots fought against Nazism in the ranks of the United Nations, they fought on all fronts without exception, participated in all major battles of World War II. At the same time, a large-scale armed movement for national statehood was an essential component of the struggle of our people in the Ukrainian lands.
Numerous Ukrainian communities joined physically, materially, culturally and spiritually in providing comprehensive assistance to those who shed blood on the battlefields. Tens of thousands of Ukrainians joined the resistance movements in the west, north, south and center of the European continent. Our compatriots fought even in the concentration camps, resisting with humanity and compassion.
Furthermore, Ukraine became an enormous bloody battlefield and the scene of humanitarian catastrophe, and the multimillion nation was put on the edge of survival: from 8 to 10 million died, the economy and social infrastructure were destroyed.
Finally, the mass losses suffered by Ukraine, as well as the military and socio-economic efforts of Ukrainians, provided formal grounds for becoming a United Nations co-founder.
The exhibition “In the ranks of the United Nations”, using the museum's authentic language, represents the large-scale canvas of events and the multicolored life palette of our people, which had its own significant contribution to the victory over Nazism and fascism.
