The Drobytsky Yar Ashes Exhibition will be opened in the AVEC Gallery on December 13 (at 5 P.M.) It will include 50 exhibits, which are directly connected with the victims of the Holocaust in Kharkiv.
“The exhibition is built on the contrast: the part of the exhibit demonstrates the peaceful life of Kharkiv Jews, including the everyday objects from the apartments of those who were shot (for example, sewing machine, gramophone), the second part directly demonstrates the tragedy of 1941 – a waistcoat with the sewn on yellow star, buttons and fragments of plates found in the place of Jewish ghetto in the KhTZ district,” the director of the Association of National and Cultural Unions of Ukraine AnnaTymoshevska told. “The exhibition also presents the archival documents, photos, newspapers, leaflets dating back to the period of the occupation by Nazi Germany, letters and memoirs of eyewitnesses, stands with the information from the archives about the shot children.”
The exhibits were provided by the Drobytsky Yar Memorial, the Holocaust Museum, and by the relatives of those who died.
The exposition will be supplemented with the pictures by Kharkiv artists devoted to the pre-war life of Ukrainian Jews. “We wanted to oppose peace to war, to show the fine line between them. The tragedy like the Holocaust must not happen again – that is the philosophy of this exhibition,” the AVEC Gallery key worker Olena Pozdniakova told.
During the exhibition’s opening ceremony, it is planned to show a film with videoframes of Kharkiv in 1940s and photos of the residents of Kharkiv who died in Drobytsky Yar.
The Drobytsky Yar Ashes Exhibition will be open in the AVEC Gallery (70, Sumska Str.) through December 20, every day, from 10 A.M. to 8 P.M. The entrance is free.
It should be reminded that after the occupation of Kharkiv in October 1941, the victimization of Jews began. On December 14, at the command of the commandant of the city, all Jews were forced to move to the ghetto barracks located in the KhTZ district. The liquidation of Kharkiv ghetto started on December 27, 1941: under pretence of sending people to work, the fascist began to take the Jews from the ghetto to Drobytsky Yar in the eastern outskirts to shoot them there. Kharkiv Jewish ghetto ceased to exist on January 7, 1942. Roma and captive Red Army soldiers were also executed in the ravine. The total of 16,000-20,000 persons were killed.
On the whole, Nazi killed nearly 6 million Jews during the years of the World War II.
