Our museum got a brochure by Alexander Wienerberger

The brochure “Russland wie es wirklich ist!” was handed over to the funds of the Holodomor Museum. Alexander Wienerberger, published in 1934, immediately after the Holodomor.

The brochure in German (translated as “Russia as it really is”) was written by an Austrian engineer immediately after returning from the USSR, where he witnessed the Holodomor while working at a Soviet enterprise in Kharkiv in 1933. Shocked by the brutality of the Soviet regime and the continuous lies about “successes”, he decided to return to Austria immediately. He also managed to take out photographic films secretly made in the capital of Soviet Ukraine, which recorded a famine that, as the Stalinist authorities claimed, “did not exist” in Ukraine.

It was in this brochure that 17 pictures of Wienerberger were printed for the first time, including those that are today the most famous photographic evidence of the Holodomor. On the cover of the brochure, there is a famous photo from Kharkiv, where the body of the dead man is surrounded by people. Fearing for Wienerberger’s safety, the author of the pictures was not identified in the brochure. In his little book of only 16 pages, Alexander tried to show the world, lulled by Soviet lies, that in the Soviet “paradise” everything is not as it is presented by the official authorities. He hoped that these pictures and his true impressions of what he had seen in the Soviet Union would cause an explosive effect in the West. But the world was silent again…

The Museum was given the brochure by the film crew of the GOOD MORNING DISTRIBUTION company, and it, in turn, received a valuable copy from Mr. Josef Vogl, an Austrian researcher who was the first to research Wienerberger’s biography. During the interview, which the film crew recorded as part of the filming of the documentary “Family Album”, the partner of which is our institution, the researcher agreed to hand over a rare copy of the brochure from his personal archive to the Holodomor Museum.

We are sincerely grateful to Josef Vogl, director Maryna Tkachuk and the entire film crew for the valuable gift!

At the same time, we invite everyone who cares: if you have things, photos or publications from the Holodomor period and the 1930s in general and are ready to donate them to the Museum, contact us by phone (044) 254-45-11, by e-mail [email protected] or through personal messages on social networks.