Many thanks to our respondents and helpers for preserving history!

Last October and November, our colleagues embarked on a large-scale expedition across Ukraine, during which they recorded the testimonies of 230 witnesses to the Holodomor and the mass man-made famine of 1946–1947. We thought long and hard about how to express our gratitude to our interviewees — the people who opened their homes, memories and hearts to us, agreeing to share their stories of the past. This inspired the idea of creating portraits of our interviewees, based on photographs taken during the expedition, as a keepsake of these encounters.

Our Holodomor Oral History Department was able to bring this idea to life with the help of our partners, Cowater International and the Canada-Ukraine Foundation, as part of the international technical assistance project ‘Support for the Exhibitions of the National Museum of the Holodomor-Genocide in Ukraine’, funded by the Canadian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

.And just recently, our respondents have started receiving thank-you photos from us: A4-sized portraits, framed without a moulding and mounted behind glass. May they serve as a fond reminder of this special experience, our meeting and the emotions we shared!

In addition, representatives of local authorities, local historians, teachers, fellow museum experts, and everyone who played an active part in organising our expedition, such as by searching for contacts among respondents and meeting and accompanying our colleagues, received letters of thanks from the Museum. Thank you, friends, for your commitment, support and desire to preserve our shared history!