International Museum Day 2022
This year’s theme of International Museum Day is the Power of Museums.
Therefore, with a series of publications, we want to tell about the unique projects of our Museum, which make it a modern centre for studying and covering the history of the Holodomor.
The highest mission of the Museum is to warn the public about the crime of genocide, accumulating and disseminating knowledge about the Holodomor of 1932-1933. The museum teaches resisting human rights violations and cultivates the protection of human dignity and democratic values. For many years, it has served as a platform for research and communication on the subject of genocide. The museum plays a significant role in building civil society, forming an awareness of the need to preserve the Ukrainian state as one of the main ways to protect against genocide.
The power of modern museums – in digitization and accessibility. The Holodomor Museum team created the first excursion-historical mobile application, Track Holodomor History, which tells about Kyiv from 1932-to 1933 through archival documents and photographs, eyewitness stories, and still unknown facts.“Track Holodomor History is an absolutely unique product. It is educational, but not boring. We collected facts, documents, memories of people, stories of whole families, old photos, and video chronicles. Many materials have been voiced or translated into comics. The story does not remain in the text on the pages of the textbook but brings to life in the hands. All the information in the application is not available to the average person in any other form—it is either in the archives or scattered in the sources that still need to be verified. The story is much closer: in the houses where we live, in the streets, we walk, and now just in our pockets—in a smartphone,” said Iryna Kurhanska, project curator. The application is available in Ukrainian and English.
Education is an integral part of the activities of museums. The exposition of the Holodomor Museum is a combination of historical research and modern multimedia technologies that comprehensively and clearly tells the history of the Holodomor. Each of the exhibits transferred by Ukrainian families to our museum has its own unique history. The Hall of Memory presents the results of scientific and applied research and search work. The repressive mechanism of the communist totalitarian regime and the Ukrainian resistance to genocide is displayed via the museum facilities. The Museum team has also developed educational and interactive sessions for audiences of all ages. It is a way to talk about the Holodomor and the dangers of totalitarian regimes without hurting. Educational sessions and guided tours are available online, allowing you to visit the Museum from anywhere in the world.