On July 1 of this year, Museum “Jewish Memory and Holocaust in Ukraine” together with the Museum of Resistance to the Holodomor (Dnipro) presented a unique exhibition “The Universe at the Point of a Needle”. It is a combination of unique examples of the art of Ukrainian embroidery, traditional clothing of eastern Ukraine with the history of Ukrainian women, who in different periods of the 20th century. became victims of Soviet totalitarianism, were imprisoned and exiled for a long time.
Like its main characters, the exhibition, created in Donetsk, has changed many locations since 2014 and was presented in Kyiv, Lviv, and Ivano-Frankivsk. After the Russian occupation of Donetsk, it was kept in the city of Bakhmut and thanks to the care and colossal efforts of several people, it was saved from destruction.
It is symbolic that this Friday, August 23, on the Day of the National Flag of Ukraine, as part of the “Current Conversation” program (as part of the “Jewish Heritage” project), the “Hesed Menachem” held an online meeting, during which the deputy director of the Museum, Dr. Yehor Vradii spoke about the exhibition, the circumstances of its appearance, as well as its author – Lyudmila Ogneva (1944–2022) – a craftswoman, writer, public figure, who for several decades revived the memory of the Ukrainian traditional and modern cultural heritage of the Ukrainian East.
It is important that the participants in the conversation were students and associates of L. Ogneva – Svitlana Kravchenko, member of the National Union of Folk Art Masters of Ukraine, co-founder of the public organization “Bakhmut Ukrainian”, granddaughter of the Righteous Among the Nations, and Larisa Azimova, member of the National Union of Folk Art Masters of Ukraine, founder and head of the People's Studio-Club “Slovyans” (Slovyansk, Donetsk region).
We believe that one day Ludmila Ogneva's exhibitions will return home – to Ukrainian Donetsk and Bakhmut. Instead, the museum's work on the preservation and popularization of Ukrainian cultural heritage continues, and an exhibition dedicated to the life of the Jews of Eastern Europe will be inaugurated today in the walls of our Museum.