On September 28, the opening of the international exhibition “A Scar Across Europe: The Consequences of the Hitler-Stalin Pact” took place at the Museum “Jewish Memory and Holocaust in Ukraine”. The project was implemented by the Berlin-Karlshorst Museum and the Department of Eastern European History at Heinrich Heine University with the support of the Federal Commissioner for Culture and Media of Germany, the Rhine Regional Council, the Civil University of Düsseldorf and the Institute for Culture and History of Germans in North-Eastern Europe.

The exhibition was opened by the Director of the Museum, Dr. Iryna Radchenko, who told the guests about the idea and concept of the project, dedicated to one of the darkest periods in European history – August 1939. She emphasized that the exhibition had already been exhibited in safer regions of Ukraine, in particular Lviv, Chernivtsi, Kamianets-Podilskyi. Organizing the exhibition in a front-line city - Dnipro, posed special requirements for placement and display, but thanks to the fruitful cooperation of the staff of the Museum “Jewish Memory and Holocaust in Ukraine” with the authors of the project, everything was resolved and organized. Dr. Iryna Radchenko emphasized that the Non-Aggression Pact between the Nazi and Soviet totalitarian regimes, known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and its secret additional protocol led to the redistribution of Central and Eastern Europe between Nazi Germany and the USSR. The consequences of this pact affected the fate of millions of people from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Ukraine and Finland. She reminded the guests of the exhibition that on August 23, Europe commemorates the millions of people who became victims of two totalitarian regimes of the 20th century – Nazism and Communism. The Director of the Museum emphasized the importance of museum work during the criminal war waged by the Russian Federation, which repeatedly emphasizes its role as the heir to Russian imperialism and Soviet totalitarianism.

Visitors to the exhibition were welcomed by Christoph Meissner, a researcher at the Berlin-Karlshorst Museum and curator of the exhibition “A Scar Across Europe: The Consequences of the Hitler-Stalin Pact.” In his video address, he noted: “We are looking at the pact here not just as a document that was signed by high-ranking officials of the Soviet Union and Germany, but also as to how it affected the fate of people, of countries. What were the consequences not only for Germany and the Soviet Union, but for those, all the countries, that were in between.”

The exhibition will be at the Museum until November 3, 2025. You can visit the exhibition on Wednesdays and Sundays, from 10:00 to 19:00 (entrance to the Museum until 18:00). We invite you to visit us!