For a long time, the Ukrainian dimension of the Second World War was on the margins of historical knowledge. During the post-war decades the dangerous myths about this most terrible conflict as «Russian glory» and about Ukrainians, «without whom the victory would have been achieved anyway» emerged.

One of the main tasks of the museum team is to rebrand the Ukrainian dimension of the Second World War on local and global levels. We are emphasizing not only the military component of the national history but also the sacrifice of civilians. For this purpose, we are searching the personal stories of Ukrainians, who with their everyday choices and deeds were fighting evil, defending the humanitarian ideals, and embodying the values of peace and tolerance.

After receiving the support from our partners and Ukrainian students we launched the large–scale project «Ukrainian Saviours. Marathon of stories». Its main purpose is to collect information, photos, documents, and videos about people, who were saving the lives of Jews, Roma, and other victims of Nazi terror. These stories are posted on the web page www.портрети.com.ua. This resource is constantly updating and available in two languages – Ukrainian and English. For better illustration of the topic, we have prepared video stories using the unique photos from the Museum’s collection, archives, and open sources.

Soon, there will be videos representing all the regions of Ukraine. The main part of these pictures is published for the first time.

We are kindly inviting you to join our project: share information about it on your informational resources, create a TV-story or essay. We are also calling upon everyone, who possesses information about rescuing the victims of Nazi terror to publish the stories on our web page.

For decades Ukrainian Saviours were forced to play the role of «good Soviet citizens» and keep silent about their heroic deeds in times of great danger. Therefore, a lot of Ukrainians were recognized as Righteous Among the Nations posthumously. We believe, that together we will manage to tell the real story of the war, Ukrainian Righteous and Saviours.

Join us!