From a Distant Land to Native Ukraine
Letters from Gelsenkirchen of Forced Laborer Hanna Pastuch, 1942–1943
Exhibition in the Bochum University Library, 8.4.-15.5.2025
The exhibition is extended until May 30, 2025
In cooperation with young researchers from the Ukrainian NGO After Silence, Bochum University Library is presenting the traveling exhibition “From afar to my Ukraine. Letters of the forced laborer Hanna Pastuch from Gelsenkirchen, 1942-1943”. The exhibition will be on display on the second floor during the library's opening hours from 8.4. - 15.5.2025.
Admission is free.
After silence - a personal story rediscovered
The exhibition tells the story of Hanna Pastuch (1922-1983), a Ukrainian forced laborer from the village of Tsykova, Smotrytskyi district (now Kamianets-Podilskyi district) in the Khmelnytskyi region. From 1942 to 1943, the young Ukrainian woman was forced to work at Glas- und Spiegelmanufaktur AG in the Schalke district of Gelsenkirchen in North Rhine-Westphalia.
After the war, Hanna Pastuch returned to Ukraine, but apparently kept silent about her experiences in Nazi Germany for the rest of her life.
In October 2022, the team from the NGO “After Silence” succeeded in acquiring letters that Hanna Pastuch had written to her parents and siblings from Gelsenkirchen via an online auction. Subsequent research enabled further information to be gathered in Ukrainian and German archives and during a visit to Tsykova.
The contents of Hanna Pastuch's eleven letters are presented in the exhibition in two languages: German and Ukrainian. The exhibition title is a quote from a letter to Hanna's mother.
Picture: Hanna Pastuch (left) with another forced laborer, Gelsenkirchen, 1942-1943, © After Silence NGO
After Silence is an Ukrainian non-governmental organization founded in 2021. It deals with various aspects of memory culture, history and social anthropology in order to develop a critical understanding of Ukraine's past and present. The focus is on individual experiences and collective traumas, memory and poster memory.
The exhibition was realized with the support of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation with funds from the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Many thanks to Dr. Olena Petrenko, Chair of Eastern European History, RUB, and Dr. Kateryna Kobchenko, Department of Eastern European History at the University of Münster, for our support in organizing the exhibition at the Bochum University Library.