The Museum Exhibition “Memory. Dialogues,” implemented last year with the support of the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Ukraine and dedicated to the memory of the Second World War in Germany and Ukraine, has received a new chapter in its history.
Last year, German citizen Karl-Heinz Ehrmann read about this exhibition in an interview with the German artist and curator Eva Neidlinger published in Der Spiegel. He contacted the Museum and informed it about the unique photo archive of his father, Karl Ehrmann, who during the Second World War was stationed on the territory of Ukraine as a Wehrmacht telephone operator.
The photo album contains photographs taken by a German military photographer that illustrate the route of German troops through Ukraine from the very beginning of the invasion. The images depict both the everyday life of German soldiers and the tragic realities of the war brought to Ukrainian land by the National Socialist regime.
With the support of the Goethe-Institut in Ukraine, Karl-Heinz Ehrmann transferred 116 photographs from this album for temporary display at the exhibition. Among the first to see this collection in the exhibition were Fabian Mühlthaler, Director of the Goethe-Institut in Ukraine, and Franziska Höfler, Project Officer for the “Eastern Partnership” and Special Programs.
We sincerely thank Mr. Karl-Heinz Ehrmann and Goethe-Institut Ukraine for this important contribution to preserving the memory of the Second World War in Ukraine and for continuing the German-Ukrainian historical dialogue.
