The exhibition Ukraine Tells Its Story gives a voice to Ukrainian refugees who have been driven from their homeland by the storm of war since February 24, 2022 and who now live in Slovenia. According to available data from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the Republic of Slovenia is providing shelter to more than 8,000 refugees from Ukraine. In 2022, administrative units issued 2,716 valid residence permits or certificates and 746 temporary or permanent residence permits and granted 195 Ukrainian applications for international protection in Slovenia.
The items that the Ukrainian refugees brought from their homeland and symbolically illustrate their flight to safety are placed alongside twenty-six of their stories. Ukrainians who were ready to share their story lived a completely normal life before the war started: they went to work or took care of their families, their children went to kindergarten and school, and pensioners spent the autumn of their lives in peace. Even though the tensions did not appear overnight, since a lot of bitter things had happened, especially in the east of Ukraine, after 2014, the war in the form that we’ve been following for a year was a shock for the population.
Awareness of the war raging in our proximity has encouraged some individuals to feel more deeply for their fellow man in need. They have offered Ukrainians easier integration and ensured their safe future in Slovenia. With the second major wave of refugees in independent Slovenia, the national agency that takes care of migrants in our country also underwent radical reorganizational changes. The exhibition thus not only presents the human face of small man caught up in conflict but shows life before it began, the moment that the war was announced, the decision to leave, the journey to Slovenia and arrival and in eight associated stories highlights selected examples of Slovenian aid and positive integration into the new, Slovenian environment.
The exhibition was made possible by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and was prepared by The Museum of Contemporary and Recent History of Slovenia on behalf of The Acting Director of mag. Nataša Robežnik, author of the exhibition Katarina Jurjavčič.
