Presentation of the B50 community in Hamburg

For a month now, our photo exhibition “Chronicles of the Unknown Superheroes Ukrainians” has been on display in the center of Hamburg. The large banners feature a photo story about a typical day of the B50 community volunteers who are responding to the consequences of the russian invasion and helping to provide children with comfortable bomb shelters, as well as excerpts from interviews with our active volunteers. The opening took place on February 23, the second anniversary of the russian invasion of Ukraine.

Photo: Mahnmal St. Nikolai
Photo: HHLA
Photo: Mahnmal St. Nikolai

Active community volunteers Svitlana Rudokvas and Yuliia Horbasenko represented B50 at the opening of the exhibition. They introduced the guests to a photo story about B50 volunteers, talked to local media and representatives of the exhibition organizers, addressed the guests with speeches about our work and their volunteering experience, and gave tours to the exhibition visitors over the next two days.

We feel very proud of our representatives and the work they did at the opening of the photo exhibition. You can also read about how they accepted such an unusual challenge and their impressions of changing the location of the volunteer trip from Moshchun to Hamburg in a small travel blog on our website.

On their last day in Hamburg, Yuliia and Svitlana presented the work of the B50 community. They told about the history of the community, the mission and development of the organization. Their stories were illustrated with photos from the B50 archive and our volunteer events. The first part of the presentation was about the community’s achievements, our projects, and a look at who the B50 volunteers are.

Then Svitlana and Yuliia showed the audience what the village of Moshchun looks like after the russian invasion, where volunteers of the Clean Up! project help every weekend, and what a typical volunteer day looks like.

I remember a story told by Oleksandr from Lisna Street in the village of Moshchun. In the first days of the invasion, he took his wife and children to a safer place, away from the explosions and gunfire, which were already very close to the village. He planned to return the next day because he had a dog in his yard, a Belgian shepherd named Max (…) However, returning to Moshchun the next day meant death (…) This story has a happy ending. We saw Max, and he is fine. (…) The garage, however, burned down. So did the house.

Yuliia Horbasenko

We found this toy in the village of Zahaltsi, where we helped in the fall of 2023. For me, this bear is a symbol of a destroyed childhood, because all Ukrainian children have now become children of war. I really hope that the child who played with this bear is alive and young enough not to understand or remember those terrible events…

Svitlana Rudokvas

Svitlana followed up her presentation with the story of a children’s toy she brought with her. It was found by volunteers at one of the locations where they were cleaning a house destroyed by russian shelling. She also shared her memories of working at the site in Makariv and the family they helped. Svitlana also showed photos of things that volunteers often find at the sites under the rubble of what used to be homes. Yuliia told the story of the evacuation and rescue from the russian army of the family of one of the owners, Oleksandr, whose house the volunteers were dismantling in Moshchun.

Part of the story included footage from the Shelters and Reconstruction projects at the children’s bomb shelter of a gymnasium in the village of Zavorychi, where volunteers help to set up a comfortable and safe shelter for students during air raids. Svitlana ended her speech by talking about the challenges Ukraine and Ukrainians are facing now and emphasized that we hope that one day our help will no longer be needed.

The full video of the presentation is available on our YouTube channel. The presentation was delivered in English, so you can add Ukrainian or English subtitles to the video.

This exhibition was made possible thanks to the collaboration with Mahnmal St. Nikolai and the logistics company Hamburg Harbor and Logistics AG. We would like to thank our partners for organizing the exhibition, helping with its adaptation, telling our story and introducing the residents and visitors of Hamburg to the resilience of Ukrainian volunteers.

We would also like to thank the Mahnmal St. Nikolai team for the hospitable reception of our representatives Yuliia and Svitlana at the opening of the exhibition. We would especially like to thank the Förderkreis Mahnmal St. Nikolai e.V. for their generous support of our goal and the donation to the organization, which will help us to implement our projects, including the repair and decoration of the next children’s bomb shelter!