Our Life Behind Barbed Wire: Photography, Poetry, and Song from Ukraine’s Shadows

On Saturday, November 1, 2025, the Shevchenko Scientific Society gallery will host an evening of scholarship and performance centered on the experiences of Ukrainian forced laborers (Ostarbeiters) in Nazi Germany.

Schedule

5:00 pm Lecture by Alex Averbuch and exhibition reception

7:00 pm Musico-poetic performance by poet Alex Averbuch and composer-vocalist Olga Zaitseva-Herz (part of the Ukrainian Cultural Festival by Razom for Ukraine)

At 5:00 pm, a public lecture by Alex Averbuch will open an exhibition dedicated to the photography and correspondence of Ukrainian Ostarbeiters who were displaced to Nazi Germany during World War II. The show brings together rare images and personal letters that record daily life, coercion, and resilience. The materials trace intimate struggles, including young women’s pregnancies in captivity, secret marriages, and clandestine efforts to send forbidden news home, as well as acts of resistance and survival under totalitarian rule. Many such archives were hidden or inaccessible during the Soviet period; newly opened collections now allow these stories to be recovered and seen. The exhibition will remain on view through January 1, 2026.

Following the talk at 7:00 pm, guests are invited to view the exhibition and attend an immersive musico-poetic program by Averbuch and Zaitseva-Herz. Blending poetry, voice, and sound, it brings forward often-silenced histories, from deported Ostarbeiters and victims of the Holocaust to those suffering under Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Staged within the exhibit space itself, the performance resonates with Ukraine’s historical “shadows,” enveloping the audience in poetry, song, and storytelling that bridge past traumas with the present struggle for survival and dignity.