Berlin honors the heroes of the “iron army” of Ukraine – DW – 29.08.2023

2023-08-29 06:47:00

On August 28, at the Main Station in Berlin, a photo exhibition “Railway of life – Ukrainian railway workers at war” (“Lebensader Bahn – Ukrainische Eisenbahner: innen und Eisenbahner im Krieg”). It is dedicated to ordinary workers of the Ukrainian railways: machinists, loaders, railroad workers, builders, conductors.

Who are they – the heroes of the Berlin exhibition?

In the center of the zero floor of the huge station building, large stands are displayed with the letter “P”, on them – photographs and captions to them. The exposition contrasts sharply with the seething human flow, covered by the bustle of the station. Men and women in railway uniforms calmly look at those running to their trains, meeting and seeing off from the photographs.

In one photo – three serious young men in orange vests at the branded blue carriage. This is a construction team from Slavyansk. One of them, in a knitted hat, is Viktor Kotvitsky, a hereditary railroad worker. “If there is anything good about war, it is that it makes us more human,” his quote is written on the stand in two languages: Ukrainian and German. Vadim Goncharov, a traveler from Kramatorsk, who also inherited the profession from his grandparents, is the subject of another photograph. Even through the image, you can see how this simple worker is embarrassed to be the focus of a foreign photographer.

Nearby is a portrait of a calm and imperious-looking woman. This is Lyubov Patsyura, head of the Kramatorsk railway station. She considers April 8, 2022 the worst day of her life. Then Russian missiles hit the station building. 57 people died, mostly refugees: civilians fleeing the war.

19 portrait photographs show the everyday life of railway workers during the war. The organizers of the exhibition call it “a living diary of wartime everyday life.” The focus of the exposition is “Ukrzaliznytsya”, the Ukrainian railway, a symbol of the country’s resilience and spirit.

Ukrzaliznytsia: one road, millions of fates

Oleksiy Makeev, Ambassador of Ukraine to the Federal Republic of Germany, spoke at the opening of the exhibition. He named dry figures, behind which are millions of human destinies: Ukrzaliznytsia evacuated 3.8 million people, including children, 100 thousand animals, transported more than 200 thousand tons of humanitarian aid throughout the country.

You can view the photo exhibition in Berlin until September 10, 2023Photo: Marina Konstantinova/DW

The photos were taken by Berlin-based photographer Reto Klar. Since February 2022, he regularly travels to war-torn Ukraine and makes photo reports in different regions of the country. The texts for the images were written by Jan Jessen, a reporter who has already visited many hot spots: Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria. After joint trips to Ukraine, the tandem of a journalist and a photographer prepared a book of reports about military everyday life – “Living in a Nightmare” (“Life in a nightmare”). It was published on August 28 by the German publishing house Klartext.

There is no pathos and despair in the deliberately dry text with which the photographs are signed. “We are not afraid. We are ready to work,” says Sergey Telpuk, a team leader from Kramatorsk. “We’ve cleaned everything. Now it’s beautiful again at the station,” says Galina Kolesnikova from the information desk of the Kherson railway station. “When I come home in the evening and know that I have done everything for the passengers, then I am satisfied,” says the head of the station in Kramatorsk. “I’m doing this voluntarily because I want to help my people,” explains Albina Zharkova, a doctor from Lvov who works on trains with the wounded.

Oleksandr Kamyshin, the former head of JSC Ukrzaliznytsia, whose portrait against the backdrop of the word “Peremoga” is also on display, calls his 230,000 colleagues an “iron army”. More than 700 of them have already died in the war.

The photo exhibition will be in Berlin until September 10, 2023. Then she will go to other cities in Germany: she will be shown in Essen, Hamburg, Leipzig, Braunschweig and Nuremberg.