“Holy Mary rescue us in captivity…”

Shortly before Orthodox Christmas the National Memorial Museum of Victims of the Occupation Regimes “Lontsky Street Prison” as a part of the “Closer Look at Memorial Museum Exhibit” campaign added several stock artifacts – embroideries made by convicted women, to its exhibition. Museum workers are convinced that touching Christmas scenes with Virgin Mary and baby Jesus would soften a heart of any visitor. Stitch embroidered prayers were made by prisoners on pieces of fabric hidden during numerous prison searches. Ukrainian women, who were under investigation of Soviet punitive organs at the Lontsky Street Prison, embroidered such icons despite the ban of the prison regime with needles made out of fish bones and “mouline” thread drawn from their clothes. “One of the embroideries contains the words: ‘Holy Mary rescue us in captivity…’ Keepsake made at Lontsky Street Prison. MKM,” told Iryna YEZERSKA, museum worker. “MKM are the initials of Kateryna Melnytska from Sokal region. She was arrested on September 30, 1948 and was sentenced to five years of labor camps. She was later sentenced to 13 more years in Kengir camps, near Karaganda for assisting rebels.” The embroidery made by Melnytska was given to the museum by her son Petro. According to him, his mother even after many years that passed since that time did not want to talk about her imprisonment because she did not want to think back again about the tortures she went through. “This priceless exhibit shows what gave Ukrainian women strength to endure suffering in NKVD prisons. Now the spark of divine faith that helped them survive comes through the darkness of decades as a message of freedom for Ukraine,” says Yezerska.

Prisoners’ embroideries are presented in the exhibition along with Christmas and New Year’s postcards published in Ukrainian printing houses in Western Europe in the early 1950s. Reprinted edition for New Year’s event “Saint Nicholas greeting UPA veterans” was done by the partner of the “Lontsky Street Prison” – Lviv Youth NGO “Borets.” Training of this NGO’s volunteers took place at the Memorial Museum. The exhibition is open daily from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. You can come to the National Memorial Museum of Victims of Occupation Regimes “Lontsky Street Prison” from Briullova Street. Entrance and tour are traditionally free.