Recently, Museum “Jewish Memory and Holocaust in Ukraine” has received a unique testimony of the past, donated to us by Leonid Halushko from Kropyvnytskyi. This is a picture made on the back of the Torah sheet. There is no exact information on how this sheet appeared in Mr. Leonid’s family. From family memories, it is known that in the late 1920s one of the relatives of his grandmother Lidia Kozhevnikova (1926-2010) picked up a sheet on the street with a religious text written in an incomprehensible language. It was a tragic time of the Soviet offensive on religion and believers, when churches and synagogues were closed, holy relics were destroyed. The tragic fate did not pass by the Choral Synagogue in the city of Zinovyevsk (until 1939 – Kirovo, until 2016 – Kirovohrad, now – Kropyvnytskyi), which was turned into a club of artisans. When the synagogue – the gathering place of the Jewish community – was closed, local residents began to collect things thrown into the street. Thus, the sheet from the Torah appeared in the Halushko family. Later, Lidia Illivna, who studied in an art workshop, painted a rural landscape on it.
Leonid Halushko remembered his grandmother so: “Drawing was her hobby. About this picture, which hung on the wall in our house for a long time, she told me in my childhood. The grandmother noted two points: firstly, it was a secret, and we should not talk about the sheet with strangers, because problems could arise; and secondly, she was always very self-critical about her drawings, did not consider them worthy of attention, and repeated that this picture was just a redrawn postcard, but that on the back was really important and valuable”.
During World War II, Lidia Illivna Kozhevnikova was a member of the partisan movement, a member of the underground in Kirovohrad. Afterwards, she was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War of the 2nd degree. After her death, Leonid kept the picture at home, but, visiting our Museum in 2017, he decided to donate it to us.
We sincerely thank Leonid Halushko for the gift! Soon it will take its rightful place at our exhibition.