Memory and Tolerance Museum exposes the drama of the displaced of Ukraine


Imagine being comfortably in your room, resting, and suddenly hearing the sound of explosions that are getting closer to your home. From one moment to another, you must run for your life. What do you take with you? What do you have to leave behind?

It is with this approach that the photographic exhibition “Refugees from Ukraine. Destiny will smile on us”, by photojournalist Toya Sarno Jordan, which was inaugurated this Thursday afternoon in the hall of the Memory and Tolerance Museum with the presence of the Ukrainian ambassador to Mexico, Oksana Dramaretska; the Director of Foreign Affairs of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), Dominique Hayde; the person in charge of UNHCR in Mexico, Giovanni Lepri, and the photographer herself.

All of them were accompanied in the presentation by the ambassadors Jaroslav Blasko, from Slovakia; Wilfred Mohr, from the Netherlands; Zvi Tal, from Israel; and Jean-Pierre Asvazadourian, from France in Mexico, among other diplomats.

Images of mothers hugging small children with only a backpack in tow, bundled up in a thermal blanket, trying to lull their daughters to sleep for a few minutes, in train stations and refugee camps, amid notoriously frigid weather in the east of Europe. Home scenes of Ukrainian children housed in homes in the Polish border city of Rzeszów, living together at lunchtime, finding shelter in play and study despite the uncertainty. People resting in any possible position, with their heads resting on the suitcases or on the arms of another person. They are part of the more than 5 million displaced so far beyond the borders of their country and those moments captured are part of the 35 images captured by Toya Sarno’s lens on the Polish border and chosen for the exhibition. In all of them the look of someone who is profoundly confused or disconsolate coincides.

During the opening ceremony of the exhibition, the Ukrainian ambassador to Mexico, Oksana Dramaretska, on the verge of tears, thanked the photographer “for being the eyes behind the lens that saw the pain in the eyes of thousands of Ukrainians who were forced to flee this absurd war, leave their homes or even be left without one”.

The diplomat stated that since the beginning of this invasion, on the day of the exhibition’s opening, Russia has launched hundreds of missiles at Ukrainian cities, destroying civil infrastructure, hospitals, schools, kindergartens, historical and cultural buildings.

The sole purpose of the Russian attacks, he said, is to terrorize people so that they cannot feel safe anywhere in the country. “Hundreds of children died and many more were seriously injured (…) according to UNICEF, the war has caused the displacement of more than 4 million children, more than half of the estimated child population in the country, including 2 million children who They crossed into neighboring countries. In the occupied areas, the Russian occupiers kidnap children and force them to go to school in the villages on the front line, using them as a human shield.”

As if that were not enough, Dramaretska shared that the conflict endangers the lives of approximately 3 million people with disabilities.

For her part, the photographer Toya Sarno shared that she spent just over two weeks on the Polish-Ukrainian border. “And what impacts the most is always seeing the children. There were many young mothers with many of them. I remember talking to a mother who told me that her children did not know how to process what was happening because they do not understand it. However, in all conflicts, in war situations, there are rays of light, everyday situations, birthdays are celebrated or if there is a ball, children look for a corner to play soccer. In a war we always have a lot of statistics, a lot of data on how many people were killed, how many were displaced and how many cities have been destroyed, but I think that the idea of ​​creating a photographic archive is very important and there are many colleagues who want to create this archive for the future”.

The Ukrainian ambassador indicated that the complement to the name of the exhibition: “Fate will smile at us”, evokes a line from the Ukrainian national anthem and, with a broken voice, wanted to add a couple more lines: “We will give our soul and our body for freedom / our enemies will vanish like dew in the sun.”

Some data on the crisis of this war

Ukraine has been declared by UNHCR at emergency level 3, the highest established by the agency, given the speed with which the humanitarian crisis in the Eastern European country is evolving.

Level 3. UNHCR-wide response: “Responds to situations of exceptional severity and automatically triggers the establishment of headquarters coordination mechanisms, the deployment of staff and supplies, access to additional financial resources, reporting in real time and monitoring mechanisms”, explains the agency.

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