How the Exhibition “CHILDREN” Was Created

In the spring of 2022, when child casualties were recorded in Kyiv, the team at the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War aimed to create a project that would become a symbolic and recognizable place of remembrance for the children who died.
The museum team chose a format that combined several core aspects: authenticity, emotional impact, commemoration (a memorial and place of remembrance for war victims), and immersion (the sense of being transported into the atmosphere of the event). A co-author of the exhibition-martyrology — the multimedia project “Children...” — was the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine, specifically the Department for the Protection of Children’s Rights and Combating Domestic Violence, whose specialists record the deaths of young citizens in Ukraine.
The public presentation of the multimedia project took place on June 4, 2022. Its exhibition venue was a symbolic location on the territory of the Memorial Complex – the Upper Gate of the Pechersk Fortress, an 18th-century architectural monument.
Before entering the gate, the word “CHILDREN” is written in white letters — just like in March 2022 in front of the Mariupol Drama Theater, which was destroyed by a Russian airstrike. Crossing the threshold of the gate, visitors enter a space where projections on the old stone walls and cobblestones bring to life a turbulent river whirlpool and the flicker of candles. Their flame symbolizes divine light, truth, and righteousness prevailing over the darkness of sin. From behind sturdy wrought-iron gates — like from a symbolic altar — portrait photographs of the newest little angels look out at the visitors in turns.
Nearby is a brief annotation: the child's first and last name, age, and place of death. This is our sorrowful martyrology of losses. In contemporary usage, the word "martyrology" refers to a list of individuals who have been persecuted or suffered, or who are victims of armed conflicts.
An essential emotional component of the multimedia project is the deeply moving musical composition “Sleep, My Child” (Ruslan Horovyi, Serhiy Zhadan and Viktor Verba). It is dedicated to 15-year-old civic activist Dani Didyk, who became a victim of a terrorist attack in Kharkiv in 2015.
The exhibition was created and continues to operate during the active phase of large-scale hostilities, making it impossible to determine the actual number of casualties. The list of victims is continuously updated with new names. As of March 29, 2025, the confirmed number of children killed since the beginning of the full-scale invasion stands at 606. The lives of children taken or crippled — these are endless, unhealed wounds. The multimedia martyrology “Children...” reminds the world of the terrible price Ukraine pays in this war.

Text by Iryna Kotsabiuk, National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War (Ukraine)