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A project by 
The suitcases of Abandonment (Bagajele Abandonului) is a communication and emotional mediation project that delves into life’s most dramatic moments, those where external and uncontrollable forces lead you to abandon everything: friends, home, the place where you live or work, the community, the small habits, existence as you know it… and hastily pack in a suitcase what seems salvageable.
We invited both Ukrainians and Romanians to open the drawers of their family histories. In the shadow of the great histories always lie our little histories, carefully preserved in emotionally fragile packaging and passed on from generation to generation. Now, when so much suitcases of abandonment have passed over the border of Romania, as a sign of solidarity and empathy, we are building a new floor of the Museum of Abandonment with suitcases full of stories of resilience from our own history.
The suitcases of Abandonment, a project financed by CARE through the SERA Romania Foundation, Care France, and FONPC, is an initiative launched by the Museum of Abandonment shortly after the outbreak of the war. The project aimed to archive the stories and emotions of one of the most dramatic events in recent European history – the conflict in Ukraine. We gathered and archived dozens of stories from refugees, mapping emotionally their journey since the beginning of the war.
Olyna came to Romania in March with her seven-year-old son, her two-year-old daughter, her mother and her father. It mattered significantly that she had her parents by her side. She...
24th of February 2022 – the day that change the lives of everyone in Ukraine. Our family dreamed of future plans, but the war operated its own adjustments to the...
Over the last few months, we kept seeing pictures of baby trolleys left by Polish women on railway station platforms to be picked up by mothers arriving from Ukraine. Those...
Those who have been lucky enough to have a teacher who inspired by his/her nature and by the way he/she related to the people around us, know that the way...
When I was packing I told him to grab a book. I needed some time to hide a knife in my luggage; I never used it; I threw it away...
Before the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, I toured a few villages in Northern Romania, placed a few steps from the border. I wanted to take the pulse and see...
I left Odessa for my little boy, and it was the hardest decision I have ever made. I never imagined I’d have to leave the home I worked so much...
I`ve spent the last five years in Ukraine, and I`ve always been impressed by the atmosphere around the holidays, with the streets lit up and everyone getting ready for Christmas....
The start of the war found Mariia in Bucharest, at a figure skating competition in which her two older daughters were participating. She and her husband decided to go back...
In a previous post I described my trip through villages by Romania’s northern border, where I spoke with a few Hutsuls – Ukrainian ethnics. That happened a few days before...
Just a few days before the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, I travelled to the northern border of Romania to talk to a few Hutsuls, Ukrainian ethnics in Romania. The...
PART I“I was held captive by Russian soldiers for five days in a school building in a neighbouring village. There were five of us prisoners, one of the others was...
The day the Russian invasion in Ukraine began, Zarin (23) left Odessa, heading for the Romanian border. He was one of the thousands of Indian students fleeing the war. I...
I am from Azerbaidjan and have lived in Ukraine for over 10 years. It was my home, my family’s home. I have a wife and a four-year-old child. The war...
I don’t know how many people realise how hard it is for your own child to see you looking helpless. Maybe you’ve had to move house at some point. Maybe...
‘We have to celebrate, no matter how long the war is going to continue,’ said Tanya, a mother from Ukraine, when she told me about what she had packed at...
Those who have been lucky enough to have a teacher who inspired by his/her nature and by the way he/she related to the people around us, know that the way...
One Saturday, after spending a week with her eyes glued to the news about the war, Adriana Șerban told her husband it was time for her to go to the...
During the time I spent as a reporter at the Siret customs point and, later, in Poland, along the Ukrainian border, I have met people of all ages, Ukrainian, but...
My name is Irina, I am 29, I am from Odessa, and when the war reached our doorstep I was a perfectly happy person, because my most cherished dream had...
Anastasiia Konovalova, the teacher who founded a Ukrainian school in Bucharest, will never forget the navy-blue sweater she packed in her luggage at the end of February. She packed in...
I met Veronika on World Refugee Day – a rather sophisticated name for a day no one ever wants to celebrate. We had come together to find small reasons for...
Until February 24, I was a happy Ukrainian, living in my beloved hometown where I worked, loved, and made plans for the future. We went to the gym, took drawing...
Initially, I had no intentions of leaving Kherson, I thought I could survive with my son somehow in our apartment or maybe in the basement of another house. My husband...
Egor (“Ye-GOR”) is a “simple case”. He just needs a place to stay overnight in Bucharest on his way to his sister’s who lives in Sweden. A coach bus brings...
I met the Ukrainians Victoria and Sergei at Siret border crossing point shortly after the war had begun in Ukraine. We didn’t get to talk much then, but I visited...
I met spouses Nadia and Michal in Rabka, a Polish village in a mountain area, where over 2,000 refugees have settled after the war in Ukraine. In 2015, the two...
Over the last few months, we kept seeing pictures of baby trolleys left by Polish women on railway station platforms to be picked up by mothers arriving from Ukraine. Those...
February 24 divided our lives into before and after. Forever. I’ll never forget that morning. I woke up at 5:00 a.m. to the sound of airplanes. I went out on...
When World War II had started, I was 6 years old. My father joined the fighting in the early first days of the war. We were living in Kozatskoye, Kherson...
I had an ordinary life in Odesa. I love my old neighborhood, close to the city center, shaded by an alley of giant chestnut trees. Every time I was having...
Taisia never thought a day would come when she would need Russian so badly. It was an intimate language she spoke only at home. She was born in Bucharest, but...
The little girl in the first photo is Raveika. Her year of birth, 1896, is noted with some approximation in the history of her family, which fled from two different...
What happens when the front line cuts through your village? This is the story Grandmother Ioana, born in 1911 in Hângulești village, often told to the grandchildren who filled her...
I have my great-grandmother Maria’s eyes. Neither my parents, my grandparents, nor any of her other grandchildren or great-grandchildren had this shade of green. I never met her – she...
This is the story of a little girl who stayed with us in the 1990s, before she was supposed to leave for the US. Her adoption never happened, but we...
Sometimes the reason you have to pack your bags is that you are fighting an inner war you don’t want to lose, because that would mean giving up who you...
“Every family has a story about baggage packed hurriedly, in a few hours, with impossible choices.” That is the only part Ileana really listened to out of the story I...
Project financed by CARE, coordinated and implemented nationally by the SERA Romania Foundation with the support of CARE France and FONPC.
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