New Collection on the Urban Media Archive

A new collection by Marianne Dekker is available for review on the website of the Urban Media Archive of the Center for Urban History.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the Dekker-Tereshchenko family regularly traveled from the Netherlands to the Soviet Union, including the Ukrainian SSR. They would make the long journey behind the Iron Curtain to visit the family of Marianne's mother, Lydia, who was born in Ukraine. As a sixteen-year-old girl during World War II, Lydia was forcibly taken to Germany for forced labor. By the end of the war, she and two other women managed to escape to Limburg in the Netherlands. There, Lydia met Marinus Dekker. They married in The Hague and had three children: Georgette, Marianne, and Yura.

After the war, Lydia did not maintain contact with her family from Ukraine. It was only in the second half of the 1950s that she received news through the Red Cross that her family was alive. In 1963, Lydia visited her family for the first time with her husband and children. Their trip began with a train from Hook van Holland to Moscow, then they had to make several more transfers to get to Chystyakovo (which was renamed Torez in 1964). Lydia's family lived there at 7 and 9 Prymorska Street.

Lydia's husband Marinus Dekker (1925-1978) was a keen photographer, so most of the trips behind the Iron Curtain were recorded on photographs, slides, and films. Unfortunately, the films have not survived.

In 2017, in memory of her father and relatives, Marianne digitized and organized part of his collection of photographs and slides. In March 2023, she transferred the digital copies to the Urban Media Archive of the Center for Urban History, and this year the collection was processed and made available online. The Center's library also offers a printed album with travel materials.

The materials were digitized as part of the project "Homing: Returns of People, Places and Archive." The project is implemented in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut in Ukraine.

Credits

Cover Image: Near an ice cream stand, Chystiakove, 1965 // Marianne Dekker collection // Urban Media Archive of the Center for Urban History