Viktoriia Savchuk Kennet, Digital Communication Manager at The Raphael Lemkin Society, has published a new essay examining how digital archives can preserve a city’s identity even after its physical destruction. Her piece, “Mariupol’s Digital Museum: The Preservation of Home,” looks at the Mariupol Museum’s ongoing work to safeguard the memory of a city under occupation.
In the essay, Viktoriia examines how the Mariupol Museum continues to give voice to the city through digital memory, even after the physical destruction of Mariupol and the loss of the museum’s archives. She presents the museum’s digital catalog as a museum without walls or a physical collection — a space that nonetheless preserves the history of home, city, and community.
Drawing a striking historical parallel, Viktoriia points to glass plate negatives of Lublin taken before 1939, images that later became a window into a city that existed before the Holocaust. She argues that Mariupol’s digital catalog serves a similar function today, documenting urban life, culture, and memory that Russia has sought to destroy, erase, or claim as its own.
The essay was published as part of Narysy, a monthly project of INDEX: Institute for Documentation and Exchange, a cultural and research institution based in Lviv. INDEX documents Ukrainian experiences of Russia’s war and fosters exchange among Ukrainian and international researchers and cultural practitioners.
Through Narysy, INDEX gathers monthly sketches, observations, memories, and reflections from its community, including accounts of time spent in Lviv, fieldwork across Ukraine, and everyday life under war.