As noted by the Czech non-profit organization Post Bellum, which is involved in documenting the historical memory of the 20th century.
Ukrainian volunteer Nadiya Kalinchenkova became a laureate of the Czech prize “Memory of the People.” She is a 73-year-old resident of Donetsk region who has been helping the Ukrainian military and internally displaced people for ten years.
The awards ceremony will take place this evening at the National Theatre in Prague with the participation of the Czech President Petr Pavel. On November 17, the Czech Republic marks the Day of Freedom and Democracy.
This year the prize was also awarded to four representatives from the Czech Republic and Slovakia who stood up to communist regimes and political repression: Milena Sedláčková and Jaroslav Vrbenkský from the Czech Republic, Fedor Gal and Emil Sedláčko from Slovakia.
“We owe these people the fact that we live in freedom” – said the director of Post Bellum and founder of the Memory of the People prize Mikuláš Kroupa.
We owe these people the fact that we live in freedom
– Mikuláš Kroupa
Post Bellum is a Czech non-profit organization that documents the historical memory of the 20th century.
Nadiya Kalinchenkova
Nadiya Kalinchenkova was born in Hlukhiv, Sumy region, from which her family moved to Donetsk. She graduated from the Kramatorsk Industrial Institute, after which she worked as an engineer. In 2014 she joined the volunteer movement “Kramatorsk Bees,” where she helps weave protective nets for the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
Volunteers, when weaving nets, never speak of death, Nadiya Kalinchenkova told the Post Bellum project, which is collecting an archive of oral histories.
Here you must stay focused only on defense, only positive, so that this positivity through our nets is transmitted to our guys. It passes through the socks we knit, through the booties we knit for the chair seats, through the blankets, through the sniper gloves we knit. We even made kikimori. So that only positivity, that is, the person wearing this kikimori, the person under this net hides. May it truly be her protection
– Nadiya Kalinchenkova
Since 2010, the Czech non-governmental organization Post Bellum has recognized more than 70 people, including several Ukrainians: in 2024 among the awardees was human rights defender Olha Heyko, a former dissident and political prisoner; in 2023 – Orthodox priest and military chaplain Vasyl Vyrozub, who spoke to Radio Free Europe about torture in captivity and about attempts to return the bodies of Ukrainians killed on Snake Island; in 2022 – philosopher, vice-rector of the Ukrainian Catholic University, former dissident and political prisoner Myroslav Marynovych; in 2020 – Leonid (Levko) Dovhovych, who at fourteen joined a resistance group against the Soviet authorities in Zakarpattia and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Later he became president of the European Congress of Ukrainians.
