How Ukrainian Saturday school in Hamburg resists Russian influence in Europe – NV report
The Ukrainian Saturday school in Hamburg is a volunteer project that tries to counter Russian imperial narratives in Germany and educate a new Ukrainian elite there.
Hamburg, Germany. The Ukrainian Saturday school’s hall is crowded. Everyone fills out papers and pays for the next month of education for children from three to 16 years old. The monthly fee is EUR 40 ($43) per student.
The Ukrainian Saturday school in Hamburg is now a center of cultural Ukrainianization. The students are children whose parents moved to Germany long ago, and those who left Ukraine recently. Almost half of them will never return to their homeland. The second half is either not sure about it or it’s not yet time. However, they all try to stick to Ukraine, to remain Ukrainian, to speak Ukrainian, even when surrounded by German speech. That is why Rostyslav and Olha Sukennyk founded the Ukrainische Schule Hamburg.
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The Sukennyks came up with the idea of creating a Ukrainian Saturday school a little over 20 years ago, when they and their nine-year-old daughter moved from the village of Bilshivtsi (Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast) to Hamburg.
At that time, they barely gathered 30 students. The first surge of relatively high demand for Ukrainian education took place in the winter of 2014, during Euromaidan Protests and the Revolution of Dignity in Kyiv. Rostyslav recalls that scores of Russian-speaking Ukrainians rushed to the Ukrainische Schule Hamburg at the time.
“Crimea, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, Odesa came. These were the people who lived here,” says Rostyslav.
“The awareness and identification of ‘who I am and why I need it’ must have come.”
Thus, the Ukrainische Schule Hamburg totaled about 80 students. But the real surge was in 2022. About a million Ukrainian refugees fled to Germany from the Russian invasion. At that time, 450 Ukrainian children already attended the Ukrainian Saturday school in Hamburg. As of 2023, it includes 250 such students who practice their native language, teach Ukrainian literature, history, geography, social science, and study Ukrainian traditions and customs.
The school is divided into forms, located in two separate buildings. Hamburg’s authorities provided these facilities for Ukrainians to use on Saturdays for free. According to Rostyslav’s calculations, this saves the project EUR 40,000 annually.
Currently, Rostyslav Sukennyk is the chairman of the Association of Ukrainian Organizations in Germany and the chairman of the Association of Northern Germany. It’s under the auspices of this institution that the Ukrainische Schule Hamburg operates.
Classroom work
Rostyslav and I are entering a classroom. A lesson is underway. Four-year-old Ukrainian preschoolers are at their desks. There are at least three such groups here, such as Malyatko, Kapitoshka, Doshkoliaryk. These are new little Germans trying to remain old Ukrainians. A girl is jumping up to the electronic board and is skillfully answering in Ukrainian which bird is bigger than the others. Children seem to be engaged and having fun. Teacher Olha teaches children to see the world through Ukrainian eyes and to talk about it in Ukrainian.
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Rostyslav only regrets that when the children return home, they switch to Russian with their parents.
“Why does a mother who brings her kid to a Ukrainian school ask the child: ‘How did the classes go?’ [in Russian],” Rostyslav says sadly.
“For us, this is an internal need to preserve and develop a Ukrainian cultural environment for children abroad. Together with children, adults also preserve their culture, language, traditions, and identity. We don’t want to assimilate.”
However, this Saturday school cannot replace general education, which is compulsory for everyone in Germany.
“Parents who don’t send their children to school may even be deprived of parental rights,” explains Rostyslav.
Children attaining Ukrainian education in an online school also have problems. The difference between school curriculums is very big. Therefore, some of the children, to “learn from others and not shy away from yours” [an excerpt from Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko’s poem], study according to the German school curriculum and simultaneously attend online education in Ukraine. It’s difficult. Therefore, the logical move is to continue expanding the Ukrainian Saturday School’s work.
“We’re not trying to recreate the Ukrainian curriculum, but we’re trying to preserve the Ukrainian language environment,” says Olha Sukennyk, a linguist by profession.
She and I are entering a classroom, where history teacher Halyna Droty from Mariupol is rehearsing with her students. They’re singing a Christmas carol, and this is how they’re preparing to celebrate both Christmas and St. Nicholas Day.
Droty is skillfully directing a fidgety choir of teenagers. And while the girls are diligently singing “Rejoice,” the boys really are rejoicing, competing in the funniest smiles to get into the NV camera. But, to their credit, among other things, they’re managing to pick up the girls’ choir on the words “The Son of God is born.” The atmosphere is friendly. The teacher is happy. The rehearsal continues.
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Droty from Mariupol is a history teacher by profession. Even before the full-scale invasion, she left school and founded a management company in her hometown that provided technical services for the maintenance of 150 residential buildings. Now it’s all in ashes.
“We were supposed to open a store in March 2022,” she tells a NV journalist.
“We planned to open a cleaning company. There was a great demand. We worked with large companies. I had everything. It didn’t make sense for me to go abroad.”
Now Droty’s life is connected with Germany, but without a break from Ukraine. She learned about the Ukrainian Saturday school in Hamburg from social media. She was looking for something similar for her two sons, focusing on mathematics. Unfortunately, mathematics is not taught at the Ukrainische Schule Hamburg yet.
“Then I asked about work,” the 39-year-old Ukrainian woman continues.
“I was told there was a need for teachers on Saturdays. Olha suggested that I teach history for our children.”
In total, 24 currently teachers work in the Ukrainian Saturday School. They don’t receive much money — just EUR 15 per hour — and those hours are rather few. One could say they work for their ideals.
How the most zealous of them work, the NV journalist observed before the Champions League football match, which took place on Nov. 28 in Hamburg. FC Shakhtar Donetsk “hosted” Belgian FC Antwerp. Children from the Ukrainische Schule Hamburg were invited to accompany the Ukrainian team to the field.
Two hours before the game, a crowd of children from the Ukrainian Saturday School filled the square in front of the stadium. That evening, the Ukrainian language dominated even over German.
“Don’t raise the flag as I can’t see you,” commands Natalia Khrushchakova, a refugee from Kyiv.
“Can everyone see me? Smile!” That’s it, a group photo was taken. Children are happy, as well as parents. Now everyone has gone to the stadium to change clothes and accompany Shakhtar to the field.
To be Ukrainians in Hamburg
“She is a very interesting and proactive person who works with children out of conviction, not for money,” says Sukennyk about Khrushchakova.
“In general, most of our teachers work by vocation.”
Read also: Russia halts pay to Ukrainian teachers in occupied territories, Kyiv says
However, there is a shortage of teachers at the school. In total, 5,000 Ukrainian school-age children live in Hamburg, according to Rostyslav Sukennyk. That is, the Ukrainische Schule Hamburg covers only 5% of them, at its peak over 10%.
In addition, there are children from diverse families, so to speak.
“We had a girl whose father is German, and mother is from the Netherlands,” says Rostyslav.
“They spent a long time in Lviv. The girl spoke Ukrainian. They had attended our school for six months, and then left somewhere. We also had a Syrian child.”
With the joint efforts of public organizations and diplomats, Ukrainian language has been introduced as a separate subject in some schools in Hamburg this year to reach an even greater number of young Ukrainians from diverse families.
“They can choose [an additional foreign language] from Year 7, and Ukrainian has appeared [on the curriculum],” Rostyslav continues.
“Now, if I’m not mistaken, Ukrainian is taught in 12 classes in Hamburg. Other federal states are currently blocking it.”
The lack of teachers and an adapted curriculum is one of the reasons for the “blockade.”
“If, for example, [Russian poet Alexander] Pushkin is taught in the Ukrainian literature lessons in Hamburg,” Rostyslav gives an example.
“Even if it’s in Ukrainian, it still doesn’t reflect Ukrainian culture. We’re fighting this, and we’re trying to teach Ukrainian topics.”
The German school system is different from many similar ones in Europe. Each of the 16 federal states has its education policy. Their education ministers, i.e. 16 people, are members of the Council of Ministers of Education. They discuss national issues together but prioritize their autonomous rights. Therefore, the practice of the Ukrainian Saturday School in Hamburg is to some extent a local, but influential project capable of pulling the entire industry up.
“We’re now moving to the next stage,” says Rostyslav.
“We want to introduce it into the German education system, because what we’re doing is not enough.”
As an example, he cites the history of WWII.
“In their narratives, they [the Germans] allegedly fought only against Russia,” says Rostyslav.
“And until today, the topic of responsibility in the Second World War was the fact that we (Germans) feel guilty before Russia. Therefore, when it comes to helping Ukraine with weapons today, it should be in such a way as not to affect Russia. These are all consequences of this psychological game.”
Therefore, Rostyslav and his associates are trying to introduce historical topics into German curriculums, but from a Ukrainian point of view. However, one of the problems is that there are many natives of the Soviet Union among the teachers in German schools who distort everything to the old way.
“And today we tell them: dear ones, look at your cemeteries,” Rostyslav continues.
“You have 75% of Ukrainian names in the cemetery, what does Russia have to do with it? That is, to whom should you be responsible? And today it’s such a transformation of this opinion. It’s very difficult to convince the elders. Therefore, we’re currently working on curriculums.”
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“What result do you want to achieve?” we asked him.
“Our task in this project is to create a piece of Ukraine abroad for Ukrainians. Some of them [students] will later get a higher education and promote Ukrainian interests somewhere. Those people who studied, who speak Ukrainian, go into politics here or become an active part of this politics, start businesses, etc. They will become part of the Ukrainian lobby here in 10-15 years.”
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