Object:
A chess piece – a rook in the form of a tower
In the exposition of the Museum of Resistance, a chess figure in the form of a tower is presented. It decorated the torpedo (dashboard of the bus) during the evacuation tours.
Kherson is a fortress
This is a story about how drivers of Kherson took people out of the occupation and brought back aid.
Until February 24, 2022, Vasyl was a driver on bus routes in the region. Like all Kherson drivers, he always decorated his workplace with flags and some toys. However, all this had to be removed when Vasyl began to take people out of the occupation - to drive through Russian
checkpoints with Ukrainian flags or even symbols of Ukrainian football teams was a suicide.
The most emotional moments happened when the bus passed the last Russian checkpoint. No matter how tired people were, they were shouting "Ukraine!" and crying. It's because of these moments, Vasyl continued to take these dangerous tours.
Photo: archives of the Totem CCD
In the summer of 2022, Vasyl took out women with children, people with disabilities. Money for such tours came from NGOs and charitable organizations. Vasyl and his colleagues took money only for fuel, they worked for free. On their way back to Kherson, the drivers took boxes of medicine that people in the occupation needed. However, it was almost never possible to bring medicine to Kherson without some loss.
Vasyl says:
"They (Russian military - ed.) quickly realized that we were carrying medicine, and they rummaged through all the boxes. Firstly, they took painkillers and everything that had a psychotropic effect. I soon became a somewhat specialist on these drugs myself. The volunteers told us what was valuable, and I hid it thoroughly, at the bottom of the boxes, and put something cheap on top. Once I brought boxes with drugs from Lithuania – it was great, everything was in Lithuanian, I didn't understand anything, Russians just swore at me and let me go."
Sometimes a one-way tour lasted 4 days or even longer. Later Vasyl couldn't resist, he couldn't look at the empty panel, so he brought one figurine from home and attached it to the panel. It was a rook in a form of tower with a warrior on top, from a Harry Potter chess set. This souvenir was once given to him by a fellow driver, with whom Vasyl occasionally played chess during the breaks between tours. However, this figure now reminded that Kherson is a fortress that must hold and endure.
Vasyl laughs:
"My son has all the Harry Potter books, and he said to me “Dad, you're not a rook, you are a horse*, because I was driving people.
*a knight chess piece has the form of the horse, and is called this way in Ukrainian.
In fact, Kherson drivers took thousands of people out of the occupation, and for many of them it was a question of life and death.
