Hannover

Hannover. City (2019 pop 536,925) and capital of the state of Lower Saxony, Germany. During the Second World War many Ukrainians were conscripted to #work in factories (see Ostarbeiter) located in Hannover and its suburbs. In one such suburb, Saltzgitter, there is a monument to the memory of the many Ukrainians who died while working in the large metallurgical plant located there. In 1945–9 Hannover and its vicinity had the largest concentration of Ukrainians in northern Germany. Ukrainian displaced persons (about 5,000 in 1945 and 2,840 in 1948) were housed in the Mykola Lysenko displaced persons camp, which served as the center of Ukrainian organizations in the British occupation zone. The camp had a nursery, an elementary school, a gymnasium, and a technical school, as well as various cultural groups and civic organizations. A camp near the neighboring town of Burgdorf housed 800 Ukrainians in 1948. In the 1980s Ukrainians in Hannover numbered about 300. A single Ukrainian church, Saint Volodymyr’s, served both Ukrainian Catholic and Orthodox communities in that city.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of #Ukraine, vol. 2 (1988).]