The archival photographs not only show how Independence Square looked like after the World War II, but also how Kyiv residents returned to their hometown after the liberation of Kyiv from the Nazis.
The photo was published on the Facebook page Spraga: it is interesting in Kyiv.
"1943. A symbolic photo of Kyiv residents returning to their hometown," reads the caption to the photo.
The photo shows three people. One man is carrying a basin. Another is pulling a cart with bags. A woman is walking next to him with a handbag. The people are smiling despite the fact that the background shows damaged and destroyed houses - they are happy to be back home.
It is worth noting that during the World War II, Kyiv was under German occupation for more than two years, from 19 September 1941 to 6 November 1943. The city became the centre of the General District within the Reich Commissariat Ukraine. A significant number of Kyiv residents did not evacuate before the Red Army's retreat, hoping for a similar attitude of the Germans to the German occupation in 1918. At the beginning of the occupation, activists tried to restore cultural and educational institutions, but later faced severe punitive measures, starvation and humiliation from the occupiers.
Many local residents were shot dead in Babyn Yar and other places of mass repression, and many young people were taken to Germany for forced labour. Although many evacuated the city with German troops before the Red Army approached, now fearing reprisals from the Soviet state security services, some people stayed behind. They suffered from both local and Soviet bombing, as well as from Soviet saboteurs blowing up buildings.
Earlier, Apostrophe wrote about what Kyiv looked like in the 1970s.