13 October 2021
The presentation of the documentary film “Chosen from a Thousand. Yosyp Patsul.” As the film's director, Andrii Smus, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Journalism of the Academician Stepan Demianchuk IUEH, said, “This is not just a film, it is an autobiographical historical investigation of our compatriot. And after the broadcast of this work on TV channels, this work should be of interest to history teachers, future candidates for dissertations, deans of historical faculties. Constantly, when our Motherland was going through difficult times, those were born who not only uttered patriotic slogans from high tribunes, but also every day, with their hard work brought closer a better future for their land. Yosyp Patsul is truly one of the thousands who have chosen this thorny path. In the early 1990s, he clearly outlined those secret springs that could simply shoot and blow up the foundations of a young independent state at any moment. All his life he actively conveyed the historical truth to our compatriots. The film consists of two parts. In the first we studied the pedigree of Patsul.
To do this, our film crew worked in Poland in the city of Przemyśl and its environs. It is from there that this glorious genus originates. We visited the native village of Patsul Lypa, from which they were evicted in 47. In the second part, we tried to convey to the audience the main historical investigations, which, thanks to Patsul, opened our eyes to the real horrors of war and the crimes of totalitarian regimes. The figure of Yosyp Patsul, in my deep conviction, is not respected enough in our city and we began to forget about this man. And in vain, because history, as you know, moves in a spiral… By the way, this is not the first film of our lecturer on the history of Volyn. The previous work on the Volyn massacre in 1943 in the Rivne region was widely presented to the public at the national level.
Reference: Yosyp Patsul - pedagogue, scientist, historian, public figure. PhD, Professor. He was a member of the board of the regional association Taras Shevchenko VUT "Prosvita", the first chairman of the Congress of Ukrainian intellectuals of Rivne region. He researched and searched for the history of repressed and shot Rivne residents.