What is Memory of Nation
This is an extensive collection of witnesses' memories gathered by individuals, non-profit organizations, educational institutions, governmental and semi-governmental agencies in Europe, which intend to share, compare, evaluate, (забрати кому) and discuss their recordings, texts, photographs, (забрати кому) and archival documents. We are enabling access to the memories of witnesses who gave their approval to use their memories for examining modern history and to make them publicly accessible.
All those who joined the effort with their collections became the members of the COMMUNITY OF EUROPEAN MEMORY. Project coordinators are invited to join the Memory of Nations database. If you want to contribute to the collection your own witness, collection, or funds, please click here.
Building up the database
This portal - the Memory of Nation digitised archive of witnesses - was created in 2008 by three Czech institutions: the Post Bellum association, Czech Radio, and the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes. The aim of the project is to link and interconnect oral history projects that are focused on similar topics from all over the world. We are ready to cooperate with other institutions and build with them this unique collection of memories. The more collections, portrayals and witnesses are saved, the more colourful and comprehensible the mosaic of the previous century will be.
The researchers
We distinguish between common users and researchers. Anyone who completes the registration form and receives a certificate from the portal administrators may become a researcher. Every researcher granted access to all collections must observe the rules and copyright and respect the witnesses' dignity.
What we want
We want to study the substance of the totalitarianism regimes of the 20th century, Nazi and Communist, through the memories of witnesses and with the help of all historical resources. We examine the phenomena that accompanied last century's totalitarian regimes. We are putting together a mosaic from the memories of thousands of individuals who found themselves in an extreme situation and can and want to share their witness. We are interested in the reasons why people behaved in certain ways, how their opinions and positions developed, and how their characters changed based on experience in life. We want to compare these memories and arrange them by historical epochs, anniversaries, years, and events to enable people to navigate them easily and understand them as much as possible.
