About Project

Memory of Nations is one of Europe's most extensive collections of life stories. It has been publicly accessible since 2008 as a database of testimonies of witnesses of 20th century events who survived the two totalitarian regimes - nazism and communism.

However, in cooperation with dozens of partners from Europe, Asia, the USA and other countries, we have been expanding our archive to cover life stories from around the world. They speak about the hardships people face when living under current totalitarian or authocratic regimes. Our flagship project in this respect is called Memory and Conscience of Nations. These testimonies help us to better understand the nature and disastrous effects of these regimes.

Thanks to the support of private donors, the Memory of the Nation collection is managed by the non-profit organization Post Bellum (Latin for "after the war") in cooperation with Czech Radio and the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes. In documenting and archiving the testimonies, Post Bellum also cooperates with Czech Television. 

You too can become a co-creator of Memory of the Nation! You can send us a tip about an interesting witness, preferably via the form or by email to pametnici@postbellum.cz or support us by joining the Friends of the Memory of the Nation Club or otherwise by visiting support.pametnaroda.cz.

Free archive for all

The Memory of the Nation is open to all interested persons, registered and unregistered, for study purposes as an additional source of learning about the past or for learning about our history. The archive contains stories from survivors based on audio or video recordings of recollections.

Each witness is presented in the form of a short biography and a longer authored text that is accessible below the biography as a link to the full story of the witness. The memoirist's story includes selected excerpts from the recording in the form of audio or video clips, including transcripts, personal photographs and documents, other archival material, links to related resources,  clips, and photo captions.

Visitors can search for memorials using the alphabetical list or the full-text search in the search box in the right corner of each page. Individual memorials are assigned to specific eras and anniversaries or thematic categories, allowing their story to be placed in context.

E-database for registered users

Users registered to the e-Reader have access to the entire unedited recordings, logs and other archival material. To register, simply complete the online form and agree to the terms of use.

We do not have the full transcripts of recordings for the vast majority of testimonies; we honor the recording as a primary historical source for further study, and the researcher has a time line, called a log, for easy and quick reference to the recording.