THE WAR FROM THEIR MEMORY
THE WAR FROM THEIR MEMORY

Summary/Abstract: Recalling means a survival lesson, the expression of a higher level of existence, accepting the past, even a painful one. The moment we decide to live beyond the limitations of the present time we turn to a memory which we (de)construct and by which we let ourselves (de)constructed. We retrieve thus history, we re-write it, a narrative which was once an event: now it is nothing but a story, the presence of an absence. This article aims to illustrate war stories, concerning Second World War, in a small community of Czechs from Bohemia, who were colonized by Habsburgs in South of Banat, in the first decades of the XIX century. It is the proof that we cannot separate local or regional history of world history. The Czech community was implicated in the conflict, by sending into the battle field close to 200 soldiers (who fought in the German troops but also alongside the Red Army). We recorded some of their stories, told by survivors and by relatives, overwhelming emotional narratives that give another dimension to the vision we have today about war. In our research, a special place was assigned to the oral history document: this type of history leads to the sharing of a memory that becomes a common good and made possible the recovery of a quasi-unknown life universe, which gained consistency by the stories obtained via the interview technique. Our interlocutors remembered the fear, the fighting, the hunger, the cold, the enemies, the camps, experiences that should not be repeated; however, current generations must know what happened, to draw some lessons for preventing the outbreak of new conflicts.

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