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What makes oral history different from any other history research method is the fact that a historian is actively involved in gathering information about events from the past. A category of performance borrowed from anthropology and ethnology shows that not only may a researcher influence a person narrating their story (e.g. by asking particular questions), it is also the storyteller who may influence the researcher, both in an existential as well as an epistemological dimension. The article discusses the problem of oral history research experience on the basis of an interview that the author carried out with the eighty-three-year old Kazimierz on the topic of the history of Międzyrzec Podlaski. The author presents the influence this interview had on her practicing oral history method as well as the history itself in a wider context. A reflection on the experience of oral history understood as a kind of research intuition (J. Huizinga) and a form of experiencing a research situation (F. Ankersmit), allows for a closer look at the issue of a researchers’ self-awareness and as a result on factors influencing their way of gathering information and the process of constructing history narration.
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In the following article, taking into account the difficulties in defining the concept of oral history, I would like to propose a multifaceted approach to the problem. Instead of trying to define the main issue in a traditional, explicit way, I will try to define it from different perspectives. In this way I would like to prove that oral history and its complex construction cannot be defined in a short and explicit way and the multitude of existing definitions lead to chaos and some kind of reduction. My way of defining, which focuses on highlighting significant characteristics and all the necessary elements, is supposed to overcome the previous limitations. Instead of one definition, I present several subsequent formulations, which result from the multifaceted construction of this research practice.
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Władysław Ząbek was born and raised in France, in Pas-de-Calais department, as a child of Polish emigrants who had come to France looking for work. After the Second World War he returned to Wałbrzych in Poland together with his parents, where he still lives. Władysław Ząbek describes mostly his daily life in a mining town in the north of France, dominated by Polish immigrants, he speaks about a Polish school, friendly relationships and the lifestyle of Poles in France. A significant part of the account is dedicated to the years of war and Nazi occupation of France. The next stage of Władysław Ząbek’s life was his return to Poland, to post-war Lower Silesia, which at that time was a national and religious melting-pot. The account shows the difficult beginnings of life in the unknown homeland, issues of Wałbrzych’s reconstruction after the war, the housing situation but also about the habits of re-emigrants from France, who constituted a distinct group in the post-war Wałbrzych and the region. Another important fact in Ząbek’s account is the time of studies in Donieck in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic which he started following the advice of the headmaster of his secondary school. During his studies, Władysław participated in the Fifth World Festival of Youth and Students in Warsaw (1955) as a French interpreter. It was one of many significant events connected with his contact with France and the French language after his return to Poland proving that the childhood and teenage years spent in France had an impact on his life.
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Based on biographical interviews coming from different collections of the Oral History Archives of the KARTA Center Foundation and the History Meeting House, the text highlights three main elements of biographical experience which make the narrations of Poles from Galicia different from those of their Ukrainian and Jewish neighbors. These were: the Red Army entering the Eastern Borderlands and Soviet repressions, the Polish-Ukrainian conflict, and departure from the Eastern Borderlands. For most speakers the following topics constitute the base of their identification with a national group understood as the community of remembrance. The text shows the difference between memories of people who stayed in the Ukraine after 1945 and those who left the Eastern Borderlands – “repatriates”. It also analyzes dependencies between individual and social memory and the influence of different cultures of memory on shaping biographical narration.
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In his narrative, Przemysław Lazarowicz (born 1st July 1964 in Wrocław), who as a teenager was an anticommunist oppositionist, tells us about his antigovernmental activity and his ernment under martial law in Poland. He gives a detailed account of his role in a circle of people focused around Kornel Morawiecki, about the circumstances of his internment, his stay in the Provincial Citizens’ Militia at Podwale street in Wrocław, and about being interned in an isolation centre in Grodków. He also devotes a lot of attention to the conditions in which he lived while interned, characterizes some of the internees and describes their mutual relations, as well as rules according to which the centre was run and forms of resistance. A separate part of the narrative describes how Lazarowicz’s XIV LO (secondary school) friends and teachers reacted to the fact that he had been interned.
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A journalist interview is a well established and described genre. In many journalism textbooks it is recognized as highly important, as interview technique is both the key to acquiring information by a journalist (from people), and a way of conducting and analysing a longer literary text in a form of a dialogue between a journalist and interviewed person. The presented text discusses interview techniques, leading to creating an extensive text that would cover many topics. Such an interview, intended for publication, takes a shape of a live question-answer conversation between a journalist and his or her interlocutor. Attention is drawn to the most important steps of interview preparation: choosing the subject and the interlocutor, arranging scenery of the meeting, conducting and recording the interview, editing and preparing the text for publishing (in the light of Polish law all this has to additionally be hedged around with the right of the interviewed person to authorise the interview). The article presents the most basic typology of interviews: for a person (when the conversation focuses on the speaking person) and for a cause (when the subject matter of the talk is a field in which the interviewed person is a specialist). The author underlines an effort that has to be made by the journalist in order to prepare for an interview – there is the necessity for detailed research, acquainting oneself with the topic to be discussed, very good knowledge of the subject close to the interviewed person’s heart. He emphasizes also an important and widely discussed issue of the journalist’s responsibility for the person with whom he or she talks, as well as requirements regarding a successful interview: respect, interest taken in the interlocutor, keeping certain distance and also – fundamental for this profession – the problem of working under pressure of time and some brevity and the need to apply schematic attitude and simplify the journalistic narrative. The whole text is illustrated with numerous quotations taken from professional press and workshop materials in which famous and renowned masters of the press interview talk about their professional experience. In this text there are also remarks on the way a journalist works on the material he or she has collected and acceptable interferences in somebody’s statement. Also, the author mentions the issue of authorisation, which is an infamous remnant of the censorship which constituted a part of press law made in 1984 and – in its principles – valid till this day.
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This text shows changes in the way oral history has been perceived in the last 10 years in Poland, what projects are being conducted at the moment and where research on this subject is going. Contemporary research in oral history has taken a few directions. First, this method is treated as a source prompted by historians and used in by them in research activity. Second, an interest taken in this method is manifested in methodological and historiographic reflection. The third group is research on archiving audio-visual documents. Another area of interest for oral history is widely understood education and popularization of this method. In Poland there are a few serious institutions/centrers that focus their research and work methods on oral form of information. On the scale of the whole country we have Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe (National Digital Archive) and Centrum Edukacji Obywatelskiej (Center for Civic Education). Widely available are internet sources such as „Uczyć się z historii” (“To Learn from History”) and „Świadkowie Historii” (“Witnesses to History”), which gather oral evidence from people all over Poland. The article discusses also activities of the KARTA Center from Wrocław, “Brama Grodzka – Teatr NN” (Grodzka Gate – NN Theatre) Center and Studio Historii Mówionej (Oral History Center) from Lublin. The Memory and Future Institute from Wrocław is a thriving institution as well. An analysis has also been made of initiatives taken by circles in Olsztyn, Łódź, and at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum.In 2009 the first in Poland Oral History Society was founded (Towarzystwo Historii Mówionej). This was possible thanks to institutions that are developing and are more and more active, and also thanks to academics who take interest in this kind of research. Every year the Society organizes nationwide conferences. Also other academic centers and societies organize conferences and meetings devoted to the culture of memory and oral history.
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An account given by Rev. Andrzej Dziełak is one of over a dozen such narratives written down for a scientific conference “Cardinal Kominek – a forerunner of the Polish-German reconciliation” which was organized by The Memory and Future Institute (Wrocław, 4th December 2008). These conference documents give us insight into circumstances and consequences of the Polish bishops addressing the German bishops. In some parts, these documents are focused in the narrative of Rev. Andrzej Dziełak, who in 1965 was a clerical student in the Higher Seminary in Wrocław. For contemporary clerics Cardinal Kominek was an indisputable authority, both moral and intellectual. Every Saturday during a seminary meeting he would share with them his observations on the situation of the Catholic Church in those days in Poland and abroad, and on complex relations with the communist state. Still, the Pastoral Letter of the Polish bishops to the German bishops turned out to be a huge surprise to the Catholic clergy of Wrocław, especially since at the beginning they did not have the text of the document at their disposal. Rev. Dziełak admits that at the beginning the message conveyed in the Letter was received with reluctance by a great part of the congregation. This was due to the recent war and a successful propaganda of the communist government.However, right from the beginning, clerics had no doubts as to the identity of the author of the groundbreaking document – they knew that it was prepared by a bishop of Wrocław who was the most knowledgeable person in the Episcopate regarding German issues.
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The article is divided into three parts. The first one (“The past is a foreign country [L.P. Hartley] History and Anthropology. Meeting points) is devoted to bringing history and anthropology of culture closer together, since in both of them a great deal of attention is paid to the issue of remembrance. In the second part (Problems with relations), by means of examples from ethnographical studies, we are presented with some of the difficulties that remembrance researchers can encounter when doing fieldwork. The last part of the text contains theoretical ponderings on the matter of remembrance as presented from the perspective of anthropology of culture. The problem of memory is discussed: the way it is understood by today’s anthropologists and what role it plays in the cognitive processes (memory as a source of anthropological knowledge, memory as a subject of knowledge, memory as a cognitive tool).
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Feliks Badowski (born on 17th May 1923 in Warsaw) was a soldier who fought in ZWZ-AK (Union of Armed Struggle-Home Army). His account concerns his education and work, war experiences and life after the war. This witness describes in great detail his work in industry in occupied Warsaw and his struggle for independence in the frames of ZWZ-AK. He also mentions his studies within Towarzystwo Kursów Technicznych (Technical Courses Association). A vast part of the narrative is devoted to Feliks Badowski’s participation in the Warsaw Uprising – he tells us, amongst others, about preparations for armed resistance against the occupier, how the army units were organized in the first days of fighting, and about the attack on the citadel. A lot of focus is given to partisan activity in Kampinos Forest – the witness explains, for example, the structure of partisan forces, their help for the fighting Warsaw, sabotage actions and how they received deliveries by airdrops. This account gives us also some insight into the way the inhabitants of villages and towns near Warsaw perceived the Warsaw Uprising. Also, it relates the marching-out of partisan units and their way towards the Świętokrzyskie mountains, during which – near Żyrardów – they were defeated by Germans. A separate part of the narrative is devoted to reminiscences from post-war Wrocław – Feliks Badowski explains why he came to the Lower Silesia and pictures relations in his new place of work – Pafawag (Państwowa Fabryka Wagonów – National Rail Carriage Factory).
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The article presents main trends that have been present in oral history of Anglo-Saxon, German and Polish cultures since the 1960s till today. The thesis of the article is comprised in the text’s structure: an account of the history and methodological variety of oral history in terms of definitions given – now or in the past – to a person being interviewed. According to the author, these definitions reflect epistemological horizons of researchers’ expectations, the ethical aspects of their research subject choices and ethical status of oral history in contemporary culture. “Informer” is a term taken form sociology. It is typical for the days when oral history tried to become part of the modernist paradigm dominant in the 1960s and 70s.A crisis in epistemology in 1980s shifted the scientific interest to linguistic aspect of cognition, introducing the term “narrator” to oral history. The author discusses two trends in which this word appears along with a category of “experience”: a German biographical method which was popular also in Poland, and a method of research formulated under the influence of Alessandro Portelli, in which the main role is played by relations between a narrator/speaker and a historian. On the other hand, the concept of “a witness to history”, predominant in Polish oral history, represents specific epistemological and ethical paradoxes which have their origins in circumstances, in which this domain of “civic historiography” was born. Finally, the author focuses on ethical issues of conducting an interview, and a problem of transcribing and editing an oral narrative.
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Władysław Zaremba was one of the leaders of the Polish Peasants’ Party in country and abroad, a member of the Polish government-in-exile during WW2, and a deputy to State National Council. However, he is almost completely forgotten nowadays. Historians were not aware of the fact that, while he was an expatriate in USA in 1965-1966, Władysław Zaremba wrote down his memoirs. The typescript was commandeered from Zaremba by the SB (the secret police) when he came back to the country in 1967 and was never returned to him. Establishing the Institute of National Remembrance (Instytut Pamięci Narodowej) gave many researchers an access to the former SB files, among which were Władysław Zaremba’s accounts. The aim of the author of the article is to introduce the reader to information regarding Zaremba’s political and social activity. The article’s author also gives a brief characteristics of the memoirs, by specifying when and how they came into being, and discusses their content through the style of the testimony. An analysis of the typescript brings a conclusion, that it is the key to the history of the Galician countryside, peasants’ movement and Poland’s political history, but even more so – to understanding Władysław Zaremba – a peasant, social activist and politician – himself.
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