www.pametnaroda.cz
Memory of Nations is an extensive collection of witnesses’ memories, gathered by individuals, non-profit organizations, academic and educational institutions, governmental and contributory organizations all over Europe, which all aim to share, compare, evaluate and discuss their recordings, texts, photographs, and archival documents. We store and provide access to the collections of memories of those witnesses, who have given their consent for their testimonies to be used in the research of modern history, and to be made publicly accessible. All who have contributed with their collections thus become part of the COMMUNITY OF EUROPEAN MEMORY.
If you would like to support the work of this portal and the recording of the witnesses’ memories, whether by means of financial contributions, or in any other way, please contact the project’s head coordinator Mikuláš Kroupa (tel.: +420 604 63 67 68). Bank account number of the association Post Bellum: 51-1707230277/0100.
Please accept our sincere thanks for your support!
What is our aim
Memory of Nation strives to make the individual testimonies of witnesses of significant historical events of the 20th century accessible to researchers as well as to general public, and to do so in a form which is easy to use and understand. In our database we store full-length recordings, excerpts from recordings, photographs, diaries, archival documents and much more. The more collections, portraits and testimonies we manage to gather, the more diverse and comprehensible mosaic of the past century will be created. Through the testimonies of witnesses and by means of other historical sources we want to learn about the nature of non-democratic regimes of the 20th century, of Nazism and communism, and to research the phenomena which accompanied them. We are assembling a mosaic made of thousands of memories of individuals, who have gone through extreme situations and who are willing to share their testimonies with others. We are interested in reasons why people behaved in this way or other, in what formed their opinions and attitudes. We want to compare the individual memories of witnesses and classify them for the purpose of research according to historic eras, anniversaries, events and witnesses’ categories.
How the idea for Memory of Nation originated
The idea to create a digital archive was born in 2006-2007 during discussions between Czech institutions which are archiving memories of witnesses (association Post Bellum, Czech Radio, The Institute of Contemporary History of the Academy of Sciences, The Military History Institute, Jewish Museum in Prague, Živá paměť o.p.s., Museum Ústí nad Labem). The creation of Memory of Nation was motivated by the need for finding a common platform, which would enable these institutions to digitally archive, store, share and compare the individual research outputs.
Who is in charge of the project
The digital archive of witnesses Memory of Nation was created in 2008 by three Czech institutions: association Post Bellum, Czech Radio and The Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes. Post Bellum is an association of journalists and historians assembling a collection of witnesses’ memories since 2001; Czech Radio is a leading public media institution with extensive sound archives and technical equipment at its disposal, and the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes is an institution focusing on research, analysis and documentation of totalitarian regimes of the 20th century. Bound by a common agreement, these three institutions have put together a team of specialists, who prepared and opened a unique application, which was officially launched on 28th October 2008. The www.pametnaroda.cz domain was provided to the portal’s authors free of charge by the Society for Moral and Legal Recognition of the 3rd Resistance, which was founded in the late 1990s by students David Prokop, Pavel Bezděk and Michal Kuchta. We would hereby like to thank them for their kindness.
Community of European Memory
The Community of European Memory is a declaratory association of individuals and institutions which have decided to store the outputs of their research in the digital archive Memory of Nation and to make them accessible through this portal. The Community is open to all historians, journalists, students and other researchers. The creators of the electronic study-room provide the users with training in the editing system, technical support, and possibly also with assistance with text-editing and translations to English. Each of the projects involved is represented by its coordinator, who is responsible for the final form of the stored materials. The members of the Community of European Memory are also invited to international research symposia.