Common project of Post Bellum, Post Bellum SK, Nizio Foundation and Terra Recognita Foundation funded by International Visegrad Fund
Implementation period: 1st November 2021 – 30th April 2023
The idea is to help all 4 partners in better communicating our recent totalitarian history to the public with a special focus on young people who cannot remember that time. We shall document main actors/witnesses of the key historic moments of all our 4 nations between 1945 and 1990 (1956/1968/1980 etc.). We’ll use their testimonies for preparing our own specific outputs in each country by means of expositions and education programmes/workshops. We will share and use the testimonies so we could show differences and similarities of our totalitarian past and learn and warn young people.
Kick off meeting
5th to 6th of May 2022, Pardubice, Czech Republic
During the meeting, representatives of the various partner organisations got to know each other. In addition, they were presented with the aim and methodology of the project. During the kick off meeting, the main coordinator of the project Martin Ocknecht as a bonus informed the participants about the assistance provided to Ukraine by Czech NGO Post Bellum. A detailed discussion was led on the project implementation, rules, duties, communication, responsibilities, deadlines and mutual agreements were negotiated and signed. The participants also visited the newly opened exhibition of the interactive museum “Memory of Nations Institute”
Recording and publication of 20 witnesses’ memories
In all 4 countries, we recorded 5*4=20 life stories, which were told by the witnesses of totalitarian communist regimes in former Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary. We specifically focused on key moments in Hungary in 1956, in Czechoslovakia in 1968 and in Poland in 1980. And we also focused on later 80s, when the Iron Curtain was falling in Eastern Bloc. Each story will video recorded in 4K quality in order to be used in the following outputs.
All the videos were compiled and published on the Pamet Naroda (Memory of Nations) website.
Memory of our Nations – Never forget our totalitarian heritage | Paměť národa (pametnaroda.cz)
Creating Workshops on our countries Totalitarian Communist Past for young people
On the basis of the testimonies of witnesses and possibly in correlation with the exhibitions that each partner created in their own way (because not all of them have the necessary space), a specific educational programme/workshop was created to bring our common totalitarian history closer to the young students so that they feel as if they themselves were its witnesses. These workshops were tested so that they could be used after the project was completed
Workshops on our countries Totalitarian Communist Past for young people
The main aim was to explain and recall the past totalitarian communist regimes in the V4 countries to those young people who cannot remember them themselves. The workshops brought this period closer and showed how they were carried out through real-life examples. machinery destroyed lives and imprisoned for having a different opinion or the will to be truly free,
