Aus der Tiefe der Vergangenheit
From the Deep of the Past

Summary/Abstract: The authors describe their work on a oral history project ran at the Jewish museum Prague. They collected over 2 000 interviews of people who survived the persecution of the Nazis, either Czech Jews, or those lived in the Czech Republic after 1945. Hyndrakova and Lorencova had a specific approach, simple in technique (with an old-fashioned tape recorder), but close in human communication. Since the interviewees were not alienated by technical surroundings, the survivors were quite open and talkative. Furthermore, the authors specify their core preliminary findings about the nature of the surviving.The authors also establish a new look on the prewar Czech Jewish society, mostly as very Czech feeling and assimilated. The survivors´ stories during the persecution are hard to generalise, but the authors show some of the incredible fates of seemingly ordinary people.

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