Franczia harcztér. Pap János I. világháborús memoárja
French Battlefield. First World War Memoir of János Pap .

Summary/Abstract: János Pap, a WW I veteran from Homoródalmás, wrote his war memoir in 1966. His writing focuses on the last day of the Great War in France where he was fighting with his battery on the western front when he heard the long awaited news of the war ending. The memoir is marked by his battalion’s traumatic experience of losing their beloved artillery sergeant on the night of the very last battle of the war. The loss overshadowed the joyous event of the end of the four year long war. The memoir then describes the stops and events on his journey back to Transylvania. Pap was a key fi gure in his community, even though his father denied him the opportunity of getting a formal education. His memoir raises several questions concerning communities’ shared cultural memories (Jan Assman), and the nature of memory itself: memories are preserved longer in a culturally homogeneous society. Communism destroyed the structure of traditional communities. So the events of the war, and the war itself, was no longer deeply rooted in communities. Aft er the decline of the period of oral tradition, the written word is the only way of preserving cultural memory.

• Details
• Contents