Povestirea vieţii prin documente personale
Retelling life stories through reading personal documents

Summary/Abstract: As a scriptural form of memory storage, letters are fragments, small cutouts of the life and history of a person or a group. Letters are documentary materials that capture dialogues, experiences, and historical facts exactly how they were perceived by the author of the letters at that time. The letters represent a way in which we can study life stories. In this paper, we analyze the role of letters in anthropological research, in terms of two case studies: a family’s correspondence that constitutes a complete corpus, and the use of letters as support for the formulation of one’s own life story. Same as letters, the diary records facts as they happen. Unlike letters, the diary does not have an addressee, but follows a daily cycle. We will examine two ways in which the diary helps build one’s identity through life stories: the diary of an adult on the edge of survival and the diary of a young girl who spends her adolescence in a concentration camp.

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