When Mrs. M. mentions that she is nervous about the interview, I tell her that I share her feelings because she is the first of the respondents I am interviewing. I suggest starting with her childhood memories. It is now 10 a.m. Her father was arrested when she was four. She admits not remembering the time surrounding his arrest, only,…
Miss. S. leaves the room and comes back with her younger sister Mrs. J. The three of us chitchat for a few moments. I reassure them what matters are their individual views on the events, rather than whether their stories match. The older sister leaves the room and the younger sister and I sit at the opposite sides…
Looking for Miss S’s home with a pharmacy sign among the two storied houses painted with pastel colors makes me feel as if I am transferred to a world that I only read about in old Czech novels. I am imagining her father opening his pharmacy’s door in the mornings many years ago. Then most of the town people, that passed his house,…
The chance to meet Mrs. V. has been uncertain from the beginning. She has retuned from visiting her son and daughter in the U.S. two days ago; they emigrated after the fall of communism. Over the phone, she let me know that she could talk to me only for one hour. She had too much work after…
The collateral damage done by the terror inflicted by totalitarian governments spreads from their direct victims like ripples on the water. Whether intended on not, the secondary victims may suffer just as much as the primary focus of repressive terror. Understandably, this can have a significant, lifelong effect on secondary and tertiary victims and therefore societies…
Mrs. L. lives in a Moravian industrial city considered for decades the steel heart of the country, a dirty and inhospitable place. In the post-communist era it has 23% unemployment rate by some estimates, and a strong communist base, still an active party in the Czech Republic. During the short taxi ride from the train station to the hotel…
We Czechs like to point out that we are a cultured nation, that in times of peril we always drew strength from our past, but now it appears that we are afraid of our own history. Or is it more that we do not know how to teach history in our schools? There is a project STORIES of INJUSTICE, constructed…
