Preliminary Programme

The multi- and interdisciplinary research characterise the oral history and life story research today. Such an intertwined research raises the question how the various approach and disciplines impact each other. Moreover the historical roots of the local academic traditions gives its colouring to the contemporary life and oral history research. The source materials (the life stories and oral history archives) exist in the written form mostly and this fact is essential in the Estonian context. From that reason, for instance, the term ‘oral history’ is not very common in the Estonian language. The analogous source material is called in Estonian language ‘ajalooline traditsioon’ (historical tradition).
The focus of this presentation lies on the concept of ‘trauma’ and its possibilities to study the difficult memories, linked to the historical events and expressed in the life stories. On the one hand the folkloristic storytelling research and the literary studies on the other are used by analyse of the Estonian life stories.
The stories observed here reflect the difficulties of life resulting from war, changes of political power, and political repressions. At the same time these stories are told by the narrators after that time which caused these difficulties. Also the literary researchers have noted that these Estonian life stories actually don’t involve the trauma language which is known in the trauma theory from the 2000s (for instance silence, being a victim, forgiving). I would like to identify (proceeding from the same life stories as a source material), is it possible to interpret the descriptions of difficulties in the life stories using the trauma concept. My hypothesis is that it allows me see the new forms of expression of the trauma. First of all, those that relates to this particular genre and cultural norms of storytelling. Secondly, those that we can observe as a trauma process: how the traumatic experience develops, takes new shapes and is constantly finding a new place in the context of the biography of the narrator.
Although the focus of the analysis is trauma expressions the frame of it involves both the narrative tradition (how people speak about their own history) and multidisciplinary approach to this issue. (Show less)

This presentation wants to discuss the various initiatives in Germany of working with the Oral Histories of Holocaust survivors in the field of civic/political education after the last witnesses have died.
Since the 1980s, eye-witness reports by ordinary people speaking of personal experiences in the Nazi period (resistance fighters, racially persecuted …) have become increasingly important, both within academia as well as in education. As “history from below” their stories appeared to perfectly illustrate the social history of NS-dictatorship, even if the majority of those collections depict experiences of persecution, discrimination, imprisonment, expulsion, and last not least of resistance and survival. The high number of Oral History projects trying to collect as many interviews and life stories of Holocaust survivors as possible, draws attention to the importance of personal histories in the process of cultural and political self-reassurance in various societies; a development which is also visible in the Museums, exhibitions and school classes working with oral testimonies – including Germany.
Since 2000, when more and more schools began to invite “contemporary witnesses”/survivors (Zeitzeugen) to meet and speak in their classes – adding the moral subtitle that they were the “last ones” who could tell us –, the relevance of Oral History and the narrations of personal experiences from the Nazi-past rose and at the same time became blurred. In the course of the years, Survivors stories had gotten detached from concrete historical events and experiences, the narrators had also changed into becoming moral instances, who warned against anti-Semitism and promoted democracy. The actual roles of survivors/narrators transformed from being a “witness to the past” into being a “witness to history” as Steffi de Jong described it.
So, what to do, when the last Survivor has died – is there a way towards “memories without eye witnesses” – who will remember? This paper elaborates on a variety of initiatives which conceptualize their work with Oral History-interviews and Life Stories of Holocaust survivors as part of civic education in the “Post-contemporary witness era”, creating new terminologies and new/modified encounters with Survivors for the younger generation. Which images do those projects imitate or create, how do they include aspects of empathy and moral politics? The presentation will discuss current examples of working with Oral History in Holocaust educational work, it will also evaluate the results of one Oral History project with pupils (which at the moment, April 2019, is being organised). (Show less)

Drawing on intimate testimonies relating both celebratory and challenging aspects of inter-racial coupling, this paper argues for the importance of an oral historian’s self-reflective approach to each oral history interview. Supported by the Nikkei Memory Capture Project, (a community-based oral history project that examines the cultural and social history of Japanese Canadians during the postwar period in southern Alberta, Canada), I gathered oral history stories from inter-racial couples, one of whose members identifies as being of Japanese descent. Reaching beyond narratives largely focused on Second World War racist policies, internment and dispossession, these stories highlight everyday lived experiences as remembered and narrated by both Japanese and non-Japanese individuals. As a white person born and raised in Alberta and never subjected to racial discrimination, my status as an outsider to the Japanese-Canadian experience required that I acknowledge differing cultures and ethnic areas between myself and narrators. Accepting the existence of certain non-negotiable boundaries, collaboration with participants prior to and during interviews, strove to lessen power differences and encourage an atmosphere of mutual engagement. This included identifying how the Canadian government’s racist policies and political power affected nationalism, identity and notions of a unitary nation-state ethnos, and how those factors shaped and informed my interaction during interviews. By being actively aware of, and critically examining the inter-subjective nature present in each interview, I was able to gain a deeper understanding of a range of perspectives through the memories of those who graciously told their stories. (Show less)