Interviews as part of the Memory of Roma project, Czech Republic
Video interviews with Romani survivors living in the Czech Republic at the time of the recording.
The interviews are based on periods in the lives of the survivors and their memories of the historical periods or events. A frequent topic of the interviews is World War II as related to the persecution and victimisation of Roma in Slovakia and the Czech Republic, as well as the consequences of this persecution in the post-war period. Survivors from the communities of Slovak Roma, Czech Roma and Sinti, as well as the Olah Roma community, talk about their experiences in socialist Czechoslovakia, including the 1958 ban on nomadism, migration to Bohemia, and involvement in the Roma emancipation movement in the early 1970s. The post-1989 period and the 1990s are also covered.
The interviews have been recorded continually since 2016, with a total of 43 interviews stored and made available on the website by 2023.
The interviews are all conducted according to a uniform pattern. First, the survivor tells their life story in relation to those moments in their life to which they attach importance. They are then asked follow-up questions on topics that they have either already mentioned or that might be relevant to them. The recollections are recorded in a setting that is natural to the survivors.
The total length of the recordings varies between two and three hours, depending on the narrator, but only an edited version is published on the website. The full recordings are stored in the Romea TV archive. The passages are selected for publication in such a way as to preserve a variety of themes and points of view on the events or topics in question.
Each recording is accompanied by brief information about the survivor and the recording itself, and is accompanied by a transcript.
The creative team is made up of Romani scholars and Romea TV staff.
Interview archive at pametromu.cz.
