Jana Kramářová et al. (eds): (Ne)bolí. Vzpomínky Romů na válku a život po válce (It does [not] hurt. Roma memories of the war and of life after the war)

The book is a col­lec­tion of tes­ti­monies from Romani peo­ple whose nar­ra­tives are divid­ed into the peri­od before the war, dur­ing the war, and the years after the war. It has two intro­duc­tions: first comes a short text by Zuzana Rama­j­zlová, coor­di­na­tor of the project Aid for the Com­pen­sa­tion of Romani Vic­tims of World War II, which explains the con­text of the book’s cre­ation. This is fol­lowed by a his­tor­i­cal out­line by the Romani schol­ar Jana Kramářová about the per­se­cu­tion of the Roma in Slo­va­kia in 1939 – 1945, enhanced by the con­text of the post-war migra­tion of Roma to the Czech Repub­lic. The main part of the book con­sists of the life sto­ries of four wit­ness­es, sup­ple­ment­ed by pho­tographs from fam­i­ly archives and film­ing. All of them were born in Slo­va­kia, where they also expe­ri­enced the hard­ships of the war, and all of them moved to the Czech Repub­lic after 1945. The book con­cludes with an inter­view with the main inter­view­er and edi­tor of the book, Jana Kramářová, and with Jakub Stein­er, who was instru­men­tal in Romani sur­vivors of the war being suc­cess­ful­ly com­pen­sat­ed. The inter­view cov­ers both the cir­cum­stances of the pub­li­ca­tion’s cre­ation and the process of com­pen­sat­ing Romani vic­tims of the Holo­caust in the Czech Repub­lic; it also men­tions in a few sen­tences the extra­or­di­nary wartime fates of sev­er­al wit­ness­es whose sto­ries could not be includ­ed in the book.

The inter­views took place in var­i­ous loca­tions in the Czech Repub­lic between 2001 and 2005, and the inter­view­ers first record­ed them on a dic­ta­phone and (to save time) wrote them down lat­er. In gen­er­al, two or three meet­ings were held with the sur­vivors. The first inter­view was focused above all on their wartime fate, as it served as an attach­ment to the appli­ca­tion for com­pen­sa­tion to the Czech-Ger­man Fund for the Future. The orig­i­nal audio record­ings are stored in the archives of the Czech-Ger­man Fund for the Future.

From almost 2,000 appli­cants for com­pen­sa­tion, the edi­tor iden­ti­fied about fif­teen who would be suit­able for the pur­pose of the book, approach­ing them with the offer to record more of their life sto­ry. She then met for a sec­ond time with those who had expressed inter­est, and in two cas­es for a third time, to extend their rec­ol­lec­tions by talk­ing about the peri­od before the war, and also after 1945. She was accom­pa­nied by Mar­tin Šimáček as pho­tog­ra­ph­er. The pub­li­ca­tion con­tains expla­na­tions of terms used in the text.

The lan­guage of com­mu­ni­ca­tion for the inter­views was Czech. The inter­views were con­duct­ed in the home envi­ron­ment of the survivor.