Exhibition
Memory of Nations: Yes/No
Stupava (Slovakia) 7/5—26/5 2018
Budapest (Hungary) 29/5—16/6 2018
Wien (Austria) 19/6—9/7 2018
Warszawa (Poland) 14/7—4/8 2018
Roskilde (Denmark) 9/8—30/8 2018
Dresden (Germany) 2/9—24/9 2018
Praha (Czech Republic) 27/9—19/10 2018
Gera (Germany) 30/8—27/9 2019
About Project
Memory of Nations is one of Europe's most extensive collections of life stories. It has been publicly accessible since 2008 as a database of testimonies of witnesses of 20th century events who survived the two totalitarian regimes - nazism and communism. The stories illustrate how these regimes impacted individual lives, and allow for uncovering of their substance.
Memory of Nations is accessible to all interested people, both registered and not, for research purposes as a source of recognition of the past and of lessons learned from our history.
Yes
The Memory of Nations: Yes/No exhibition tells the stories of 12 witnesses from 6 European countries — Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Germany, Poland and Slovakia. These witnesses are united by a common experience: they received an offer from the secret service to collaborate. Each of the 12 witnesses had to decide whether to make their life easier and more comfortable. Some of them yielded to the seduction and responded YES. Others were more courageous and said NO.
No
The theme of collaboration is in the former Easter Block countries still very vivid and painful. While the stories of those who refused to collaborate are usually well known, the stories of the others remains in the background, or become familiar through sensational medial cases.
We are convinced that to better understand the communist totality of the 20th century, it is necessary to point out both the notional sides. For on both the sides there were people in particular situations, life circumstances, with their inner motivations, or personal failures. We are happy that we found witnesses with either kind of experience who dared to share their life stories. We are deeply grateful for their personal courage.
