Paper Short Abstract:

In my presentation, I will analyse interviews with Holocaust survivors in the city of Szeged, Hungary. I turn my attention to representations of the past and its silences and omissions. I seek to answer the question: what are the conflicts of memory that this silence creates? How and why did they manage to break this silence? Finally, I would like to present the method of narrative interviewing.

Paper Abstract:

In my presentation, I will analyse interviews with Holocaust survivors in the city of Szeged, Hungary. They are the personal stories of individuals who experienced the dramas of the Shoah as children (from babies of a few months to children of 12 years).

In the context of the narratives recorded on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the Holocaust, I turn my attention to representations of the past and its silences and omissions. I seek to answer the question: what are the conflicts of memory that this silence creates? It is a well-known fact that secrets are a burden. It is a burden on the one who does not tell it, and also on the one who is kept in silence about something that (also) belongs to him. This kind of memory situation is characterised by taboos, forgetting, the appearance of forgetting, traumatic and painful memories buried in the subconscious. Through the narratives of my interviewees, I explore how they relate to silence and silencing. Did they choose it themselves, did they not have the opportunity to speak, or was it an inheritance? How did they experience it? I would also like to point out when, how and why did they manage to break this silence? Finally, I would like to present the method of narrative interviewing. Why I considered this technique, which focuses on the individual, to be an appropriate way to interview the survivors of this historical trauma.