Welcome to the updated website of Political Prisoners.eu

This site was originally created in the fall 2008 with the following objectives:

• attract the attention of youth and general public by publishing life stories of former prisoners of Stalinism
• offer the stories in written as well as video and audio formats (short sequences)

The published content was enriched, edited and updated in July 2011. Thanks to our volunteers we have proofread all our English interviews and made them more comprehensive.

This website became part of a trans-disciplinary, non-governmental and non-profit oral history project which aimed at commemoration of former political prisoners who survived jailing in Stalinist prisons and working camps in the former Czechoslovakia and other European countries. Later on in 2009, 2010 and 2011 we developed new initiatives, events and networks targeted at a more profound research interest in the field of oral histories of politically oppressed around the globe.

Commemoration of victims of Stalinism, in our opinion, was of an utmost importance not only when the whole world celebrated the 20th anniversary of the fall of Iron Curtain. Former political prisoners were and still are the living witnesses of past. They certainly should not be heard only on anniversaries. We do not have many chances left to listen, research, and learn from their stories. However, we are the witnesses of the future and thus potential carriers of their important memories.  We wish to  contribute to the exchange and popularisation of their memories. That is why you can find here transcriptions of oral history interviews and narratives and short multimedia. Though we are mostly Czech researchers we are working on delivering more stories in English too.

We would like to invite everyone interested in supporting this project to contact us via email: info@politicalprisoners.eu.

Thank you in advance for your interest and help!

The Team of volunteer research initiative Political Prisoners.eu.