Memories of the occupation in Greece

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The online archive memories of the occupation in Greece ( Greek Μνήμες από την Κατοχή στην Ελλάδα , homepage: occupation-memories.org) is a digital collection of 93 interviews with contemporary witnesses of the occupation of Greece by the Wehrmacht and the SS during National Socialism (1941 -44). These interviews were carried out between 2016 and the end of 2018 by Greek and German scientists as part of the project of the same name “Memories of the Occupation in Greece” at the Center for Digital Systems (CeDiS) of the Free University of Berlin . They were filmed, transcribed in Greek and translated into German. The archive with all the video material created has been publicly accessible since April 2018. A follow-up project, which is also located at CeDiS, intends to develop a digital educational portal that will make eyewitness reports and their historical context accessible to schoolchildren.

Project

Institutional framework

The project “Memories of the Occupation in Greece” is based at the Center for Digital Systems (CeDiS) of the Free University of Berlin (FU Berlin). The project management is the responsibility of Prof. Dr. Nicolas Apostolopoulos (Free University of Berlin). The scientific project management in Greece is carried out by Prof. Dr. Hagen Fleischer ( National and Kapodistrias University of Athens ), who is considered to be one of the world's most important experts in research into the German occupation in Greece. The project staff are selected researchers from Greek and German universities.

The project is binational and was funded by German and Greek institutions. Through the involvement of political actors such as the former Federal President Joachim Gauck and the Foreign Minister and later Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier , the financing of the project was partially secured by the German-Greek Future Fund of the Federal Foreign Office . The project was also co-financed by the Greek Stavros Niarchos Foundation , the German Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future and the Free University of Berlin. The cooperation partner is the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.

Implementation / research work

From May 2016 to the end of 2018, 93 interviews with contemporary witnesses of the German occupation in Greece were carried out as part of the project. During the interviews with the contemporary witnesses, the project staff based themselves on the biographical-narrative method according to Alexander von Plato, which is common in the field of oral history . The term "oral history" refers to the scientific research and interpretation of historical events using oral history sources.

The interviews conducted as part of the project were filmed, edited, divided into sections, transcribed and then translated into German and subtitled. In a second phase, the interviews were prepared with scientific comments and references. In order to make the later archive material as easily accessible as possible, accompanying lists with key words and important terms, short résumés of the interviewees and interview protocols were drawn up.

archive

content

The archive of the program contains all of the recorded interviews with Greek contemporary witnesses of the German occupation. These contemporary witnesses include survivors of massacres and retaliatory actions, resistance fighters, Holocaust survivors and Jews who were hidden as children during the occupation.

In their memory reports, the contemporary witnesses tell of everyday occupation , of the flight, the persecution of the Jews , the concentration camps , the collaboration, the retaliatory actions, the mass executions and the resistance . The reports come from different regions of Greece. However, some interviews were also conducted in Israel and Berlin.

use

The digital archive has a modular software architecture that has been developed over several years at the Center for Digital Systems at the FU and adapted to the needs of the specific project.

In order to use the digital archive, registration or creation of a personal user account is required for data protection of the interviewed contemporary witnesses. The structure of the digital archive enables both full-text and keyword searches. In addition, a so-called "alphabetical thesaurus" with over 3,000 terms and names in the archive is available to users.

Education portal

target

From the beginning, the aim of creating the archives was also to develop material for school lessons both in Greece and in Germany. To this end, the two-year follow-up project “Memories of the Occupation in Greece - Education Portal” was initiated, which is funded by the Federal Foreign Office and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation.

This project intends to develop educational materials that will enable Greek and German young people to learn about the occupation in Greece and the history of the Second World War through the archive. On the basis of various topics, such as B. Concentration camps, resistance, childhood in war or hunger, pupils can work on assignments in a digital learning and working environment, view documents, read informational texts and develop a more personal approach to history through interviews with contemporary witnesses. This not only provides historical knowledge, but also promotes a critical approach to the format of the life story as a historical source. Ultimately, the educational portal should be developed in both languages ​​and be applicable within the framework of the respective country education system.

Other uses of the archive in education

In addition to the education portal and the accompanying events, the follow-up project is also promoting the dissemination and use of the archive in extracurricular education, as well as in the context of educational initiatives for young people and adults such as the German-Greek Youth Office founded in 2019. The use of the archive material in this context should contribute to the development of a common German-Greek culture of remembrance in the long term.

Project presentations

The project was presented to the public at several events in Germany and Greece. In February 2017, the first results of the project were presented at the National and Kapodistrian University in Athens. In April 2018, on the occasion of the publication of the digital archive in the Topography of Terror Foundation in Berlin, an event was organized at which numerous representatives from politics and science as well as project sponsors, scientists, active participants in the field of German-Greek relations and interested citizens were present.

On October 4, 2019, a conference on “The digital contemporary witness archive memories of the occupation in Greece in the German-Greek youth exchange” took place in the Greek Ministry of Education, Research and Religions. Present at the conference were educators, politicians and representatives of cultural and religious institutions. The proposal discussed at the conference for the use of the archive in German-Greek youth exchange programs was presented for the first time at a conference at Freie Universität on April 8 and 9, 2019.

Finally, on October 11th and 12th, 2019, a scientific conference on the subject of “Remembrance, contemporary witness and digital approaches in historical studies: The archive of memories of the occupation in Greece ” was held at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. The conference was organized by the workshop for historical research and documentation of the Institute for History and Archeology of the University of Athens in cooperation with the project “Memories of the Occupation in Greece”. The event covered a wide range of topics, ranging from historiographical retrospectives to dissertation and habilitation projects and their links with the contemporary witness archive.

Web links

literature

  • Hagen Fleischer, In the cross shadow of the powers. Greece 1941-1944. (Occupation - Collaboration - Resistance ), Volume 1 & 2, Frankfurt - Bern - New York 1986, 1995.
  • Chryssoula Kambas, Mariliza Mitsou (Ed.), The Occupation of Greece in World War II. Greek and German culture of remembrance , Böhlau Cologne-Vienna-Weimar 2014.
  • Mark Mazower, Inside Hitler's Greece. The Experience of Occupation 1941–1944 , New Haven / London 1993.
  • Iason Chandrinos, Anna Maria Droumpouki, "The German Occupation and the Holocaust in Greece: A Survey", in: Dirk Moses and Giorgos Antoniou (eds.), The Holocaust in Greece , Cambridge University Press, forthcoming (2016).
  • Anna Maria Droumpouki, Trivialization of World War Two and Shoah in Greece: Uses, misuses and analogies in light of the current debt crisis , Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 21: 2, 2013, pp. 190–201.
  • Anna Maria Droumpouki, Das Distomo Massaker (June 10, 1944): The incriminating legacy of an unresolved Nazi crime from the end of the war to the present day , Zeitschrift für Genozidforschung, forthcoming (2016).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ https://www.cedis.fu-berlin.de. Retrieved January 24, 2020 .
  2. ↑ http://www.occupation-memories.org/de/project/funding/index.html. Retrieved January 24, 2020 .
  3. ↑ https://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/de/aussenpolitik/laender/griechenland-node/-/211532. Retrieved January 24, 2020 .
  4. ↑ https://www.snf.org/en/newsroom/news/2018/04/presentation-of-the-project-memories-of-the-german-occupation-in-greece-in-berlin/. Retrieved January 24, 2020 .
  5. ↑ https://www.zwangsarbeit-archiv.de/sammlung/entstehung/plato-interview-bedingungen.pdf. Retrieved January 24, 2020 .
  6. ↑ https://griechenland.diplo.de/gr-de/themen/willkommen/-/1995284. Retrieved January 27, 2020 .
  7. ↑ Report on the presentation of the project, Athens, 02.02.2017. Retrieved January 27, 2020 .
  8. ^ Report on the presentation of the archive in Berlin, April 23, 2018. Retrieved January 27, 2020 .
  9. ^ Report on the conference in the Greek Ministry of Education, Athens, January 4th, 2019. Retrieved January 27, 2020 .
  10. ^ Report on the scientific conference at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, October 11th / 12th, 2019. Retrieved January 27, 2020 .