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Travelling into the past

Saturday was reserved for introducing the participants to the topic of the academy. With the help of a “time machine” the students travelled to the Soviet Union, 1970s Poland, Nazi Germany and communist Romania. Each of the four groups shared their experience by performing a sketch about their destinations in the past.

In the next two days they will have the opportunity to speak with people from the past that experienced totalitarian regimes in Poland, GDR, Spain and Romania.

To prepare these interviews they had a workshop in the afternoon, where they learned more about oral history and how to ask the right questions when talking to an eye witness. After dinner, the groups gathered again with the purpose of thinking and formulating the questions they would wish to ask in their interviews.

These won’t be the only interviews we will have at this academy. Every evening, four of us will take the voice recorder and will share with each other impressions on the day that has ended. Our first four volunteers (Sofie, Ana-Maria, Antti and Jasmin) felt both excited and exhausted after this long day and were looking forward to meeting the eye witnesses in Berlin.