Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...

“[Being a refugee] is like being lost, like being a person that is lost.
Maybe there were chances of a new life, but when it came to the past…
I hadn’t taken anything from the past with me, except my family, because
everything else from the past and all the memories were left behind…”
Introduction
Chapter 1
Memory Telling.
Individual and Collective
Identities in Post-War
Kosovo:
The Archives of Memory
Silvia Salvatici*
Gentiana 1
This essay is a first analysis of materials collected for the Archives of
Memory in Kosovo. These documents were gathered as part of the
Psychosocial Trauma and Response project that served primarily as a
training course for psychosocial counsellors. 2 The first section of the
report will describe the geographical and social environment in which the
research took place, as well as the methods chosen for it. The following
section of the report will focus on remembrance of the past and perception
of the present, where narratives of suffering on one side seem directed at
*Ph.D., historian, Project Officer in Pristina for the Archives of Memory in 1999-2000, now
consultant for the Psychosocial and Cultural Integration Unit, IOM Liaison Mission in Italy
and Regional Coordination Office for the Mediterranean, Rome.
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