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views, as these were considered evidence of violence suffered by
Albanians, and seen as devices that could be used to incriminate the Serbs.
This stance should remind us of a more general attitude which was shared
by the interviewees, and prevalent in the discussions.
Diaries, drawings, memories
Psychosocial Notebook, Volume 2, October 2001
As we have already pointed out, the material gathered in Kosovo for the
Archives of Memory also consists of documents collected or “produced”
through specific research activities. Until now, the material delivered to
the Archives has been remarkably varied. While on one hand, the collection
met our requests and expectations, the list of materials also included
items that people considered appropriate for the Archives of Memory. One
example of this came from a young boy who contributed his “green card”,
the identification document issued by the Serbian Interior Ministry to
every Albanian still living in Kosovo between April and May of 1999. The
card was handed to us with a short essay on the different purposes attributed
to this document by the popular collective imagination. One contributor,
a mother, wanted her 6-year-old daughter’s drawings, which
depicted the experience of war and exile, to be preserved in the Archives
of Memory. Another woman delivered drawings, this time her own, drawn
between 1998 and 1999. There was even a boy who wanted to give us the
letters he had received from his brother, who was still jailed in Serbia. We
also received several diaries kept during the war, adding to the items that
document the experience of the conflict in so many different ways.
With the exception of a few cases, however, it was the people directly
involved with the project, (students, local professionals, local staff) who
yielded documents to us. This was probably not simply a matter of knowing
about the Archives (indeed, the project was widely advertised), but of
a trust rooted in an awareness of the aims of the project, and in a strong
relationship built in months of working together. Trust is essential to the
contributions, because the experiences narrated in the documents handed
to us are not only products of a very recent past, but they are also strongly
connected to the present. Given the extent to which they could impact
the wide debate on the present and future of Kosovo’s political and social
setting, these narratives describing experiences during the time of conflict
cannot be neutral. Memory can never be neutral and this is particularly
evident in Kosovo. The people of Kosovo are aware of this, and this influences
their decision whether to let their memories leave the private sphere.
As will be shown, this issue is also central to the sharing of oral testimonies,
in which two currents cross: an awareness, in both interviewers
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