Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...
Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...
Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...
Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
views, as these were considered evidence of violence suffered by<br />
Albanians, and seen as devices that could be used to incriminate the Serbs.<br />
This stance should remind us of a more general attitude which was shared<br />
by the interviewees, and prevalent in the discussions.<br />
Diaries, drawings, memories<br />
<strong>Psychosocial</strong> <strong>Notebook</strong>, Volume 2, October 2001<br />
As we have already pointed out, the material gathered in Kosovo for the<br />
Archives of Memory also consists of documents collected or “produced”<br />
through specific research activities. Until now, the material delivered to<br />
the Archives has been remarkably varied. While on one hand, the collection<br />
met our requests and expectations, the list of materials also included<br />
items that people considered appropriate for the Archives of Memory. One<br />
example of this came from a young boy who contributed his “green card”,<br />
the identification document issued by the Serbian Interior Ministry to<br />
every Albanian still living in Kosovo between April and May of 1999. The<br />
card was handed to us with a short essay on the different purposes attributed<br />
to this document by the popular collective imagination. One contributor,<br />
a mother, wanted her 6-year-old daughter’s drawings, which<br />
depicted the experience of war and exile, to be preserved in the Archives<br />
of Memory. Another woman delivered drawings, this time her own, drawn<br />
between 1998 and 1999. There was even a boy who wanted to give us the<br />
letters he had received from his brother, who was still jailed in Serbia. We<br />
also received several diaries kept during the war, adding to the items that<br />
document the experience of the conflict in so many different ways.<br />
With the exception of a few cases, however, it was the people directly<br />
involved with the project, (students, local professionals, local staff) who<br />
yielded documents to us. This was probably not simply a matter of knowing<br />
about the Archives (indeed, the project was widely advertised), but of<br />
a trust rooted in an awareness of the aims of the project, and in a strong<br />
relationship built in months of working together. Trust is essential to the<br />
contributions, because the experiences narrated in the documents handed<br />
to us are not only products of a very recent past, but they are also strongly<br />
connected to the present. Given the extent to which they could impact<br />
the wide debate on the present and future of Kosovo’s political and social<br />
setting, these narratives describing experiences during the time of conflict<br />
cannot be neutral. Memory can never be neutral and this is particularly<br />
evident in Kosovo. The people of Kosovo are aware of this, and this influences<br />
their decision whether to let their memories leave the private sphere.<br />
As will be shown, this issue is also central to the sharing of oral testimonies,<br />
in which two currents cross: an awareness, in both interviewers<br />
17