having resisted against the terror, humiliation and despair fascism
brought over Europe are kept alive and visible for everybody.
The protagonists and eyewitnesses will disappear in the next
years. Soon, there will be no other testimonies of the happenings apart
from those having been collected, recorded, recounted and written down.
The value of eyewitness interviews is unique. No book or film can
replace the opportunity of watching eyewitnesses tell their stories of
resistance and independent decision to do so.
The European Resistance Archive will enable the documentation of
this precious knowledge. It offers video interviews with women and men
having taken part in the antifascist resistance. In Europe, these
testimonies are often only available to those personally visiting
archives or documentary centres.
it would be in the sense of the project to extend the range of
countries and in future being able to integrate every European country
being afflicted by fascism and Nazism.
ERA is defined to be an open and growing website and
it bears the possibility of being extendible in various directions. It
should work as a first step in a network of historical research
covering the various faces of the European resistance.
In the process of creating this new platform, young people participated actively in the realization of the project in form of doing the interviews. The young participants were guided in their work by historians, memory worker and a professional video-team.
We hope that this creates an understanding and coming together
of the different generations and makes the understanding of the history
of Europe possible.
