#outofthebox – Workshop Series on Trauma at SFU Vienna

Workshop on “Oral History and Holocaust Memory Research in Slovakia”

  • Speaker: Dr. Monika Vrzgulová
  • Time: Tuesday, 22 April, 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM
  • Venue: SFU Vienna, Freudplatz 1, lecture room 1002, free of charge

Workshop Description

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the first oral history research into the life stories of survivors in Slovakia. What were its results and how have they influenced scholarly research, collective memories of the Holocaust in Slovakia and intergenerational communication? Monika Vrzgulová summarizes her findings and experiences she has gained while researching Holocaust memory, combining methods of memory studies, oral history and autoethnography.

She presents data from two international research projects, which were also conducted in Slovakia and are available online to experts and the public. It contextualizes the insights gained from this research with the changing social situation in a country that, more than 30 years after the fall of communism, is struggling to come to terms with its past.

About the Speaker

Monika Vrzgulová is a senior research fellow of the Institute of Ethnology and Social Anthropology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava, an expert in Holocaust Studies in Slovakia, issues of memory and identity, Holocaust remembrance, and intergenerational communication. She has been conducting domestic and international research using the oral history method, studying the representations of historical events and periods (e.g., the Holocaust and the communist regime in Slovakia). Between 2005 and 2013, she was a member of the Slovak delegation to ITF/IHRA.

From 2005 to 2017, she was the director of the Holocaust Documentation Centre in Bratislava. From 2011 to 2016, she led the Slovak research team in the USHMM Oral History Documentation Project: Crimes against the Civilian Populations during WW2: Victims, Witnesses, Collaborators, and Perpetrators. In 2018, as the Gunzenberger- Reichman Family Fellow, she studied at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies. She has authored seven monographs and dozens of studies. Her book Oral History and the Holocaust in Slovakia. Selective and Contradictory Memories was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2024.

  • The workshop is open for all students and faculties, held in English and free of charge.
  • For Psychotherapy Science students, participation can be recognized as part of the “Window of Opportunity”. In addition to participating, students have to provide the assignments required by the faculty.
  • Please register for this event: 

Registration Form


Contact SFU:
Dr. Kamila Midor
kamila.midor@sfu.ac.at
Institute for Transgenerational Trauma Transfer Research
Faculty of Psychotherapy Science | Sigmund Freud Private University

 

Kindly note that pictures will be taken during the workshop and may be shared on the SFU website and social media platforms.