"Experiences difficult to communicate." Post-war testimonies by Jan Ištvan, a Romani holocaust survivor, and the history of his family in the Czech lands
Abstract
Research on the Holocaust of the Roma and Sinti including the collection of testimonies by Holocaust survivors was carried out in Czechoslovakia/Czech Republic since late 1960's and included several documentation initiatives. Apart from these certain survivors attempted to write memoirs on their own.
In some cases we have at our disposal different versions of a testimony by the same survivor, delivered under different circumstances and at a different point of their post-war lives, sometimes accompanied by a parallel testimony of a (close) relative. These instances offer a unique possibility to explore the way in which the survivors decided to narrate their experiences both shaped by and shaping the way in which Romani Holocaust was explained, presented and narrated outside the private sphere.
Our contribution focuses on Jan Ištvan, his Holocaust testimonies and his family history. Jan Ištvan was interviewed in 1988 by Nečas during an early phase of his research of the topic.
In 1995 he refused to take part in a documentation project by the Czech Museum of Romani Culture, but in 1997 he decided to write a memoir dedicated to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. Our contribution brings together existing testimonies by Jan Ištvan and detailed mapping of his family history focusing on the first half of the 20th century with the goal to document the fate of the family during the holocaust and to explore their position in the post-war struggle for the Romani survivors' voices to be heard.