We document witnesses of key moments in our recent history. We record radio and television documents, publish books, organise exhibitions, prepare educational programmes of modern history for primary and secondary schools, present the Memory of Nations Awards. Dozens of organisations from 13 European and 3 non-European countries have joined the Memory of Nations network. There’s a lot going on, and we’re still trying to explore new paths forwards. We developed the Memory of Nations Sites smartphone app, we organise the largest public documentary competition. Thousands of pupils from all over the Czech Republic take on the role of documentarian each year in Stories of Our Neighbours or participate in our one-day experiential workshops.

On average, we publish two to three detailed and diligently processed witness stories each day, supplemented with the complete audio recording and short clips showcasing their most essential testimonies, period photographs, possibly letters, diaries, or other archival materials – including English translations. Since 2014 we have also been recording life stories on video with the help of our unique Eye Direct method.

Memory of Nations is freely accessibly to everyone so that the memories of witnesses of historic moments helped us recognise the characteristics of the totalitarian regimes of the 20 century – Nazism and Communism – and also to understand the motives and decisions of individuals in critical situations. The more portraits we are able to collect, the more diverse and comprehensive a mosaic of the past century we can create. We divide the testimonies into various categories and tagged them with the historical events and phenomena that the witnesses describe.