| dc.description.abstract | Oral history is a reference to the traditional method of gathering information about the past.
Already Herodotus used this approach for collecting sources. However, the methodological
progress emphasized scepticism towards the memory of witnesses, and held the value
of documents in high regard. That is why, the return to oral history in academic research,
especially in the studies of social history, is a kind of renaissance in the historian’s workshop.
The author of the article analyzes the difference between the classical understanding of the
value of witnesses’ relations and the conscious evoking of the sources i.e. the historian’s use
of memory resources of the history witnesses. The witnesses do not necessarily have to be
people who took responsibility for the communities, countries or organizations but those
who formed these organisms. Important are the memories of an average person, a man and
a woman, because the diverging perspectives allow for noticing various aspects of historical
events. Critical analysis of the content, gestures, face expressions, language and the tone of
the utterances allows for making the most of the source of historical narration and more.
The article characterizes the author’s journey to recognizing the value of such sources
in historical research. Chorązki showed his initial weakness for classical workshop of
the historian as well as described his indifference and scepticism towards oral sources.
Simultaneously, he depicted his increasing fascination with this type of academic research
verging on social sciences. He particularly emphasizes another aspect of his weakness for the
oral sources – he describes his research journeys with other people, pointing out that such
a form of meeting with another person and his or her history can be an interesting method
of gathering information about the subject of the research and, above all, of getting to know
another person.
The experiences of Marcin Chorązki with the witnesses of history as well as his methods of
using such materials in his work can serve as an examples of how one can skilfully follow the
traces of history and witnesses’ memory. The author characterized his witnesses in quite
a detail, pointing to their personal traits. He did not hesitate to show their weaknesses and
difficult experiences to the reader. In his opinion, this is the value of the witnesses’ relations.
Memory resources of the witnesses gave him the possibility of filling in the spheres of human
life that were not dealt with in the archives created by institutions. The author creates a thesis
that oral history should coexist with other sources in the workshop of a historian who deals
with the recent history. It follows from, among other things, the belief that the aim of the
research is to gain knowledge about the life of people in the past. And nothing can make
the moods, emotions or the life of particular people more understandable than memories of
those who lived in that time. | en |
