Oral history as a special kind of a dialogue. Ethical aspects of recordings with eye-witnesses .

Abstract

Understanding the role that a researcher recording oral history biographical testimonies performs during a conversation (who they become to the narrator, and what boundaries and ethics they need), are a condition of a well-done recording. Due to specifics of the XX century history, the oralists often deal with people whose lives have been marked by some kind of trauma A social order to remember the past means an order to bear witness to the tragic or traumatic experiences. This is a difficult task not only for the narrator but also for the researcher, who are usually not psychologists but sociologists, historians or anthropologists. In the article, the author confronts the theory regulating the ethics of oral histor recordings with empirical research.