Ego documents

Using osmikon.search you can find a variety of published ego documents from library collections. You can search for a particular document very effectively using the keyword "Erlebnisbericht" and refining your search by selecting another facet (language, subject, year).

Search example with the search terms "Erlebnisbericht + Russland"

In the Index of Microforms on History at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (Verzeichnis der Mikroformen zur Geschichte in der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek, VMG-BSB) you will find numerous microfilmed ego documents from Eastern European archives, such as:

• The Long Road Home: Documents of Ukrainian Forced Labor Workers in Soviet Filtration Camps in Germany. [Fond R-5597.] 180 film rolls | State Archive of the Kiev Oblast' (GAKO)
• Voice of the People under Soviet Rule. [Materials from individuals and families.] 90 film rolls | Documentation Center "Narodnyi arhiv" (Moscow)
• Russia through the Eyes of Foreigners. Travel and Personal Accounts from the 16th Century to the October Revolution 1917. 2,179 microfiches | National Library of Russia (Saint Petersburg)

The microfilmed archive materials are searchable via the OPACplus/BSB catalogue and can be ordered by interlibrary loan to the reading room of your home library.

Tip: Use the keyword index for your research (subject/heading "Erinnerungen")! 

Bayerische Staatsbibliothek | Verzeichnis der Mikroformen zur Geschichte in der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek

Keyword index to the Verzeichnis der Mikroformen zur Geschichte in der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek

The Specialised Information Service for Russian, East and Southeast European Studies has licensed the following source collections with ego documents:

• The First World War Portal 
• Visual History Archive der USC Shoah Foundation
• World of Children: Artek Pioneer Camp Archives, 1944-1967 Online

• Chronicles of Terror 39-45 (Pilecki Institute) – the online database of the Pilecki Institute contains testimonies of Polish citizens who were victims of the German and Soviet wartime occupation between 1939 and 1945.   
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• Croatian Memories: Unveiling Personal Memories on War and Detention – the database contains more than 1,000 oral history interviews with survivors of the Second World War as well the Croatian War of Independence. The focus is on women, ethnical minorities and victims' relatives. 
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• Kogu me lugu! – the oral history portal on the history of Estonia in the 20th century contains interviews with contemporary witnesses and victims of the Soviet and National Socialist regimes, supplemented by documentation and learning materials.
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• Memoirs of Russian, East European, and Eurasian Women – the collection is curated by the Slavic Reference Service. It contains digitized (pre-copyright) memoirs of women from these regions, which were published in collected works, journals, and books. It is open to researchers from around the world. 
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• Paměť národa – the database contains more than 7,000 oral history interviews with contemporary witnesses who lived under the totalitarian rule of National Socialism and Communism. The focus is on the Czech Republic.  
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• PamMap – this portal contains over 60,000 place and person-related digital records in the form of photos, postcards and written ego documents of all kinds relating to the history of Bratislava and Slovakia.
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• Polskie Archiwum Filmów Domowych – a project to collect and digitise private films that provide special insights into the history of Poland after 1945 through visualised family stories.  
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• Prožito – this database contains over 450,000 daily entries from over 4,000 diaries by over 1,700 authors in Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian from the years 1802-2006.
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• Soviet Survivors of Nazi Occupation. The first testimonies – the website features some of the earliest testimonies of Soviet survivors of Nazi occupation recorded by Moscow historians from 1942 to the end of the war. 
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• Testifying to the Truth – this project of the Wiener Holocaust Library contains more than 1,000 reports of eyewitnesses of National Socialist persecution and includes the following aspects of the Holocaust: children and young people, resistance, persecution of non-Jews, the November pogrom, perpetrators, Theresienstadt, gender-specific experiences, forced migration.
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• The History of Everyday Life Database contains, among other things, memoirs, family chronicles, diaries and letters from the Czech Republic or Czechoslovakia from the 19th century to the present.
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• Transformation of Civil Society: Oral History of Ukrainan Village Culture of the 1920-30s – the collection offers oral history interviews with 126 villagers, who witnessed rural life before and after the collectivization and during the Holodomor.
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• Vospominaniya o GULAGe i ikh avtory – the database "Memories of the GULAG and their authors" lists authors who wrote memoirs of the Soviet penal and labour camps. The majority of these are previously unpublished first-person documents by camp inmates and their relatives, which can also be viewed on the website.
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