Oral History Commons^™

Bahar And Zarrin, Bahar, Zarrin, Tsos

TSOS Interview Gallery

Bahar and Zarrin are friends living in Oinofyta Refugee Camp. They are both from Afghanistan but fled very different circumstances. Bahar lived in Iran with her husband until he passed, and she was rejected by her family. As a single woman she faced a life with little rights. Despite major health complications she fled to Greece in a boat. She now lives in the camp, struggling with repeated hospitalizations.

Zarrin left a life of comfort and privilege in Afghanistan and misses home greatly. Her husband was a wealthy businessman and Zarrin taught school. Thinking back on what they lost causes …

Nevin, Nevin, Tsos

TSOS Interview Gallery

Nevin is a civil engineer from Afghanistan who worked with an American company and local government. The Taliban threatened him and demanded he work for them instead and ultimately attacked him on his journey home. After this he began a dangerous journey to Europe full of smugglers, trafficking, encounters with police, poor living conditions and a trip across the Mediterranean in an overcrowded raft.

Nevin ultimately made it to Greece, where he lived in a camp for several months. He received medical care but faced new problems of closed borders and difficulty obtaining papers. He was transferred to a camp …

Aeham, Aeham, Tsos

TSOS Interview Gallery

Aeham Ahmad is a pianist from Yarmouk, Syria who gained internet fame from videos posted of him performing on the streets. Because of this, he was targeted and forced to flee to Germany, leaving his wife and two sons behind. Since this interview, his family has joined him.

Aeham’s talent and fame opened up opportunities to perform in various cities in Germany. To share his story during these performances, he learned English. He wants to use music to make a difference in the world. During his time in Yarmouk, there was an underground area where children practiced music because it …

Hamed, Hamed, Tsos

TSOS Interview Gallery

Hamed and his family are from Afghanistan where he worked as a diplomat and interpreter for the U.S. Army after having studied international relations and diplomacy. As the situation with the Taliban worsened it became too dangerous for Hamed and his family to stay in Afghanistan. They began the difficult journey with the help of smugglers, first to Iran, then Turkey, and then to Greece in a dangerous, overfilled boat.

Hamed explains the despair and frustration faced by many refugees. They feel as though very little is actually done for refugees once they’re admitted, and explains they need more assistance. …

Zarrin, Zarrin, Tsos

TSOS Interview Gallery

My name is Zarrin. I was an English teacher. In Afghanistan I had a big house and a garden. My husband was a rich man; he had lots of money. My children studied in a private school.All the time the Taliban was warning my husband, “Why does your wife go to school and teach children? If your wife goes to school, we’ll throw acid on her face and take your children.” They don’t like education —they don’t like women attending school.Zarrin left a life of comfort and privilege in Afghanistan and misses home greatly. Her husband was a wealthy businessman …

Ilhan & Family, Ilhan, Tsos

TSOS Interview Gallery

Ilhan, his wife Nura, and their children resided near Kabul, in a region where both the Taliban and ISIS were active. As Shias, Ilhan’s family faced numerous menaces, including threatsfrom ISIS that they would be beheaded if they did not display ISIS flags. Ilhan’s sister Radwa, who is deaf and mute, was forced to marry a regional leader. In addition to being threatened on religious grounds, Ilhan’s family was also threatened by anelder of their town. Out of desperation, Ilhan’s family sold their house appliances, escaped Afghanistan, and arrived at the Oinofyta refugee campin Greece. Ilhan’s family fled with Radwa, …

Kamaria Bakes, Kamaria, Twila Bird, Lindsay Silsby, Yasmine Kataw, Tsos

TSOS Interview Gallery

Amina is from Aleppo, where she was a math teacher. She is married with four boys. Her family fled to Turkey from Syria after losing their home in the war. Amina and her youngest son then sailed on an inflatable boat to Greece. Using cars, buses, and trains, they traveled from Greece to Macedonia, then on through Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, and Austria before finally arriving in Germany. They stayed for two months in Camp Hamburg before being transferred for a short time to Lemberg. Lemberg was followed by another camp for three and a half months and then to Eisenberg …

Making Oral History Interviews Accessible At The Louie B. Nunn Center For Oral History, Kopana Terry, Judy Sackett

Library Faculty and Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Bahram & Camila, Bahram, Camila, Tsos

TSOS Interview Gallery

Bahram tells the story of the Afghanistan's 1992 government collapse and subsequent civil wars that destroyed the city of Kabul. "There was war in every alley, every house, every area and every village. 60,000 people were killed." Their family emigrated to Pakistan and after living there for some time, some relatives of a friend from their village travelled to Pakistan and required lodging so they stayed with Bahram's family. In some developing and under-developed countries, the custom of arranged marriage to child and infant daughters is practiced. These house guests demanded their one-year-old daughter be given in marriage to a …

Mina And Gulyar, Tsos

TSOS Interview Gallery

Mina:

Mina was the second polygamous wife to her husband in Afghanistan. After her husband’s death 16 years ago, her husband’s first wife and children took all the husband’s belongings as their own, including the house and land. Forced to find another place to live, Mina and her sons fled to Pakistan, where they lived until returning to Afghanistan to ask for their share of Mina’s husband’s property. In response, both Mina and her children were beaten, resulting in the death of her oldest son. Mina and her younger son, Gulyar, escaped, and as Gulyar hid, Mina buried her older …

Lima And Hanif, Tsos

TSOS Interview Gallery

In Afghanistan, Lima worked as a teacher, and her husband worked (and continues to work) for the government as an agricultural manager. She has a fourteen-year-old son who is deaf and has related speech problems; he could not be treated for them properly in Afghanistan. Because her uncle was very wealthy, Lima received daily threats that her son would be kidnapped and held for ransom. Her uncle went to Germany with his own children and her son to protect them from the kidnapping threats.

Although Lima’s son was safer in Germany, she still faced threats because of her work as …

Interview No. 1683, Hilda Villegas

Combined Interviews

Hilda was born in El Paso, Texas. She was raised in El Barrio Chamizal and attended Beall Elementary, Guillen Middle, and Bowie High School. She recalls that growing up in the community felt like home. She talks about the possible closure of Beall Elementary by El Paso Independent School District as an alternative to cutting costs due to underutilization of elementary schools. She feels that they are targeting areas in which the parents are not as engaged. The students would be redistributed into Zavala and Douglass Elementary Schools. Since it is one of the poorest areas in El Paso, mobility …

Interview No. 1706, Alicia Marentes

Combined Interviews

Alicia was born in Ciudad Juarez Chihuahua, Mexico. When Alicia was 16 years old she got married and crossed the border thru the river and head to Albuquerque, New Mexico with her husband. As a young immigrant, she couldn’t get a job so she started cleaning houses and her first cleaning job was at a Doctor's house. With the money that she earned she saved a portion every month and used to send it to her mother back in Juarez.

Alicia then moved back to Juarez while her husband went and worked in Los Angeles. After a couple of months, …

Interview No. 1684, José Rodríguez

Combined Interviews

Senator José Rodríguez was born in Alice, Texas and grew up in Alamo, Texas in the Lower Rio Grande Valley. He went to grade school in the mid-fifties when Mexican-American students went to separate schools from Anglo students. These schools did not have all of the resources that were in the Anglo schools. If they spoke Spanish they were paddled. He felt like he did not receive a very challenging elementary education. In middle and high school he came across teachers that saw potential in him and encouraged him to read books. They would give him books to take when …

Guide To Ms315 Carl Hertzog Collection, Cindy Milazzo

Finding Aids

Jean Carl Hertzog (1902 – 1984) was a book designer, typographer, and printer. The Hertzog ephemera collection dates 1947 – 2010, bulk 1950 – 1990. This collection contains materials about or by Carl Hertzog which were collected by various donors. Types of records include publications printed and designed by Carl Hertzog, book catalogs, correspondence, UTEP handbooks and catalogs, slides, holiday cards, an audio tape, and other printed material.

Interview No. 1709, Lorena Andrade

Combined Interviews

Lorena Andrade is the director of La Mujer Obrera. Andrade grew up in Los Angeles, California and moved to El Paso, Texas in 1997 to volunteer with LMO. She began working with the organization in 1998.

Andrade defines leadership as being able to remember what the principles of the organization are and as a leader, ensuring that those are respected during meetings, discussions, and decision making. She also believes that a leader’s responsibility is to reinforce these principles and make sure that everyone is heard. As a leader, she works to keep the history and the values of the LMO …

Television In Ireland: A History From The Mediated Centre, Edward Brennan

Conference Papers

This paper identifies and critiques a dominant narrative in the history of Irish television, which is too often passed off for, or accepted as, the history of television in Ireland. The his- tory of television in Ireland has been written within an institutional framework and depends on the cultural binary of tradition and modernity, ‘old Ireland’ and ‘new Ireland’. This dom- inant narrative fails to interrogate television as a medium. It provides an account of the Irish broadcaster RTÉ rather than an account of the arrival of a new medium. Ironically this nar- rative which hinges on the role of …

Past Disquiet: From Research To Exhibition, Kristine Khouri, Rasha Salti

Artl@s Bulletin

An exhibition of an exceptional scale and scope took place in Beirut in the middle of the civil war and today, its archival and documentary traces have been almost entirely lost. The International Art Exhibition for Palestine opened in the Spring of 1978, comprising some 200 works donated by artists hailing from nearly 30 countries, to be a seed collection for a museum in exile. This is a transcript of a presentation of the transformation of research into an exhibition format and a virtual walkthrough of the show Past Disquiet: Narratives and Ghosts from the International Art Exhibition for Palestine, …

Sharing [True] Stories: Supporting And Sustaining Collaborative Digital Oral History Archives And Research, Rachel Walton, Charlotte Nunes

Oberlin Digital Scholarship Conference

The grant-funded [True] Stories project aims to provide instructors from a variety of disciplines and on multiple campuses the critical resources and expertise needed to make student-driven oral history work possible, impactful, accessible, and a permanent part of collections. As such, the project PIs are committed to building and vetting a practical model for oral history classroom collaborations between smaller, moderately-funded college archives or libraries. In addition to the expected challenges of technological and interdisciplinary collaboration, the [True] Stories face critical digital preservation decisions and roadblocks: shared and sustainable digital storage solutions; a standard set of acquisition, processing, and curatorial …

In The Land Of The Mountain Gods: Ethnotrauma And Exile Among The Apaches Of The American Southwest, M. Grace Hunt Watkinson

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

In the mid to late nineteenth century, two Indigenous groups of New Mexico territory, the Mescalero and the Chiricahua Apaches, faced violence, imprisonment, and exile. During a century of settler influx, territorial changeovers, vigilante violence, and Indian removal, these two cousin tribes withstood an experience beyond individual pain best described as ethnotrauma. Rooted in racial persecution and mass violence, this ethnotrauma possessed layers of traumatic reaction that not only revolved around their ethnicity, but around their relationship with their home lands as well. Disconnected from the ritual resources and sacred geographies that made up every day Apache living, both groups …