A remarkable initiative emerged from this group of Dersimis living in Germany. Hüseyin Kenan Aydın, then a member of the Bundestag, and Yasar Kaya, then chairman of the Federation of Dersim Communities in Europe (FDG), launched the Dersim 1937-38 Oral History Project in September 2008. With the support of actors from politics and academia of Dersim origin, particularly the Dersim Culture and History Centre, the group has since conducted over 400 video interviews with contemporary witnesses of the events in eight countries.

The interviews have outstanding educational potential, as they also talk about violence, migration, foreignness, and home in a straightforward way that promotes empathy. They are a necessary addition to the German culture of remembrance, as they represent the experiences of millions of Germans of migrant origin. They do not compete with the politically essential remembrance of National Socialism and the Shoah. On the contrary, the edited interviews can make an important contribution to understanding between groups of very different origins but (despite all differences) with a shared experience of persecution.

The material is also essential from an academic perspective. This applies particularly to research into violence and remembrance, educational science, linguistics, and ethnology. In addition to the analyses supported by further third-party funding (still to be applied for), the processed interviews are to be widely used in university teaching. They can thus form the basis for qualification theses (masters, doctorates). It is planned to start the scientific analysis and the didactic preparation financed by funds parallel to the translation into German. The filmed interviews can thus become the starting point for a wide range of activities in education (including schools, universities, and adult education), culture (including museums or exhibitions, film), and research.

But first, the material must be collected, sifted, translated, transcribed, and published. This process is very complex and time-consuming for several reasons. Since the interviews selected for this project were predominantly conducted in the language spoken by most of the persecuted group (Kırmancki/Zazaki), the material, in the first step, must be transcribed and then translated into Turkish. This lays the groundwork for the final steps – the translation into German and the transference of the subtitled interviews to an online archive. To this end, we are collaborating with the oral-history.digital archive at the Freie Universität Berlin. A direct translation into German is impossible for the number of interviews, as there is simply a lack of people who speak both Kırmancki/Zazaki and German at a native level. The online archive will form the basis for a didactic processing of the materials and their scientific analysis.

This elaborate work is kindly supported by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, Claudia Roth.