Amintiri dintr-un alt fel de copilărie

The article explores excerpts from two types of documents: the transcription of interviews conducted in 2002 and a notebook of memories discovered in 2015. Both narrators were in advanced senescence when they were interviewed or respectively wrote their memories. I focus on passages presenting the ways in which they lived and made sense of the WWI. These fragments are part of what we usually call collective memory, but they are intensely marked by subjectivity and emotion. The analysis demonstrates that the two witnesses of the world conflagration deployed distinctive narrative strategies to relay their experience to future generations. They emphasized the importance of family cohesion and peace at the expense of material and spiritual goods. Although they knew at the time of recording the details and significance of the Great War, they preferred to share their experiences through the prism of innocent childhood to emphasize the sacrifices and traumas associated with war as lived experience behind the battlefield.