COURAGE

savienojot kolekcijas

The Transnational Roma Networks Ad-hoc Collection at CNSAS comprises documents created or collected by the Romanian secret police, the Securitate, about the transnational relations of the Roma community. From among the members of this community who willingly assumed this identity, two leaders and activists, Nicolae Gheorghe and Ion Cioabă, stood out during the 1980s. They were among the few people in communist Romania who had the courage to rise up against the aggressive policy of forced assimilation of Roma that threatened their survival as a distinct ethnic and cultural group. As a result, their stand against discriminatory treatment of Roma people in communist Romania brought them into close collaboration with foreign researchers and Roma transnational organisations, also interested in the fate of the persecuted Roma.

The Ukrainian Museum-Archives in Cleveland, OH contains a hidden world-class archival collection amassed over the last century. Founded in 1952 by Ukrainian WWII refugees, the materials document the lives and struggles of multiple generations against communism. The museum-archive took on the mission of preserving Ukrainian culture at a time when it was being destroyed in the Soviet Union, assembling a vast collection of books, periodicals, photographs, ephemera, diplomatic papers and other materials that document a century of struggle. This is a unique institution that spans international borders, but is simultaneously integrated into an urban American neighborhood. The collection is based in Cleveland’s historic Tremont neighborhood and attracts partners like the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the National Academy of Sciences in Ukraine, and other institutions interested in digitizing its hidden gems.