The accompanying programme to the exhibition Threads of Memories - The Fates of Women in the Gulag presented life behind bars through the memoirs of women who went through the hell of the Soviet camps, the documentary work of the writer Kamila Hladka and the stories of female political prisoners in Putin's Russia.
A woman's world behind bars with all its harshness, the fatal loss of freedom, separation from loved ones, death and the attempt to preserve dignity or contact with her former life. Women wrongly convicted in the Gulag camps and women imprisoned for crimes today have one thing in common - when a free being becomes a prisoner, it has a completely defining and overwhelming impact on everyone. The deprivation of liberty is an absolutely fundamental loss of humanity for every human being.
How did these traumas seep into the souls of women who experienced suffering in Soviet camps on the basis of fabricated and false accusations? How did they imprint themselves on their lives after release and on their memoirs? What do their stories have to do with the fates of today's women prisoners convicted of variously motivated crimes, often rooted in contemporary social problems? These and other themes were the focus of the evening that accompanied the exhibition Threads of Memory - The Fates of Women in the Gulag.
The event took place on 21 January 2025 from 18:00 to 20:30 in the meeting room on the 1st floor of the Klementinum (National Library of the Czech Republic, entrance A).
The exhibition itself was on display in the same building in the exhibition corridor on the ground floor until 31 January always during library opening hours.
"Immerse yourself in the world of Russian camp literature by reading excerpts from the memoirs of women who survived imprisonment in the Soviet Gulag camps. Together, we will relive their stories from the dramatic moments of arrest, through the daily struggle to survive in the inhumane conditions of the camps, to the harrowing journey back to life after release, " said Judith Krulišová from Gulag.cz, adding that visitors could also join in the reading.
We have been transported from the Soviet concentration camps to the present thanks to the work of writer and literary documentary filmmaker Kamila Hladka. In preparing her book Home? Stories of Former Women Prisoners, she focused intensively on the fates of women who have been imprisoned in the Czech Republic today. We also looked for parallels in her earlier work, when, in preparing her book Sisters, she focused on nuns persecuted and imprisoned as a result of the fabricated political trials in the 1950s.
As part of the evening, visitors were also able to write a letter to contemporary female political prisoners in Russia. The guest speaker for this part of the programme was journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, who spent almost ten months in a Russian prison and was released as part of the Great Prisoner Swap in August 2024. At the event, she shared her experiences of detention and also what letters of solidarity and support have meant to her.
Alexandra Skorvid from Gulag.cz helped with the formulation of the letters and presented the cases and helped with the translation.
The event was prepared by Gulag.cz in cooperation with the Slavic Library of the National Library of the Czech Republic and the Memorial Association.
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