Gyula Flohr's life was not exceptional, nor were the historical and personal circumstances that shaped it. His story is that of an often authoritarian and hypermasculine East Central European entrepreneur who was understandably hostile towards the state. He grew up in a coal dealer Jewish family in Northern Hungary but converted to Christianity early in his childhood. During WWII he was conscripted into the forced labour service where he helped build the narrow-gauge railroad in Bor and eventually escaped to join Josip Tito's partisans.
Ljubo Petanovc's life was not exceptional either. Early in the war he joined the partisans, only to be deported to one of the Allies' camps in Egypt. After returning to Yugoslavia this pre-war communist and partisan soon started experiencing disappointment, even betrayal. He remained a devoted Yugoslav, but not a communist, and he spent the rest of his life as a high school teacher.
Starting from two family relics dating from WWII, a backpack and a photograph, this paper is structured as a dialogue between two artists/researchers. The dialogue, which explores the histories related to these relics and the meanings they may hold in the present, focuses on the memory work and integrating discourses coming from the interdisciplinary field of memory studies. While looking into their role as artists and researchers in revealing hidden and traumatic family narratives, the authors use the objects as testimonies to look into the histories of genocides, grief, afterlives of trauma, and potential healing processes.
