The Croatian society is still coping with traumatizing events (World War II and civil war) and memories of them. The politics of memory, articulated by Tudjman´s strategy of generational and memory reconciliation of the society in the early 1990s, led to the relativization and even promotion of the pro-fascist Ustashe regime, and simultaneously to the marginalization and stigmatization of narratives relating to the role of national liberation struggle within multi-ethnic partisan movement. This also included members of local Czech minority. The study shows how - despite this - the narratives concerning the partisan resistance are still alive in family memory, and they form, through generational transmission, a value alternative to the contemporary nationally-oriented state ideology as well as to the cultural presentation of Czech minority. Family memory works as an autonomous ”intimate space/area” of expatriates in Croatia, which is based on searching for a generational value continuities in the period of post-communist social uncertainties.
The study deals with the content and transmission of “images” connected with forced displacement and the relating processes in two three-generation families. The families were chosen based on the oldest generation´s personal experience with the forced displacement after World War II (a family of “deported” Germans living in Germany today and a family of German origin remaining in Czechoslovakia after 1945). The analysis focusses on family memory, whereby the authors ask not only about the content of memories of persons who are part of the “generation of experience”, but also about the transmission of these contents down to the generation of children and grandchildren, as well as about in which way the follow-up generations came to terms with the experience of the oldest generation. The authors point out the importance of family memory to create the identity of persons participating in that memory, and they demonstrate one of possible types of family remembering, whereby the youngest and the oldest generation are its major participants (transgenerational remembering).
In addition to fights at particular front-lines, war conflicts influence the otherwise quite calm life in the hinterland areas as well. This manifests itself not only in material poverty of the people living in the hinterland areas, but also by infringements of close and wider family relationship. The young men, who must go fighting, leave at home not only their parents, grand-parents, brothers and sisters and other relatives, but very often also their girl-friends, fiancées, wives as well as children. No one of them knows whether they will meet again. This is a big intrusion into existing and possible future family relations, of course.
On a particular example, the text follows two young people separated by the call-up order during World War I (in spring 1915), their fates, better said how their fates were passed on in family memories within the space of almost one century, namely from the World War I up to the outset of the 21st century. The reflexion of this family story passed down from generation to generation in its basic outlines, showed itself in a quite different light after almost one hundred years, than it was passed on through family gatherings and repeated narrations over a long period.
This review study deals with a phenomenon of adult children's caregiving for their aging parents and focuses on gender themes in this field. Findings of empirical and theoretical studies mostly of British and American authors are introduced. Based on both foreign and Czech literature sources the author provides a general view of the filial responsibility attitudes and the actual behavior. Starting from the fact that women (daughters in particular) form the majority of all caregivers, she presents some of the explanations for this state (socialization theory, theory of men's and women's different position in labor market, same-gender preferences theory) and at the same time arguments which do not fully support them. The attention is paid to the ways how men perceive filial obligation, in what circumstances and how they participate in the care of a parent. Caregiving is mainly viewed more as a natural feature than a learnt or gained ability which is supposed to make women more appropriate candidates to undertake it. The author discusses the future of intergenerational solidarity in general and the possible course of changes.