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Restoring the Meaning: ‘Biographic Work’ in Ostarbeiters’ Life Stories
In the chapter on the example of biographical interviews with Ostarbeiter is considered the phenomenon of biography injured by historical experience. On a theoretical level we analyze the phenomenon of trauma (P.Shtompka, A.Zdravomyslov, Y.Ryuzen et al.). The crisis of meaning, biographical ruptures, incoherence in biography are a reaction to catastrophic experience, experienced collectively and destroys the very possibility of its interpretation. Empirical research has revealed a number of strategies to normalize the biography, which are designed 1) on the level path traveled life's journey, committed social action, and 2) on the level of narrative solutions in stories of trauma - silence, fragmentation, dehronologization.