Websites, databases
The website of the Nation’s Memory Institute
Databases of ÚPN related to two crucial periods of non-freedom in Slovakia:
1. Information published regarding the years 1939-1945:
a) Fate of the Slovak Jews in the years 1939-1945;
b) Hlinka’s Guard;
c) The fallen, dead, and killed Slovak soldiers during the anti-Soviet military campaign (June 1941 – August 1944);
d) Documents 1939-1945.
2. Information published regarding the years 1945-1989:
a) Units and members of the State Security, Border Patrol and Ministry of Interior;
b) Agenda of the State Security dossiers.
c) Functionaries of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) and Communist Party of Slovakia (KSS);
d) List of people kidnapped to gulags;
e) Victims of the Iron Curtain;
f) Orders issued by the Ministers of Interior 1948-1989;
g) August '68;
h) Illegal leaving of the Republic;
i) Candle Manifestation;
j) November '89;
k) Documents 1945-1989.
Individual thematic websites regarding the historical events and projects of the ÚPN
This thematic website launched in 2018 is dedicated to the Communist coup of February 1948 and the establishment of totalitarian Communist regime in Czechoslovakia. In addition to specialised texts, the website also includes contemporary documents, testimonies of witnesses and photos from the ÚPN Archive.
The website launched in 2020 focuses on the issue of liquidation of male and female religious orders in the 1950s, what was a significant milestone in anti-church policy of the Communist regime. The action known as “the Barbarian Night” became one of the cruelty symbols of the Communist regime. On this site, there are also detailed statistics, specialised texts, contemporary photographs and documents, testimonies of witnesses and an interactive map.
This thematical website launched in 2018 concentrates on the year of 1968, precisely on August 1968, which has indelibly marked people’s minds as a month, when the efforts to democratize the Communist regime were brutally suppressed by the Warsaw Pact invasion led by the Soviet Union. This site includes a rich collection of photographs and testimonies of witnesses, as well as contemporary documents and audiovisual records of August 1968. Moreover, the site also maps cases of victims of the occupation of Czechoslovakia.
The website was created in 2009 and significantly updated in 2019. It contains information related to the Velvet Revolution and the fall of the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia on 17th November 1989. Its visitors can find here a rich collection of photographs, leaflets and posters of November 1989.
The Festival of Freedom is a multi-genre international festival that recalls and analyses the period of non-freedom in Slovakia. It brings a lot of interesting documentaries and feature films, exhibitions, theatre performances and discussions. The Nation’s Memory Institute has been annually organizing this festival since 2010, always on the occasion of the fall of the totalitarian regime in Slovakia.
The documentary-educational project offers an interactive map of Slovakia with marked monuments, memorial plaques, statues, busts and similar memorial sites that commemorate victims of the Communist totality. Each memorial site is categorised as, for example, persecution of churches, military forced labour camps and auxiliary technical battalions, victims of the Iron Curtain, etc., and is accompanied by historical facts and context.