Jáchymov: Borders of Oblivion

The remarkably dynamic history of the small Czech town of Jáchymov provides the possibility of tracing memory, forgetting and recalling through constant rewriting and negotiation – both of a place of the individual memories, as well as the hierarchy of the events which are worthy of being remembered, and those that would rather be forgotten. German, Soviet, and Czech presence here cross with the spa and military nature of this place and its martyrological memory, on one side of the transfer of the German population shortly after World War II, and on the other one the political prisoners of the 1950s, who were forced into slave labor in the local uranium mine. All of these layers still remain today – referring to the title of the book by Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska – remembered in Jáchymov's summer landscape, in which the air is breaking the image of reality, making it fluid, and somewhat elusive. And it is this variety of the layers of memory, recalling, and oblivion, which I would like to identify and describe in my article.