The family of Mohamed El Batta has established and maintained the “Sheikh Hafez El Batta Library” in Khan Younis, Gaza, for the last 300 years. Unfortunately, this library was destroyed during the latest military conflict.
Narrator: Mohamed El Batta
Researcher: Evangelos Athanasiadis
Podcast Creation: Fenia Chala
Sound Design: Dimitris Palaiogiannis
Sound Editing: Nikos Kanelakis, Dimitris Papadakis
Istorima is the biggest project for recording and preserving oral histories of Greece. More than 1,000 young researchers find narrators listen, collect and preserve stories of people from all over Greece: Stories of their hometowns, stories of love, stories that changed Greece or defined it, modern or old stories. Stories that are not recorded in the history books and that could easily be lost in time.
It was created by the journalist Sofia Papaioannou and the historian Katherine Fleming and is implemented with a founding grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF), as part of its initiative to Restart and Empower Youth (see more on www.snf.org). More than 20,000 stories are gradually being published in full on www.archive.istorima.org. Excerpts of the stories are published in the form of podcasts, videos, or written stories on www.istorima.org.