Ongekend Bijzonder Ongekend Bijzonder
Ongekend Bijzonder is a European Refugees Oral History project. In the Netherlands Stichting BMP (Foundation for the Promotion of Social Participation) has started an innovative community-based refugee oral history project. The title of this project is Ongekend Bijzonder, which means Specially Unknown or Unknown Special in English.
The aim of the project is to collect and create a permanent record of individual refugees’ life histories accessible to the general public. The collection comprises a significant body of testimony-based material on the subject of refugee lives in the Netherlands. The record offers a new primary source for further research. Overall the project: contributes to the diversity of the heritage collections of archives and museums; promotes the cultural participation of refugees (as creators and the public); contributes to a different perception of refugees and contributes to the current discussion about the importance of oral history and the question of what history.