exercise 45.1 407

Oral history is an important way of capturing certain aspects of the past that might otherwise be lost. Source 1.While history books relate the stories of great men and great events source 2, rarely do they include the experiences of ordinary people- slaves, concentration camp survivors, and the illiterate, for example. Source 1By providing information about the people and emotions of the past, oral history makes sense of the present and gives a glimpse of the likely future. Source 2 But because any particular rendition of a life history relies heavily on personal memory, great care must be taken to evaluate and explain the context of an oral history. Source 3
Like any other historical account, oral history is just on of the many possible versions of an individual’s past. Source 3