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Ethnographer and politician Bertalan Andrásfalvy was born in 1931 in Sopron. His father was Károly Andrásfalvy, a public administrator in the city of Cluj (or Kolozsvár by its Hungarian name); his mother was Judit Mezey. She was a goldsmith.

Andrásfalvy attended school in Sopron at the High School of the Order of Saint Benedict. He then continued his studies in Budapest. He studied Hungarian and Romanian and Hungarian and Romanian Ethnography and Museum Studies at the University of Budapest. He graduated with a degree in ethnography and museology. He started to work at the museum of Szekszárd. He did research on folk culture and, in particular, the history of farming. He wrote his Doctor of the Academy thesis on the fruit culture in Hungary in 1990. In 1951, he started to collect material on folk dances and folk music. In 1988, he joined the Hungarian Democratic Forum and started his political career. Between 23 May 1990 and 22 February 1993, he served as minister of education. He was made professor emeritus at the University of Pécs in 2001.

Milena Angelova, as a student of history at Neofit Rilski South-West University in the first half of the 1990s, participated actively in field expeditions gathering materials for micro-historical studies. Her doctoral dissertation, dedicated to the Model village program (2004), sets out the main thematic areas in which she develops her research interests - modernization projects, history of social work, social diseases, public health and welfare.

M. Angelova’s has conducted significant research in the field of memory politics, attempts of the communist party to control memory during the totalitarian regime.

With a sense of historical detail and sensitivity to the voices of those ignored by the official historiography groups, M. Angelova actively participates in the diverse activities of the Bulgarian Society for Autobiography and Social Communication (BSASC),  enriches the archive collection, and participates in a number of regional, national and international projects (Digital Archives - Science and Information Complex, Shared Memory Places - Digital Map of Monuments - projects of the Science Fund of the Ministry of Education and Science, To Come Out of the Shadow Supporting the Social Integration of People Threatened with Marginalisation Caused by Their Nationality (2011-2013, Grundtvig Program); Politics of Memory Cultures of the Russian-Ottoman War 1877-1878: From Divergence to Dialogue 7th Marie Curie Framework Program (2012-2016, FP7-PEOPLE-2011-IRSES Marie Curie Action International Research Staff Exchange Scheme), Knowledge Exchange and Academic Cultures in Humanities: Europe and the Black Sea Region, late 18th - 21st Centuries (2017-2020, Horizon2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Rise) among others.
As a member of the Multimedia Center for Computer Archives, Digital Archives and History of Local Governance and the International University Seminar for Balkan Studies and Specializations, she contributes to their establishment as scientific and educational dialogue centers that, through numerous exhibitions, lectures and meetings, teach history and deepenen the public debate on the recent past.

Antall József (1932-1993) was the first democratically elected Prime Minister of Hungary after the socialist period. He graduated from the Eötvös Loránd University and then worked in the National Archives and the Research Institute of Pedagogy. In 1955, he started teaching at Eötvös József Grammar School, and he led the Revolutionary Committee of the school during the 1956 Revolution. After the Soviet troops crushed the revolution, he was arrested and released several times. He continued teaching in Toldy Ferenc Grammar School in 1957, but in 1959 he was prohibited from teaching. He started working at the Semmelweis Museum of Medicine, and in 1974 he became the head of the institute. Antall also took part in the National Roundtable Talks, led by the Hungarian Democratic Forum in 1989, and he was elected to serve as president of the party. After his party won the free elections, he became the prime minister of Hungary until his death (1990-1993). He played a significant role in the fall of the communist dictatorship and the process of democratic transition in Hungary. He died of cancer in December 1993.

Andrej Aplenc was born in Ljubljana on September 2, 1930. He is from an old family of Slovenian Liberals. His father was a gymnasium professor, and his mother a teacher. He had two brothers. Both his father and mother were sympathizers of the Partisan movement but did not participate in it. Aplenc was twice detained in the prison camp on the island of Goli. The first time was during his secondary school days and the second time during college. He was a member of the League of Communist Youth of Yugoslavia (LCYY/SKOJ) and participated in the youth brigades, where he was also a troop commander. In 1947 or 1948, he was excluded from the LCYY because of his more open approach to the organization’s functioning (as troop commander he allowed the organization of a dance). He continued to advocate for greater freedom of young people among students in the school, which resulted in his first detention on Goli in 1949. He spent a year on the island and was then released. A year and a half after his release, he was summoned for interrogation by the UDSA/UDBA (State Security Administration) to assess his attitude toward everything he had experienced on Goliand his relationship with other inmates from Ljubljana, who were then released. After refusing to provide the information requested, he was sent to Goli for the second time and spent the next two years there.

After returning from Goli, he had problems reintegrating into society and was initially prohibited from studying. He began to engage in mountaineering, and in his own words – found spiritual balance and peace in that way. Later, he returned to the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering (Fakulteta za strojništvo), where he graduated. He was offered an assistant’s position at the Faculty provided that he join the Party, which Aplenc refused and then went to Switzerland (he had travel documents). There he married an American of Slovenian descent and went to America with her. He earned a masters degree in mechanical engineering there. He came back to Slovenia in the 1990s. He was rehabilitated by the court and was paid compensation for being detained on Goli. He is the author of the monograph Prodaja Slovenije (The Selling of Slovenia, Mladinska knjiga, 1997), and an associate of the weekly journal Democracy.