tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/romani-10084/articlesRomani – The Conversation2024-01-25T13:17:44Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2201992024-01-25T13:17:44Z2024-01-25T13:17:44ZNazi genocides of Jews and Roma were entangled from the start – and so are their efforts at Holocaust remembrance today<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570420/original/file-20240119-27-9655vn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C1%2C1022%2C680&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Franz Roselbach, a Roma survivor of the Holocaust who was sent to Auschwitz when he was 15, attends a ceremony at the former Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 2006. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/roma-survivor-of-the-holocaust-franz-roselbach-who-was-sent-news-photo/72830867?adppopup=true">Sean Gallup/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When the United Nations passed a resolution to designate Jan. 27 International Holocaust Remembrance Day, it did not define the Holocaust. <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/u-n-resolution-establishing-holocaust-remembrance-day">The 2005 proclamation</a> merely noted that it “resulted in the murder of one third of the Jewish people, along with countless members of other minorities.”</p>
<p>Among those unnamed other minorities are Roma, who deserve to be part of the larger story of the Holocaust commemorated on this day. Their story is <a href="https://as.vanderbilt.edu/jewishstudies/people/faculty/ari-joskowicz/">closely connected with that of Jews’ suffering and struggle for recognition</a> – a relationship at the center of <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691244044/rain-of-ash">my 2023 book</a>, “Rain of Ash.”</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570426/original/file-20240119-25-j22s4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A blue and green flag with a red wheel design waves in front of a large stone monument with a statue on top." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570426/original/file-20240119-25-j22s4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570426/original/file-20240119-25-j22s4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570426/original/file-20240119-25-j22s4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570426/original/file-20240119-25-j22s4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570426/original/file-20240119-25-j22s4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570426/original/file-20240119-25-j22s4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570426/original/file-20240119-25-j22s4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A Romani flag waves during an event on International Romani Day in front of Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/romani-flag-hangs-at-a-pro-romani-demonstration-in-front-of-news-photo/468905978?adppopup=true">Adam Berry/Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>A chilling report</h2>
<p>To understand the connections between Jewish and Romani experiences, it is useful to return to one of the key moments when Europe’s Jews began to realize that they faced a new type of threat: systematic mass murder.</p>
<p>In March 1942, a prisoner fled Chelmno, a Nazi extermination camp in present-day Poland, <a href="http://www.deathcamps.org/occupation/bajler.html">and escaped to the Warsaw Ghetto</a>. There, he told members of the ghetto’s underground resistance movement about mass killings in gas vans. </p>
<p>Szlamek, as the witness was known, recounted how Jewish prisoners had been <a href="https://search.worldcat.org/title/63902356">forced to dig mass graves</a> for truckload upon truckload of murdered Roma from Austria. In his vivid description of the process, he reported how these Jewish gravediggers warmed themselves by putting on the clothes of the Romani victims. Once their work for the day was done, the SS forced these Jews to lie on the bodies of those already in the burial pits before being shot themselves.</p>
<p>It’s a haunting image: Jews murdered on top of the Roma whose clothes they were wearing. It also encapsulates how connected the murders of these two groups were, even as the crimes committed against them continue to be remembered as distinct events.</p>
<h2>Missing chapter</h2>
<p>Younger generations in the United States are <a href="https://www.claimscon.org/millennial-study/">not able to identify basic facts about the Jewish Holocaust</a>, according to surveys by the Claims Conference, which advocates for restitution for Jewish victims and their descendants. Around half of millennial and Gen Z respondents could not name a single ghetto or concentration camp, and just over a third knew how many Jews had been murdered: around 6 million.</p>
<p>The public knows even less about the Romani Holocaust. Indeed, the history of <a href="https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/policies/justice-and-fundamental-rights/combatting-discrimination/roma-eu/roma-equality-inclusion-and-participation-eu_en">Europe’s largest ethnic minority</a> is a blank slate for many Americans, even those who consider themselves well-informed.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571224/original/file-20240124-25-o43d27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A faded photograph of a soldier and a man in a suit standing as they interview a shorter woman in a kerchief." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571224/original/file-20240124-25-o43d27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571224/original/file-20240124-25-o43d27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571224/original/file-20240124-25-o43d27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571224/original/file-20240124-25-o43d27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571224/original/file-20240124-25-o43d27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571224/original/file-20240124-25-o43d27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571224/original/file-20240124-25-o43d27.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dr. Robert Ritter, whose pseudo-scientific work contributed to the Nazis’ forced sterilization and murder of Romani people, interviews a woman in 1938.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/gypsy-deportation-dr-robert-ritter-head-of-the-racial-news-photo/107759810?adppopup=true">Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>This is not a matter of students ignoring, or not properly absorbing, the lessons available in their history textbooks, as is the case for the Jewish Holocaust. Romani history is rarely in the textbooks to begin with.</p>
<p>Romani activists are keenly aware of this, and frequently they see Jews’ relative success telling the story of their genocide as a model for <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2019/10/30/roma-holocaust-amid-rising-hate-forgotten-victims-remembered">Romani struggles for recognition</a>.</p>
<p>Nazi Germany persecuted many groups; concentration camps were originally built to imprison the regime’s political opponents, while the first dedicated killing sites’ purpose was <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/euthanasia-program">to murder disabled people</a>. Among those persecuted, Roma and Jews were the only groups whom the Nazis and their allies systematically persecuted in large numbers as entire families – whether by deporting them to concentration and death camps, or <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/mass-shootings-of-jews-during-the-holocaust">systematically shooting them as racialized groups</a> in occupied areas of the Soviet Union. </p>
<p>As with Jews, many of Roma’s experiences of persecution and genocide occurred in locations well known to people who have learned something about the Holocaust, such as Auschwitz or <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/lodz">the Lodz ghetto in occupied Poland</a>. The Roma murdered in Chelmno <a href="http://www.lodz-ghetto.com/the_gypsy_camp.html,36">came from Lodz</a>, where the Nazis had deported over 5,000 Roma from Austria in November 1941. Many <a href="https://www.coe.int/en/web/roma-genocide/austria">Austrian Roma</a> who avoided these early deportations eventually ended up in Auschwitz. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570423/original/file-20240119-19-wp9t65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An index card filled in with personal information positioned between three photographs of the same woman's face and two handprints." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570423/original/file-20240119-19-wp9t65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570423/original/file-20240119-19-wp9t65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1272&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570423/original/file-20240119-19-wp9t65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1272&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570423/original/file-20240119-19-wp9t65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1272&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570423/original/file-20240119-19-wp9t65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1599&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570423/original/file-20240119-19-wp9t65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1599&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570423/original/file-20240119-19-wp9t65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1599&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gestapo dossiers for Roma people, whom the Nazis persecuted and considered ‘foreign and inferior.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/sinti-and-roma-gestapo-dossiers-at-the-permanent-exhibition-news-photo/523965182?adppopup=true">Horacio Villalobos/Corbis via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>In the end, the Nazis killed approximately three-quarters of <a href="https://www.coe.int/en/web/roma-genocide/austria">Austria’s prewar Romani population</a>: approximately 9,000 men, women and children. Among countries where the Romani genocide took place, this was one of the highest rates of murder, next to <a href="https://www.coe.int/en/web/roma-genocide/latvia">Latvia</a>, <a href="https://www.coe.int/en/web/roma-genocide/estonia">Estonia</a> and the areas of today’s Czech Republic that the Nazis <a href="https://www.coe.int/en/web/roma-genocide/czech-republic">called the Protectorate</a>. </p>
<p>In many other locations, totals are less clear. Serious estimates for <a href="https://www.romarchive.eu/en/voices-of-the-victims/the-number-of-victims/">the overall number of victims</a> range widely, from 120,000 to over half a million.</p>
<h2>Many languages, many faiths, many countries</h2>
<p>Romani people are highly diverse. They have many religions: Catholicism, Protestantism and Orthodox Christianity as well as Islam. Many <a href="https://rm.coe.int/roma-history-factsheets-eng/1680a2f2f8">speak Romani as their first language</a>, while others don’t. Whatever their relationship to the Romani language, all Roma are at home in at least one other language, depending on what country they live in. </p>
<p>Historically, many Romani families in Western Europe lived as itinerant traders and craftspeople, contributing to the popular image of them as travelers with wagon homes. Most Roma in Europe, however – particularly in Southeastern and East Central Europe, <a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/10/20/sunday-review/a-diaspora-of-11-million.html">where the largest Romani populations live</a> – have been settled for many generations. Whether considered nomadic or settled, they were stigmatized: frequently isolated at the edge of settlements, excluded from civil rights, and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/20/italys-treatment-of-roma-people-reflects-a-centuries-old-prejudice">targeted as a dangerous “nuisance</a>” by authorities.</p>
<p>When the Nazis and their allies persecuted this diverse population as “Gypsies,” they were able to <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/documentation-on-the-persecution-of-roma">rely on policies to police and surveil them</a> that had been <a href="https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/bavarian-precedent-roma-european-culture">in place since the late 19th century</a>.</p>
<p>These policies, including special identity cards with fingerprints, did not disappear after liberation. Instead, following the Second World War, Roma across Europe remained marginalized <a href="https://sverigesradio.se/artikel/6450629">and overpoliced</a> in ways that made it hard for them to gain recognition of the genocide they had experienced.</p>
<h2>Shared stories</h2>
<p>An international Romani civil rights movement that took shape in the 1970s, building on earlier local efforts to organize, slowly changed this. Organizations like <a href="https://iru2020.org/">the International Romani Union</a>, <a href="https://eriac.org/">the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture</a> and <a href="https://zentralrat.sintiundroma.de/en/">the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma</a>, are forming a new landscape for Romani politics and recognition.</p>
<p>From the start, their efforts were tied together with those of Jewish victims. Jewish survivors could build on a much longer history of international organizing and philanthropy, and after 1945 they could rely on the help of the thriving U.S. Jewish community in their quest to document Nazi crimes and explain them to the wider public. Many of the oldest Jewish institutions in this field, such as <a href="https://wienerholocaustlibrary.org/">the Wiener Holocaust Library</a> in London, offered crucial support, as scholars and activists strove to tell the history of the Romani Holocaust. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570424/original/file-20240119-25-s0yn47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Five older men in suits and ties sit in a semicircle as one pulls up his sleeve." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570424/original/file-20240119-25-s0yn47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570424/original/file-20240119-25-s0yn47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570424/original/file-20240119-25-s0yn47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570424/original/file-20240119-25-s0yn47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570424/original/file-20240119-25-s0yn47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570424/original/file-20240119-25-s0yn47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570424/original/file-20240119-25-s0yn47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Hermann Hoellenreiner, a Sinto Holocaust survivor, shows his prisoner tattoo to David Lewin, a Jewish Holocaust survivor, as they and officials travel to a commemoration ceremony in 2011.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/german-president-christian-wulff-looks-on-as-sinto-news-photo/108426185?adppopup=true">Jesco Denzel/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Roma and Jews found new ways to connect through their efforts for recognition and redress, though Jewish intellectuals, activists and institutions had much greater access to resources. <a href="https://vha.usc.edu/home">The Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive</a> is emblematic here: It has over 50,000 video interviews with Jewish survivors and 406 with Romani survivors. Yet this is nevertheless the largest dedicated collection of Romani testimony in the world.</p>
<p>While this unequal partnership has not dissolved, it is transforming. Jewish institutions are increasingly investing resources to preserve and digitize Romani history and to promote public education about both peoples’ experiences in collaboration with Romani activists. At the same time, Romani and Jewish activists are <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691244044/rain-of-ash">working together to overcome antisemitism and anti-Roma sentiment</a> – linked by a sense that understanding history is essential for the defense of liberal democracy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220199/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ari Joskowicz received funding from the American Philosophical Society, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, the American Society of Learned Societies, and the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies.</span></em></p>Many young people today know little about the murder of European Jews during the Holocaust, and even less about the murder of Romani communities.Ari Joskowicz, Associate Professor of History, Jewish Studies and European Studies, Vanderbilt UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1895252022-08-31T12:29:18Z2022-08-31T12:29:18ZUnknown Holocaust photos – found in attics and archives – are helping researchers recover lost stories and providing a tool against denial<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481646/original/file-20220829-18-44snrs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1%2C2%2C797%2C541&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jewish deportees march through the German town of Würzburg to the railroad station on April 25, 1942.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa6232">US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The summer of 2022 marked the <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/deportations-to-killing-centers">80th anniversary of the first Nazi deportation</a> of Jewish families from Germany to Auschwitz. </p>
<p>Although the Nazis deported hundreds of thousands of Jewish men and women, for many places where those tragic events happened, no images are known to document the crime. Surprisingly, there’s not even photographic evidence from <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/berlin">Berlin, the Nazi capital and home to Germany’s largest Jewish community</a>.</p>
<p>The lack of known images is important. Unlike in the past, historians now agree that photographs and film must be taken seriously as primary sources for their research. These sources can complement the analysis of administrative documents and survivor testimonies and thus enrich our understanding of Nazi persecution.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://dornsife.usc.edu/cf/faculty-and-staff/faculty.cfm?pid=1020030">a historian originally from Germany and now teaching in the U.S.</a>, I have researched the Nazi persecution of the Jews for 30 years and <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=aug_8D0AAAAJ&hl=en">published 10 books on the Holocaust</a>.</p>
<p>I searched for unpublished images in all the archives I visited during my research. But I have to admit that I – along with many of my colleagues – did not take the gathered visual evidence seriously as a primary source and rather used it to illustrate my publications. </p>
<p>During the past decade, scholars have realized how pictures can contribute to our understanding of mass violence as well as the resistance to it. Some can provide the only evidence we have about an act of persecution – for example, a photograph of anti-Jewish graffiti. Others will reveal additional details, as in the image of a court proceeding against anti-Nazi resistors. </p>
<p>Photographs are now in some cases the sole objects of scholarly inquiry. They are used to identify perpetrators and victims in specific cases, when other sources would not reveal them.</p>
<p><a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481618/original/file-20220829-6542-moakkm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip">Here’s one example: An image shows</a> uniformed Nazis standing in front of a passenger train filled with German Jews in Munich on Nov. 20, 1942. Who were those men? More importantly, what are the stories of the barely recognizable victims behind the windows in this image?</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481618/original/file-20220829-6542-moakkm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Soldiers watching a train filled with people as a person is pushed onto it." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481618/original/file-20220829-6542-moakkm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481618/original/file-20220829-6542-moakkm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481618/original/file-20220829-6542-moakkm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481618/original/file-20220829-6542-moakkm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481618/original/file-20220829-6542-moakkm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481618/original/file-20220829-6542-moakkm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481618/original/file-20220829-6542-moakkm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The deportation of Munich Jews to Kowno in Nazi-occupied Lithuania, Nov. 20, 1942.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">City Archive Munich, DE-1992-FS-NS-00015</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<h2>Investigating photos of Nazi deportations</h2>
<p>Between 1938 and 1945, more than 200,000 people were <a href="https://www.bundesarchiv.de/gedenkbuch/chronology/view.xhtml?lang=en">deported</a> from Germany, mainly to ghettos and camps in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe. </p>
<p>To make pictures of Nazi deportations accessible for research and education, a group of university, educational and archival institutions in Germany and the Dornsife <a href="https://dornsife.usc.edu/cagr">Center for Advanced Genocide Research</a> at the University of Southern California launched the <a href="https://lastseen.arolsen-archives.org/en/">#LastSeen Project — Pictures of Nazi Deportations</a> in October 2021.</p>
<p>This effort aims to locate, collect and analyze images of Nazi mass deportations in Germany. The deportations started with the forced expulsion of around 17,000 Jews of Polish origin in October 1938, <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/kristallnacht">right before the widespread antisemitic violence of Kristallnacht</a>, and culminated in the mass deportations to Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe between 1941 and 1945. </p>
<p>The mass deportation targeted not only Jews, but also people with disabilities as well as tens of thousands of Romani.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Hundreds of people being marched down a village street, while onlookers watch." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481621/original/file-20220829-12824-jaofjl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481621/original/file-20220829-12824-jaofjl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481621/original/file-20220829-12824-jaofjl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481621/original/file-20220829-12824-jaofjl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481621/original/file-20220829-12824-jaofjl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481621/original/file-20220829-12824-jaofjl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481621/original/file-20220829-12824-jaofjl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Romani families, in total 490 people, from Germany’s southwest border region are deported to Nazi-occupied Poland, May 22, 1940.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Research Office for Racial Hygiene, Federal Archive Germany, Barch R 165, 244-42.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What can we learn from the pictures? Not only when, where and how these forced relocations took place, but who participated, who witnessed them and who was affected by the persecution acts.</p>
<p>I work with the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research to manage the outreach for the #LastSeen Project in the English-speaking world. The project has three main goals: first, gathering all existing pictures. These images will then be analyzed to identify the victims and perpetrators and recover the stories behind the pictures. Finally, a digital platform will provide access to all the images and unearthed information, both enabling a new level of study of this visual evidence and establishing a powerful tool against Holocaust denial.</p>
<p>When the project began, the partners were skeptical of whether we would find a significant number of never-before-seen images of mass deportations. </p>
<p>But after addressing the German public and querying 1,750 German archives, within the first six months of the project we received dozens of unknown images, more then doubling the number of German towns, from 27 to over 60, where we now have photographs documenting Nazi deportations. </p>
<p>Many of these photos had collected dust on shelves in local archives in Germany, and some were found in private homes. In the future, the project hopes for discoveries in archives, museums and family possession in the U.S. and the U.K., but also in Canada, South Africa and Australia. We know that liberators took photographs with them from Germany at the end of the war, and survivors received them later via various channels. </p>
<h2>Tracing unknown images beyond Germany</h2>
<p>The project has already located photos in the United States. In two cases, survivors had donated them to archives, which project staff learned during research visits. <a href="https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn671780">Simon Strauss gave an image</a> to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum depicting the deportation in his German hometown of Hanau. He wrote on it, “Uncle Ludwig transported.” The second photo was at the Leo Baeck Institute in New York, which had received the hitherto <a href="https://digipres.cjh.org/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE9435726">only known picture</a> from the Nazi deportation of the Jews in Bad Homburg. </p>
<p>To locate more photos, the project counts on the help of ordinary citizens, researchers, archivists, museum curators and survivors’ families. </p>
<p>After joining the project, I searched the <a href="https://vhaonline.usc.edu/login">USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive</a>, which holds over 53,000 video testimonies of Holocaust survivors. Many of the Jews who gave testimony talked about Nazi deportations. All interviewees shared photographs. While many of these more than 700,000 images are artifacts of personal value, such as family and wedding photos, some images depict Nazi persecution.</p>
<p>Within minutes of my search using the term “deportation stills” I was staring at photographs showing a Nazi deportation in a small town in central Germany. At the end of his 1996 interview, Lothar Lou Beverstein, born in 1921, shared two photographs from his hometown of Halberstadt that he had received from friends after the war. Beverstein identified his father, Hugo, and his mother, Paula, <a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481627/original/file-20220829-8838-nks8x2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip">in an image showing Nazis lining up deportees</a> in front of the city’s famous 13th-century Gothic cathedral.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481627/original/file-20220829-8838-nks8x2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A large group of people assembled on the street in front of a timbered building and a large church, with people watching them on the other side of the street." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481627/original/file-20220829-8838-nks8x2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481627/original/file-20220829-8838-nks8x2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481627/original/file-20220829-8838-nks8x2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481627/original/file-20220829-8838-nks8x2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481627/original/file-20220829-8838-nks8x2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=573&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481627/original/file-20220829-8838-nks8x2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=573&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481627/original/file-20220829-8838-nks8x2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=573&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jewish families from Halberstadt, Germany, assembled for deportation from the city, April 12, 1942.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/vha17046">USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive, Lou Beverstein interview.</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Both of Lou Beverstein’s parents were deported to the Warsaw Ghetto on April 12, 1942. In his interview, Beverstein declared that to his knowledge nobody survived from that transport, which according to a list consisted of 24 men, 59 women and 23 children. Now the project needs to locate Lou Beverstein’s family in the United States or connect to other descendants from Halberstadt to find out more about the origins of the images and the identities of the deportees depicted in them. </p>
<h2>Naming and recognizing victims</h2>
<p>The identities of deportees and perpetrators in the existing images are often unknown. Most photographs show groups of victims whom project staff aim to identify so they and their stories can be acknowledged. This is very difficult, since there are seldom close-up shots.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two young girls in winter coats and hats, both wearing Jewish stars on their coats." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481631/original/file-20220829-24-gyyf07.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1769%2C1254&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481631/original/file-20220829-24-gyyf07.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481631/original/file-20220829-24-gyyf07.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481631/original/file-20220829-24-gyyf07.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481631/original/file-20220829-24-gyyf07.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481631/original/file-20220829-24-gyyf07.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481631/original/file-20220829-24-gyyf07.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Two Jewish girls awaiting deportation in Munich on Nov. 11, 1942. Their identities are not known.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">City Archive Munich DE-1992-FS-NS-00013</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Even in a <a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481631/original/file-20220829-24-gyyf07.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=crop&dpr=1">photograph clearly showing two Jewish girls</a>, we do not know anything other than that the Gestapo deported them to Kowno with the same transport <a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481618/original/file-20220829-6542-moakkm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip">depicted in the image showing Munich Jews being deported</a> referenced at the beginning of this article. The nearly 1,000 deportees from Munich were shot soon after they arrived at their destination in Nazi-occupied Lithuania.</p>
<p>This is but one example of how scholars desperately need the public’s help to recover the stories of countless unidentified victims of the Nazis.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/189525/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Wolf Gruner directs the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research, which is a partner institution in the LastSeen project. </span></em></p>Holocaust scholars long relied on documents and survivor testimonies to help reconstruct the history of that tragic event. Now, they’re turning to wordless witnesses to learn more: pictures.Wolf Gruner, Shapell-Guerin Chair in Jewish Studies and Professor of History; Founding Director, USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and SciencesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1798692022-05-05T10:18:09Z2022-05-05T10:18:09ZSix English words borrowed from the Romany language<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460009/original/file-20220427-22-a3m5i8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C22%2C4992%2C2784&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/romani-peoples-flag-blowing-wind-3d-2057422496">Tavarius/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities have been part of the UK’s regional populations for centuries. Roma communities are documented to have migrated to the UK during the early 15th century and evidence is found among a variety of official <a href="https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/citizenship/citizen_subject/docs/egyptians.htm">legal documentation</a> and formal correspondence. As part of a wider community referred to as Gypsy Roma and Traveller, Roma have often faced hostility and inequality. It may be surprising then to hear that Romany, an unwritten language spoken by Roma communities is used in everyday English. Romany is a language spoken by communities who live largely across Europe.</p>
<p>The Romany language and culture have been associated with <a href="https://www.history.org.uk/podcasts/categories/438/podcast/655/romani-history">central and northern</a> India and inherits a significant part of its linguistic heritage from Sanskrit alongside modern Indian languages such as Hindi, Urdu and Gujarati. In this sense, it is considered the only Indo Aryan-derived European language.</p>
<p>While there are large communities of Romany speakers across Europe and beyond, only a small number of people in the UK speak a fully grammatical version. Within the UK, the majority of speakers use what is referred to as Anglo-Romany. This is a language unique to the Anglo-Roma of the UK and with a historical and linguistic connection to Romany culture. You may be surprised by some of the words that have been incorrectly labelled as colloquial or slang in English, which are in fact words that have crossed over from Anglo-Romany.</p>
<p>Here are six such words including their meaning found in regional dialects in England with their Romany historical links explained.</p>
<h2>1. Wonga</h2>
<p>This is a word considered slang according to many online dictionaries. However, this is actually an Anglo-Romany word used for “money”. The word derives from the European Romany word “<em>vangar</em>” and is a word used for “coal”, having a clear and historical association of value. There are a number of variations used across Anglo-Romany speaking communities for money and these range from “<em>vonga</em>” to “<em>luvna</em>”. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Loads of notes." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460015/original/file-20220427-22-4yswlf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460015/original/file-20220427-22-4yswlf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460015/original/file-20220427-22-4yswlf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460015/original/file-20220427-22-4yswlf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460015/original/file-20220427-22-4yswlf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460015/original/file-20220427-22-4yswlf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460015/original/file-20220427-22-4yswlf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Wonga derives from the Romany word ‘vangar’, which means money.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/gbp-money-bill-close-finance-background-1093246820">Makhh/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>2. Chav</h2>
<p>The word “chav” has been popularised as a slur in English to mean a person whose behaviour shows a lack of education or someone having <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13626046">a lower-class status</a>. But the meaning of “chav” or “chavvi” in Anglo-Romany simply means “boy” or “girl” or even just “child”. “chavo” for boy, “chavi” for girl and “chave” meaning children.</p>
<h2>3. Cushty</h2>
<p>This is another word that was brought into mainstream use and is often associated with the comedy character Del Boy in the popular British sitcom Only Fools and Horses. The word “cushty”, sometimes spelled “kushti” in Anglo-Romany is used as an affirmative adjective and means “good” or “fantastic”. The meaning of cushty originates from an older Romany word “<em>kuč</em>”, meaning expensive. Its use in English is most likely linked to dialect mixing of Anglo-Roma communities and east London cockney speakers.</p>
<h2>4. Chingering</h2>
<p>According to the online source the urban dictionary the word “<a href="https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Chingering">chingering</a>” means to caress another person’s chin in a sensual way. This is quite far removed from the meaning of the word chingering used amongst speakers of Anglo-Romany. This word is used to refer to quarrelling or to the act of insulting someone. The word again derives from the Romany words “<em>čhinger</em>” and “<em>čhingerel</em>” meaning to quarrel or shout.</p>
<h2>5. Pal</h2>
<p>This is perhaps the most well-used example of a Romany word found in everyday English, most typically meaning “friend” in English. This term actually originates from the Romany word “phral” meaning brother. The Anglo-Romany word pal is also used for brother and has been extended and again crossed over through dialect contact over the centuries into everyday English.</p>
<h2>6. Peeved</h2>
<p>The English slang word “peeved” is sometimes used to refer to someone who has drunk too much alcohol and is again derived from a Romany word. The European Romany word “<em>pijav</em>” means “drink” and shows a direct connection with the English slang. </p>
<p>These are only a few examples and words such as “lollipop”, and “doylum” are also words from Anglo-Romany. There are many other words from Anglo-Romany that have been adopted into English, and most likely a regional dialect you know will have some fascinating examples.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/179869/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Lee does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There’s a long history of communities speaking Romany in the UK, so it’s hardly surprising that some of its words have found their way into everyday English.Peter Lee, Lecturer in Language and linguistics, Nottingham Trent UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1703122022-01-27T12:56:37Z2022-01-27T12:56:37ZSocial care: how Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children face discrimination across Europe and the UK<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442585/original/file-20220125-19-16a39cj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A Roma boy and his horse in Velykyi Bereznyi, a settlement in the Carpathian mountains, in Western Ukraine.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/velykyi-bereznyi-ukraine-february-28-2021-1962358759">Brum | Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Throughout Europe – from Italy to Hungary – Romani children are <a href="http://www.errc.org/reports-and-submissions/life-sentence-romani-children-in-institutional-care">overrepresented</a> in institutional care. This is particularly acute in eastern Europe. As many as four in five children in the care institutions of some countries <a href="http://www.errc.org/uploads/upload_en/file/5284_file1_blighted-lives-romani-children-in-state-care.pdf">are of Roma</a> origin. In Bulgaria, while the Roma comprise less than 10% of the population, they account for more than 60% of the children’s home population. In Slovakia, that number rises to 80%. </p>
<p>The situation in the UK <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-policing-bill-will-criminalise-gypsy-and-traveller-families-there-is-a-better-approach-174487">isn’t much better</a>. <a href="https://www.criticalpublishing.com/anti-racist-social-worker">Social work experts</a> estimate that between 2009 and 2015, there has been an increase of 733% in the number of Roma children in foster care. A <a href="https://academic.oup.com/bjsw/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/bjsw/bcab265/6500256">recent analysis</a> of the UK government’s own data from 2020 confirms that Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children are over-represented in child welfare services in England. </p>
<p>My <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Financing-Roma-Inclusion-with-European-Structural-Funds-Why-Good-Intentions/Kostka/p/book/9780367582951">research shows</a> that Roma communities across Europe are routinely denied access to essential services but are instead subjected to oppressive state intervention. Senior public servants I have interviewed in Slovakia and the Czech Republic alike have expressed explicitly prejudiced views. </p>
<p>Those interviewees held that all Roma share predictable beliefs, values and behaviours and are prone to violence, negligence, laziness, addiction and illiteracy. They see the abject poverty experienced by many Roma families as an active choice or a cultural norm rather than the result of centuries of oppression and ongoing <a href="https://theconversation.com/gypsy-roma-and-traveller-communities-endure-worsening-racism-and-inequality-this-must-be-a-turning-point-114890">discrimination</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A group of young children smile up at the camera" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442587/original/file-20220125-27-1mzyqvl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442587/original/file-20220125-27-1mzyqvl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442587/original/file-20220125-27-1mzyqvl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442587/original/file-20220125-27-1mzyqvl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442587/original/file-20220125-27-1mzyqvl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442587/original/file-20220125-27-1mzyqvl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442587/original/file-20220125-27-1mzyqvl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Roma children in the Old Town of Constanta, in Romania.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/constanta-romania-august-22-2015-happy-308745359">ELEPHOTOS | Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Poverty pathologised</h2>
<p>Across Europe, many Roma families have little or no access to social support. Preventative measures are scarce or non-existent. According to <a href="http://www.errc.org/reports-and-submissions/life-sentence-romani-children-in-institutional-care">a 2011 report</a> by the European Roma Rights Centre, poverty is often cited as the reason for children being removed. And removal is often the first, rather than the last recourse. </p>
<p>The report cites the harrowing case of one Hungarian Romani family. When their home was damaged in a storm, instead of receiving financial help to make the necessary repairs, the family’s newborn baby was placed in foster care.</p>
<p>In the media, these communities are frequently portrayed as uneducated, culturally backward and lazy, predisposed to criminality and to exploiting benefits. In Poland, headlines talk of Gypsies attacking people, of Roma being not poor but <a href="https://wyborcza.pl/7,75398,16280560,kradna-oblapiaja-niszcza-i-nie-sa-biedni-jak-gazeta-wroclawska.html?disableRedirects=true">liars and thieves</a>.</p>
<p>I have found that, despite not knowing very much about Roma culture, public authorities treat the coping strategies of the most at-risk families as problematic and abnormal, under assumptions that equate Roma culture and poverty with harmful behaviour. In Slovakia, charity workers told me that the authorities view marginalised Roma communities as a threat to mainstream society.</p>
<p>For a study of Romanian Roma migrants in Poland in 2013, I conducted <a href="https://intersections.tk.mta.hu/index.php/intersections/article/view/387">interviews</a> with social workers who insisted that removing Roma children is necessary and justifiable, citing nomadic lifestyles as a reason. As the manager of one social-work team in Wroclaw told me: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The parents come and go, they don’t want to work, or send their children to school, it is not possible to work with them, they lie; but worst of all they force children to beg. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In Britain, there are legal prohibitions on child removals on the grounds of poverty or deprivation. However, research has found that <a href="https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/sites/default/files/research_report_12inequalities_experienced_by_gypsy_and_traveller_communities_a_review.pdf">Gypsy</a> and <a href="https://policypress.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1332/policypress/9781847428738.001.0001/upso-9781847428738">Traveller</a> children are often placed in care following official “concern” and amid disputes over accommodation, school attendance and employment-related practices. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Travellers walk alongside horsedrawn painted wooden caravans down a road." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442588/original/file-20220125-15-5gjzun.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442588/original/file-20220125-15-5gjzun.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442588/original/file-20220125-15-5gjzun.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442588/original/file-20220125-15-5gjzun.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442588/original/file-20220125-15-5gjzun.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442588/original/file-20220125-15-5gjzun.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442588/original/file-20220125-15-5gjzun.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In the UK, social workers often feel ill-equipped to properly assess Traveller families.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/stafford-england-june-21st-2019-traditional-1430319233">Andy J Billington | Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Damaging stereotypes</h2>
<p>The British historian, <a href="http://www.reaktionbooks.co.uk/display.asp?ISB=9781780232577">Becky Taylor</a>, underlines that this oppression has a long history. From their arrival in Britain in the 16th century, Gypsies were actively prosecuted for their costumes and nomadic way of life, which was deemed a threat to British society. The 1530 Egyptian Act aimed to end the “naughty, idle and ungodly life and company” of Gypsies by either forcing them to assimilate or face exile and death. The 1824 Vagrancy Act further criminalised the nomadic Gypsy lifestyle, equating it with harmful behaviour and risk. </p>
<p>Stereotypical views held by care professionals still lead to discrimination. Of the 137 child-protection professionals surveyed in a <a href="http://www.errc.org/uploads/upload_en/file/the-fragility-of-professional-competence-january-2018.pdf">2018 study</a> in England, half believed that Gypsy, Roma and Traveller <a href="https://theconversation.com/care-system-fails-gypsy-roma-and-traveller-children-31477">children</a> were more at risk of significant harm than any other child. They cite parental neglect rather than poverty as reasons for the commencement of child proceedings. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.ippr.org/files/publications/pdf/Roma-communties-and-Brexit_Oct2016.pdf?noredirect=1">Recent Roma arrivals</a> to the UK have similarly suffered from being labelled as as hard to reach, hard to engage, or uncooperative by social services. <a href="https://www.advicenow.org.uk/lawforlife/law-for-life-projects/multimedia-toolkit-for-roma-parents/">Dada Felja</a>, from the Law for Life charity, which supports Roma parents, says that this mistrust stems from the discrimination and racism they have long experienced at the hands of public officials. </p>
<p>Within the assessment and referral process, <a href="https://www.lboro.ac.uk/news-events/news/2019/june/new-report-roma-migration-benefits-to-britain/">language barriers,</a> cultural differences in family structure and child-rearing practices, acculturative stress (the stressors associated with being an immigrant or ethnic minority and adapting to the local culture) and isolation are rarely considered. </p>
<p>Research has shown that social workers often do not <a href="http://www.errc.org/uploads/upload_en/file/the-fragility-of-professional-competence-january-2018.pdf">properly assess</a> Roma children and their families, because they feel ill-equipped or unable to do so. Assessments are crucial to understanding the child’s experience and what support the family might need. They also help to ascertain whether alternative carers could be found within the extended family. Failing to undertake such assessments is a clear indicator of discrimination and structural inequality.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/170312/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joanna Kostka does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Romani children across Europe are overrepresented in institutional care. Research shows widely held prejudical views and structural inequality is to blame.Joanna Kostka, Lecturer in social work and sociology, Lancaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1431442020-08-26T12:20:42Z2020-08-26T12:20:42ZForced sterilization policies in the US targeted minorities and those with disabilities – and lasted into the 21st century<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353240/original/file-20200817-18-b7q561.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1165%2C26%2C2383%2C2314&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An operation taking place in 1941 on South Side of Chicago.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.rawpixel.com/image/2301130">Library of Congress</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In August 1964, the North Carolina Eugenics Board met to decide if a 20-year-old Black woman should be sterilized. Because her name was redacted from the records, we call her Bertha. </p>
<p>She was a single mother with one child who lived at the segregated O'Berry Center for African American adults with intellectual disabilities in Goldsboro. According to the North Carolina Eugenics Board, Bertha had an IQ of 62 and exhibited “aggressive behavior and sexual promiscuity.” She had been orphaned as a child and had a limited education. Likely because of her “low IQ score,” the board determined she was not capable of rehabilitation. </p>
<p>Instead the board recommended the “protection of sterilization” for Bertha, because she was “feebleminded” and deemed unable to “assume responsibility for herself” or her child. Without her input, Bertha’s guardian signed the sterilization form.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353451/original/file-20200818-14-mzzs17.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A 1950s era pamphlet that reads: The average feebleminded parent cannot be expected to provide good heredity, a normal home, intelligent care - to say nothing of the many other things needed to bring up children successfully." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353451/original/file-20200818-14-mzzs17.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353451/original/file-20200818-14-mzzs17.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353451/original/file-20200818-14-mzzs17.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353451/original/file-20200818-14-mzzs17.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353451/original/file-20200818-14-mzzs17.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=644&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353451/original/file-20200818-14-mzzs17.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=644&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353451/original/file-20200818-14-mzzs17.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=644&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A pamphlet extolling the benefit of selective sterilization published by the Human Betterment League of North Carolina, 1950.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://digital.ncdcr.gov/digital/collection/p249901coll37/id/14974/">North Carolina State Documents Collection/State Library of North Carolina</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Bertha’s story is one of the 35,000 sterilization stories we are reconstructing at the <a href="https://ssjlab.weebly.com">Sterilization and Social Justice Lab</a>. Our interdisciplinary team explores the history of eugenics and sterilization in the U.S. using data and stories. So far, we have captured historical records from North Carolina, California, Iowa and Michigan. </p>
<h2>Eugenics</h2>
<p>More than <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/sterilization-united-states_n_568f35f2e4b0c8beacf68713">60,000 people were sterilized in 32 states during the 20th century</a> based on the bogus “science” of eugenics, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1051/medsci/2009256-7641">a term coined by Francis Galton in 1883</a>.</p>
<p>Eugenicists applied emerging theories of biology and genetics to human breeding. White elites with strong biases about who was “fit” and “unfit” embraced eugenics, believing American society would be improved by increased breeding of Anglo Saxons and Nordics, whom they assumed had high IQs. Anyone who did not fit this mold of racial perfection, which included most immigrants, Blacks, Indigenous people, poor whites and people with disabilities, <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674445574">became targets of eugenics programs</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353242/original/file-20200817-14-rlngdx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An old map of the United States showing the status of state eugenics laws in 1913. About half the states either have laws or are in the process of creating them." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353242/original/file-20200817-14-rlngdx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353242/original/file-20200817-14-rlngdx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353242/original/file-20200817-14-rlngdx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353242/original/file-20200817-14-rlngdx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353242/original/file-20200817-14-rlngdx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=639&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353242/original/file-20200817-14-rlngdx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=639&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353242/original/file-20200817-14-rlngdx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=639&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">By 1913, many states had or were on their way to having eugenic sterilization laws.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://collections.countway.harvard.edu/onview/files/original/3f02811d6a83b0f896c4eaa6794ecffc.jpg">Boston Medical Library in the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Indiana passed the world’s first sterilization law in 1907. Thirty-one states followed suit. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr.114.3.776-a">State-sanctioned sterilizations</a> reached their peak in the 1930s and 1940s but continued and, in some states, rose during the 1950s and 1960s. </p>
<p>The United States was an international leader in eugenics. Its sterilization laws actually informed Nazi Germany. The Third Reich’s 1933 “<a href="https://www.ushmm.org/learn/timeline-of-events/1933-1938/law-for-the-prevention-of-offspring-with-hereditary-diseases">Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases</a>” <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691172422/hitlers-american-model">was modeled on laws in Indiana and California</a>. Under this law, the <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674745780">Nazis sterilized approximately 400,000 children and adults</a>, mostly Jews and other “undesirables,” labeled “defective.”</p>
<h2>Anti-Black racism and sterilization</h2>
<p>The team at the Sterilization and Social Justice Lab has uncovered some remarkable trends in eugenic sterilization. At first, sterilization programs targeted white men, expanding by the 1920s to affect the same number of women as men. The laws used broad and ever-changing disability labels like “feeblemindedness” and “mental defective.” Over time, though, women and people of color increasingly became the target, as <a href="https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/fit-to-be-tied/9780813578910">eugenics amplified sexism and racism</a>.</p>
<p><iframe id="SIc36" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/SIc36/4/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>It is no coincidence that sterilization rates for Black women rose as desegregation got underway. Until the 1950s, schools and hospitals in the U.S. were segregated by race, but integration threatened to break down Jim Crow apartheid. <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/mothers-of-massive-resistance-9780190271718?cc=us&lang=en&">The backlash involved the reassertion of white supremacist control and racial hierarchies</a> specifically through the <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/155575/killing-the-black-body-by-dorothy-roberts/">control of Black reproduction and future Black lives by sterilization</a>.</p>
<p>In North Carolina, which sterilized the third highest number of people in the United States – <a href="https://journalnow.com/news/local/against-their-will-north-carolinas-sterilization-program/image_acfc2fb8-8feb-11e2-a857-0019bb30f31a.html">7,600 people from 1929 to 1973</a> – women vastly outnumbered men and Black women were <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9780807855850/choice-and-coercion/">disproportionately sterilized</a>. Preliminary analysis shows that from 1950 to 1966, Black women were sterilized at more than three times the rate of white women and more than 12 times the rate of white men. This pattern <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520299948/how-all-politics-became-reproductive-politics">reflected the ideas</a> that Black women were not capable of being good parents and poverty should be managed with reproductive constraint.</p>
<p>Bertha’s sterilization was ordered by a state eugenics board, but in the 1960s and 1970s, new federal programs like Medicaid also started funding nonconsensual sterilizations. <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/population-control-politics-women-sterilization-and-reproductive-choice/oclc/1003747011">More than 100,000</a> <a href="https://nyupress.org/9780814758274/women-of-color-and-the-reproductive-rights-movement/">Black, Latino and Indigenous women were affected</a>.</p>
<p>Many <a href="http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/films/no-mas-bebes/">felt shame and shrouded these experiences in secrecy</a>, not even telling their closest relatives and friends. Others took to the streets and filed law suits to protest forced sterilization. The powerful documentary “<a href="https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/films/no-mas-bebes/">No Más Bebés</a>” tells the story of hundreds of Mexican American women coerced into tubal ligations at a county hospital in Los Angeles in the 1970s. One of them, who became a plaintiff in a case against the hospital, reflecting back decades later said <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/no-m-s-beb-s-looks-back-l-mexican-moms-n505256">her experience “makes me want to cry.”</a></p>
<h2>Forced sterilizations continue</h2>
<p>In the years between 1997 and 2010, unwanted sterilizations were performed on <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/new-documentary-illuminates-the-forced-sterilization-of-women-in-california-prison">approximately 1,400 women in California prisons</a>. These operations were based on the same rationale of bad parenting and undesirable genes evident in North Carolina in 1964. The doctor performing the sterilizations told a reporter the <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/07/09/200444613/californias-prison-sterilizations-reportedly-echoes-eugenics-era">operations were cost-saving measures</a>.</p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>Unfortunately, forced sterilization continues on. <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2016/07/roma-women-share-stories-forced-sterilisation-160701100731050.html">Romani women have been sterilized unwillingly in the Czech Republic</a> as recently as 2007. In northern China, Uighurs, a religious and racial minority group, have been <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/china-forcibly-sterilizing-uighur-women-xinjiang-abortions-contraception-ap-2020-6">subjected to mass sterilization</a> and other measures of extreme population control.</p>
<p>All forced sterilization campaigns, regardless of their time or place, have one thing in common. They involve dehumanizing a particular subset of the population deemed less worthy of reproduction and family formation. They merge perceptions of disability with racism, xenophobia and sexism – resulting in the disproportionate sterilization of minority groups.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/143144/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexandra Minna Stern receives funding from the National Institutes of Health-National Humane Genome Research Institute for portions of this research project. </span></em></p>The US has a long history of forced sterilization campaigns that were driven by the bogus ‘science’ of eugenics, racism and sexism.Alexandra Minna Stern, Professor of American Culture, History, and Women's Studies, University of MichiganLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1282012019-12-06T16:08:05Z2019-12-06T16:08:05ZCenturies of prejudice means Gypsies and Travellers are still political targets today<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304952/original/file-20191203-66998-r6slgu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1%2C1%2C1196%2C932&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Gypsy by Thomas George Webster.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Calderdale Metropolitan Borough Council</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Conservative Party’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/gypsies-and-travellers-clampdown-is-less-dog-whistle-more-political-fog-horn-126453">manifesto commitments</a> to “tackle unauthorised traveller camps” and give police new powers to seize Travellers’ property and vehicles play to an age-old view of travelling people as criminals. The manifesto argues this is “to protect our communities”, resolutely placing Travellers outside a Tory concept of “community”, and playing to <a href="https://theconversation.com/gypsy-roma-and-traveller-communities-endure-worsening-racism-and-inequality-this-must-be-a-turning-point-114890">centuries-old suspicions and prejudices</a>.</p>
<p>British Romani and Traveller people are wearyingly familiar with this political rhetoric as repeated in newspapers, on television and in the playground. In his magisterial <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/stopping-placesby-damian-le-bas-review-stunning-memoir-gypsy/">The Stopping Places</a> from 2018, Damian Le Bas described his relationship with travelling, with being a Traveller and to Britain. From a young age, he realised that “the land I lived in would never allow me to forget that it saw the Gypsies as a people apart”. The Romani academic Ken Lee has pointed out that no matter when or where, Romanies have been seen as strangers.</p>
<p>The word “Gypsy” is an exonym derived from “Egyptian”, which is how Romani people were described when the diaspora was first noted in Britain. The <a href="https://www.ourmigrationstory.org.uk/oms/romani-gypsies-in-16th-century-britain">first record of Romanies in England</a> is sometimes given as an inquest in 1514 that mentions an Egyptian woman, though there is also evidence for a much earlier presence. A <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1617141/">10th-century skeleton unearthed in Norwich</a> has a DNA sequence matching a rare modern Romani lineage. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/gypsies-and-travellers-clampdown-is-less-dog-whistle-more-political-fog-horn-126453">Gypsies and Travellers 'clampdown' is less dog whistle, more political fog-horn</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>As well as being called Gypsies, British Romani people are often referred to (or refer to themselves) as Travellers. Irish Travellers in Britain and other travelling groups have a separate community history to Romani people, although laws, politics and attitudes have led them to share many experiences.</p>
<p>The stereotype of the Gypsy criminal is neither new, nor exclusive to Britain. Yet it has a disturbingly pernicious cultural power. As a document signifying attitudes and aspirations, the Conservative Party manifesto of 2019 joins a long list of representations – in law, the media, visual arts and fiction – that contribute to the false impression of Romanies or Travellers en masse as criminal outsiders. </p>
<h2>Different century, same attitude</h2>
<p>Almost from the outset, Gypsies were subject to the force of the law. The Egyptians Act of 1554 introduced the death penalty for “Egyptians” who refused to leave the country. The Tudors wanted real control over who was coming in and out.</p>
<p>Almost two centuries later, on New Year’s Day 1753, a teenage maidservant called Elizabeth Canning was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1988/03/20/opinion/the-editorial-notebook-the-brawley-case-of-1753.html">apparently kidnapped</a> from the City of London to be forced into prostitution in Enfield, some miles away. She claimed that, after several weeks in starving captivity, she escaped through a window. The woman who owned the brothel was sentenced to branding of the thumb, and Mary Squires, a Gypsy, who was said to have assisted, was sentenced to death by hanging. </p>
<p>The sensational media reporting of the time was sure of Squires’s guilt because she was a Gypsy. But their stereotyping was wrong: Squires had an alibi and received a full pardon. Another <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?redir_esc=y&id=WGpkoQ7m3iIC&q=%E2%80%9Ca+further+instance+of+their+Barbarity+to+our+Subjects%2C+which+shews+the+immediate+Necessity+of+rooting+these+Villains+out+of+their+Dens#v=onepage&q=out%20of%20their%20dens&f=false">story about the case</a> mentioned a street-seller supposedly beaten and robbed by Gypsies as “a further instance of their Barbarity to our Subjects, which shews the immediate Necessity of rooting these Villains out of their Dens”. In 1753 as in 2019, the easy line for the press to take was that “our” communities needed protecting from these criminal outsiders.</p>
<p>A century later, and an 1865 painting by Thomas George Webster called The Gypsy hangs in the Smith Art Gallery in Brighouse, West Yorkshire. Webster’s image portrays a dark-haired, sharp-faced Gypsy woman emerging from the foliage outside an open window, besides which a pale girl sits sewing. A small white pot on the windowsill is easily reachable through the window. The painted scene implies that the Gypsy woman will steal from the other, and the girl’s expression suggests that the wide-open window suddenly seems a mistake. </p>
<p>This minor moment in art history may seem innocuous, but it is part of the steady drip, drip of cultural references in which Gypsies and Travellers are painted, metaphorically or literally, in a particular light. Throughout the 19th century, novels, poems and books for children portrayed Gypsies as suspect and to be feared.</p>
<p>Each century has its Gypsy and Traveller suspects, across all cultural forms and varied audiences. It is no surprise that, with this cultural history, politicians claim again and again to want to take action against these groups’ perceived criminality. The <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/14/police-oppose-traveller-and-gypsy-camp-crackdown-foi-shows">opposition of police forces</a> to the Home Office’s proposed policy on unauthorised encampments shows how much the Conservative’s manifesto pledge is about image rather than well-researched policy. It is the same image that has been informed by centuries of fictional but powerful representation. </p>
<p>The British state does not need special protection from Romani and Traveller communities. With their <a href="https://theconversation.com/gypsy-christmas-food-bank-challenge-is-just-one-of-their-many-contributions-to-society-108136">social and cultural contributions to British life</a> ignored or deemed worthless, it is Romani and Traveller people that need protecting from an over-zealous state.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/128201/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jodie Matthews has previously received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. </span></em></p>Attacking Gypsies and Travellers is an easy win for politicians, thanks to centuries of prejudice cultured by the state and the media.Jodie Matthews, Reader in English Literature, University of HuddersfieldLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/954682018-04-25T10:03:14Z2018-04-25T10:03:14ZTo Europe’s shame, Roma remain stigmatised outsiders – even when they live in mansions<p>Anti-Roma sentiment and negative stereotypes across Europe are so pervasive that even wealthy Roma families face stigma and inferior treatment. That’s the finding of our <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/1468-2427.12626">new research</a> on wealthy Roma households in Romania, which exposes the deep-seated stigmatisation of Europe’s perennial “outsiders”. </p>
<p>Most government and EU policies dealing with the integration of Roma across Europe are fairly consistent. They talk the talk of integration: “social capital”, “empowerment”, economic and labour market “inclusion”, “desegregation” or “participation”. </p>
<p>Yet, in my research with human geographer <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Cretan_Remus2">Remus Cretan</a>, we found that wealthy Roma households in Romania who are economically active, upwardly mobile, and live in conventional housing in mixed neighbourhoods, still face the same stigmatisation as those Roma households who live in abject poverty within <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/the-truth-about-romanias-gypsies-not-coming-over-here-not-stealing-our-jobs-8489097.html">segregated ghettos</a>. </p>
<p>We interviewed 60 Roma households in south-west Romania whose relative wealth challenged the dominant perception of Roma as an economically excluded group living in degraded environments. And our analysis of Romanian print media over a five-year period between 2012 and 2016 showed heightened attention to “wealthy Roma” and criticism of “ugly Gypsy palaces”, particularly since 2013 and an escalation in populist rhetoric.</p>
<p>Roma settlement in more affluent neighbourhoods is met with hostility and protest. Yet many interviewees faced unfounded accusations that their wealth was a result of begging and theft, or that their daughters were sex workers, and their children faced the same accusations from peers. They are invariably accused of building their wealth on illegal activity, a criticism that draws on longstanding stereotypes of criminality and deviance. Those Roma who do achieve social mobility in Romania are often met with accusations of belonging to a “Roma mafia”. All this serves to undermine economic progress and leads to Roma avoidance of public spaces, stifling “integration”. </p>
<h2>Widespread prejudice</h2>
<p>The marginalisation of Roma across Europe raises fundamental questions about the EU project. For the political right, Roma are used as a means of <a href="https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/656553/Roma-gypsy-palaces-quit-EU-benefits-Brexit">mobilising anti-EU sentiment within Europe</a>. For the left, the systematic and toothless failures of EU policy to address widespread Roma racism undermines the rhetoric of the EU as an inclusive, rights-driven project, but also serves as a reminder of the importance of the nation and national character. </p>
<p>From day-to-day interactions through to political rhetoric, Roma are largely treated by wider society as inferior. In November 2017, Lisa Evans, the wife of Northern Ireland footballer Corry Evans, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/nov/10/corry-evans-wife-rant-romanian-referee">posted an offensive tweet</a> after a Romanian referee awarded a “dodgy” penalty for a highly questionable handball on the part of her husband. She wrote: “Romanian gypsy c**t!!! And to actually think Northern Ireland has probably homed one of his smelly relatives!! Ungrateful t**t!! Anyway onwards and upwards.” </p>
<p>She later deleted the tweet and apologised for posting it, but her words captured the scale of the task in hand. Conflation of the Romanian nationality with the diverse Roma ethnic group underscores the widespread level of ignorance. References to housing and welfare, hygiene and “ungratefulness” are all longstanding Roma stereotypes that seem to roll off the tongue. It’s as if Roma are sub-human.</p>
<p>Perhaps unsurprisingly, when faced with such hostility, many Roma show a tendency towards avoidance and separation – a protective retreat into the private sphere of the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/43997043?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">family or the group</a>. Though there is sometimes <a href="https://www.ainceputploaia.com/">resistance</a> to eviction and ghettoisation, often the burden of stigmatisation, or the threat of violence, drive Roma to avoid interaction and public spaces altogether. Sites and opportunities for meaningful interaction are severely curtailed, further perpetuating stereotypes. Certain myths – such as that <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2473054/Irish-girl-seven-returned-Roma-family-DNA-tests-prove-IS-daughter.html">Roma “steal babies”</a> – are all the more powerful when backed by political or media rhetoric and the actions of state officials. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/216254/original/file-20180425-175041-9g7t8i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/216254/original/file-20180425-175041-9g7t8i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216254/original/file-20180425-175041-9g7t8i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216254/original/file-20180425-175041-9g7t8i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216254/original/file-20180425-175041-9g7t8i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216254/original/file-20180425-175041-9g7t8i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216254/original/file-20180425-175041-9g7t8i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">An illegal eviction of Roma families in Bucharest in early 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/pawagner/31861669444/sizes/l">pawagner via flickr.com</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
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<h2>Seen as the Roma’s problem</h2>
<p>Yet often, Roma separation and exclusion is seen as a problem of Roma: it’s Roma themselves who need to change. Roma culture and customs are presented by both the right and the left <a href="https://theconversation.com/anti-roma-stigma-of-czech-president-milos-zeman-threatens-progress-over-romani-rights-88437">as the problem</a> and a threat to non-Roma. These perspectives always lack historical perspective and serve to make racism against the Roma invisible. For example, 500 years of slavery in Romania or the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-genocide-of-the-roma-and-how-commemoration-of-this-forgotten-holocaust-is-shifting-92771">Romani Holocaust</a> are key contexts for understanding the position of Roma, but these histories are woefully neglected. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-genocide-of-the-roma-and-how-commemoration-of-this-forgotten-holocaust-is-shifting-92771">The genocide of the Roma – and how commemoration of this 'forgotten Holocaust' is shifting</a>
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<p>While our research in Romania captured the socio-economic diversity of Roma families beyond poverty and deprivation, it also exposed how consistently they are harassed and stigmatised, regardless of wealth. The power of group stigmatisation is such that Roma retreat from the public sphere, and so maintain their separation and diminish the chance of bonds and identification with non-Roma.</p>
<p>Until the longstanding and widely held perception of Roma inferiority is acknowledged and better understood, then policies of Roma “integration” can only be partially successful. Only through an understanding of group stigmatisation and its drivers can racist attitudes be addressed effectively. And perhaps then Europe’s longstanding shame can lead to more opportunities and spaces for meaningful interaction between Roma and non-Roma.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/95468/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ryan Powell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>New research among well-off Roma families in Romania shows how widespread prejudice against them is.Ryan Powell, Reader in Urban Studies, University of SheffieldLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/927712018-04-06T13:21:49Z2018-04-06T13:21:49ZThe genocide of the Roma – and how commemoration of this ‘forgotten Holocaust’ is shifting<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213138/original/file-20180404-189813-dftnxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">German Sinti and Roma awaiting deportation from Asperg in southwestern Germany, May 1940.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABundesarchiv_R_165_Bild-244-48%2C_Asperg%2C_Deportation_von_Sinti_und_Roma.jpg">Bundesarchiv via Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The genocide of the Roma by the Nazis remains for many <a href="http://www.errc.org/blog/ten-pictures-that-tell-us-human-stories-of-the-forgotten-holocaust/73">the “forgotten Holocaust”</a>. February 26, 2018 marked the 75th anniversary of <a href="http://hmd.org.uk/content/26021943-first-transport-gypsies-roma-and-sinti-reaches-auschwitz">the day in 1943</a> when, following an order issued by SS leader Heinrich Himmler the preceding December, the first transport carrying German Sinti and Roma arrived at the “Gypsy Camp” in Auschwitz-Birkenau – the beginning of a wave of mass transports which peaked that March. By war’s end, some <a href="http://auschwitz.org/en/history/categories-of-prisoners/sinti-and-roma-gypsies-in-auschwitz/">20,000 Sinti and Roma</a> had been murdered in Auschwitz or died as a consequence of their internment there.</p>
<p>The families of the victims of the Roma Holocaust <a href="https://theconversation.com/anti-roma-stigma-of-czech-president-milos-zeman-threatens-progress-over-romani-rights-88437">still struggle</a> for compensation and equal rights. Meanwhile, institutional and rhetorical anti-Gypsyism is sadly becoming politically respectable in parts of Europe.</p>
<p>Yet at the same time, the way the Romani Holocaust is commemorated and represented is shifting. Thanks above all to the mobilisation of Romani communities, physical memorials are proliferating, from the central memorial to the murdered Sinti and Roma <a href="https://www.memorialmuseums.org/eng/denkmaeler/view/1482/Memorial-to-the-Sinti-and-Roma-of-Europe-Murdered-Under-the-National-Socialist-Regime">in Berlin</a>, which opened in 2012, to local initiatives all over Europe. </p>
<p>Holocaust testimony in many forms, such as photographs and survivor accounts, is intrinsic to new cultural initiatives such as RomArchive’s <a href="https://blog.romarchive.eu/">digital archive of Romani culture</a>.</p>
<p>Museums are also responding. In the UK, the <a href="https://www.iwm.org.uk/events/the-holocaust-exhibition">Holocaust Galleries</a> at the Imperial War Museum in London are currently under review. As I learned in conversations with some of those involved, this is partly being done with a view to integrate the fate of the Roma into a more comprehensive narrative. In its 25th year, the <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/">US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC</a> (USHMM) is also reassessing its permanent exhibition. There, too, I’ve learnt that one outcome will be the more effective deployment of its now substantial holdings on the Roma in educating its own staff and updating the displays.</p>
<p>Museum practices reflect the ways in which scholarship on the Romani Holocaust has broadened and deepened, often through partnerships between research and educational institutions. For example, the USHMM can draw on the work produced through its own Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, which has invested substantially in research and <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/research/competitive-academic-programs/faculty-seminars/jack-and-anita-hess-seminar-for-faculty/details">teaching</a> on the subject.</p>
<h2>Romani persecution</h2>
<p>One thing that <a href="https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/Weiss-WendtNazi">recent scholarship</a> makes clear is that those who passed through the gates of Auschwitz were only a fraction of the hundreds of thousands of Romani victims of the genocidal policies of the Nazis and their allies. In occupied Poland, Serbia and the Soviet Union, they were hunted down by the same Wehrmacht units and death squads that massacred Jews. In Romania, some 25,000 were deported to “colonies” east of the Dniester river (Transnistria); nearly half of them did not survive the brutal conditions there.</p>
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<p>Before the 1943 deportations from Germany, there had already been two large scale removals of Sinti and Roma: 2,500 shipped to primitive camps in Poland in 1940, and 5,000 deported to the <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/photo/gypsy-camp-in-the-lodz-ghetto">Łódź ghetto</a>, where those who did not die of typhus were sent to the gas chambers at Chelmno. </p>
<p>The victims of the Romani Holocaust also include many who suffered internment without ever leaving their home territories. The names of the Lety and Hodonin camps in what is now the Czech Republic and the Jasenovac camp in Croatia are notorious for the crimes committed against Roma interned there. </p>
<p>In Germany, <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/persecution-of-roma-gypsies-in-prewar-germany-1933-1939">internment of Roma</a> began as early as 1935, in designated camps set up by local authorities. Under permanent police surveillance, forced to work for local firms, labelled as “antisocial” and increasingly criminalised, many were already in SS concentration camps by the late 1930s. They included several hundred “Gypsy” men targeted <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/photo/romani-gypsy-prisoners-in-dachau">for arrest</a> in mid-June 1938 during “Operation Workshy”, which also saw the first mass arrests of Jews and some 10,000 others. Most of these Romani prisoners never saw Auschwitz, but were shipped from one camp to another over the years, permanently available to the SS, while they were alive, for exploitation.</p>
<h2>Life and death in Auschwitz</h2>
<p>Auschwitz remains a powerful symbolic point of reference for European Roma – as it does, of course for global memory of the Holocaust. August 2 <a href="http://auschwitz.org/en/museum/news/roma-and-sinti-genocide-remembrance-day,1270.html">is commemorated annually</a> in memory of the “liquidation” of the “Gypsy Camp” there in 1944, when 2,900 men, women and children were gassed in a single night. Increasingly, Roma communities also <a href="http://www.leparisien.fr/saint-denis-93200/saint-denis-les-tziganes-se-souviennent-de-leurs-combats-d-hier-et-d-aujourd-hui-14-05-2017-6948240.php">mark May 16, 1944</a>, when, as survivors remember, the inmates successfully resisted the SS’s first attempt to clear the camp.</p>
<p>Auschwitz was a special kind of hell for Sinti and Roma. Himmler’s order decreed that they should be deported “as families”, and in Auschwitz-Birkenau, Section BIIe was set aside for them as a “family camp”. They were “allowed” to wear their own clothes and let their hair grow. Children were born. Non-Romani observers, including Jewish inmates and political prisoners, sometimes imagined that this made life easy.</p>
<p>But Romani survivors <a href="https://blog.romarchive.eu/?p=7336#fn5">remembered</a> that they had to watch as their children and parents, brothers and sisters were humiliated and abused, and as they died from malnourishment, exhaustion and disease. Arriving as relatively healthy, relatively young people, they also constituted a ready supply of “human material” for the experiments of SS physicians such as Joseph Mengele, whose “medical” facility was immediately adjacent to their camp.</p>
<p>This is an area, then, where scholarship, activism and public memory must go hand in hand. As new initiatives emerge, such as the planned <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/adjaye-associates-and-ron-arad-architexts-win-uk-holocaust-memorial-international-design-competition">Holocaust memorial in Westminster</a>, I hope that what we are learning about this history will find its place at each point in their design.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-refugee-crisis-is-dealing-another-blow-to-europes-roma-74000">How the refugee crisis is dealing another blow to Europe's Roma</a>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eve Rosenhaft receives funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK) as Co-Investigator of an international research network exploring the Legacies of the Romani Genocide in Europe since 1945. </span></em></p>Some 20,000 Sinti and Roma died in Auschwitz alone.Eve Rosenhaft, Professor of German Historical Studies, University of LiverpoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/884372018-01-24T10:14:39Z2018-01-24T10:14:39ZAnti-Roma stigma of Czech president Miloš Zeman threatens progress over Romani rights<p>Czech president Miloš Zeman faces a tough <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/13/milos-zeman-leads-first-round-of-czech-republic-presidential-elections">run-off</a> against rival Jiří Drahoš in the second round of the presidential election on January 26-27. Voters will deliver their verdict on Zeman’s open hostility to refugees, Muslims, and the European Union, and his support for Russia. </p>
<p>While the vote can be seen as a choice between the country leaning east or west in the future, Zeman’s controversial remarks about Roma demonstrate that many of the questions dividing Czechs are also rooted in the nation’s past.</p>
<p>In late 2017, Zeman provocatively <a href="http://www.romea.cz/en/news/czech/czech-president-says-90-of-inadaptable-citizens-are-romani">claimed</a> in a television interview that 90% of his country’s “unadaptable” citizens are probably Roma. He was responding to a UN human rights <a href="https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G17/235/37/PDF/G1723537.pdf?OpenElement">report</a> that called for better integration of Roma in the Czech Republic. Zeman <a href="http://www.romea.cz/en/news/czech/czech-president-shakes-his-fist-during-christmas-speech-references-inadaptables-rejects-early-elections">repeated</a> his criticism of “unadaptable” citizens in his Christmas speech. </p>
<p>Members of the Czech government council for Roma community affairs reacted angrily to Zeman’s allegations. Meanwhile, Roma <a href="http://www.romea.cz/en/news/czech/marie-sivakova-reaction-of-an-ordinary-roma-czech-woman-to-president-s-allegation-that-90-of-inadaptables-are-romani">citizens</a> eloquently pointed out that the Czech Republic is their homeland, too.</p>
<p>Racist stigmatisation of Roma as socially “unadaptable” has a long history across Europe. As a result, many people prefer not to declare their Romani identity. Just over 13,000 Czech citizens claimed Romani nationality in the <a href="https://www.czso.cz/csu/sldb/preliminary_results_of_the_2011_population_and_housing_census">2011 census</a>. Yet the Council of Europe <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/justice-and-fundamental-rights/discrimination/roma-and-eu/roma-integration-eu-country/roma-integration-czech-republic_en">estimates</a> that some 250,000 Roma are living in the Czech Republic, a little less than 2% of the population. </p>
<p>Widespread ignorance about the history of Europe’s Roma fuels damaging stereotypes and persistent discrimination. But far from being perennial outsiders or aliens, Roma have been intimately integrated into European societies for centuries. As I argue in my <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/rights-of-the-roma/9097F0C39DABC77433A7FDC748474EC0#fndtn-information">recent book</a>, Roma were not simply victims of human rights violations in postwar Europe, but citizens claiming equal rights for themselves. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005219">genocide</a> of European Roma during World War II casts a long shadow over <a href="https://romalegacies1945.wordpress.com/">postwar Romani history</a>. The “<a href="http://auschwitz.org/en/history/categories-of-prisoners/sinti-and-roma-gypsies-in-auschwitz/">Gypsy camp</a>” at Auschwitz-Birkenau has become an important symbol for commemoration of the Roma Holocaust. But persecution and discrimination took many forms. </p>
<p>Years before the Nazis came to power, many states across Europe, including Czechoslovakia as well as France and Germany, introduced laws requiring “gypsies” to carry special passports, or regulating their freedom of movement. During the war, Roma across Europe faced incarceration, deportation, and forcible sterilisation. </p>
<h2>Hope in postwar eastern Europe</h2>
<p>After the war, the largest Romani communities in Europe lived in eastern, not western, Europe. The “people’s democracies” in eastern Europe promised a new era of working-class emancipation in which discrimination on the basis of race and sex would be a thing of the past. In Czechoslovakia, one of the most industrialised countries within the eastern bloc after the war, Romani activists were outspoken advocates for their own rights under socialism. </p>
<p>During the late 1940s and early 1950s, many Romani activists in Czechoslovakia saw socialism as a path towards equality for Roma. To them, equality meant the right to work, to education, housing, healthcare, and to freedom from discrimination on the basis of race, class or sex. They knew that the Soviet Union had offered <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/brigid-o-keeffe/roma-homeland-that-never-was">cultural rights</a> to Roma during the 1920s and early 1930s. </p>
<p>During the Prague Spring of 1968, as Czechoslovaks sought to create a democratic socialism “with a human face”, Czech and Slovak Roma battled to establish their own associations and to be recognised as full citizens of their socialist homeland. They wanted Roma to have a greater say in political decisions that concerned them. They raised awareness of Romani language and culture. And they fought to win compensation for Romani victims of Nazi racial persecution. </p>
<p>But the socialist regimes in postwar Europe saw the path to equality for Roma lying in assimilation as worker-citizens. Communist officials claimed Roma were a “social group”, not a national or ethnic minority with the right to state support for their language or culture. Post-Stalinist states revived campaigns against Gypsy “nomadism” and debates about coercive sterilisation of Romani women. To justify this, experts argued that Roma were “unadaptable” citizens. </p>
<h2>Struggle for citizenship</h2>
<p>By the 1970s, however, Roma from socialist Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia were at the head of a new international Romani movement that called for recognition of the Romani nation. Today, Romani movements across Europe are making their history accessible to a wider audience through initiatives such as the digital <a href="https://blog.romarchive.eu/">Roma Archive</a>. </p>
<p>The Czech <a href="http://www.rommuz.cz/en/home-2/">Museum of Romani Culture</a> in Brno has pioneered research on Romani history since the collapse of the communist regime in 1989. The museum’s director, Jana Horváthová, whose family were among the leaders of the Romani movement during the Prague Spring, seems optimistic. </p>
<p>For decades, a pig farm stood on the site of the former camp for Gypsies in Lety, from where Roma were deported to Auschwitz during the Nazi occupation. Years of lobbying by Romani activists persuaded the Czech government to <a href="http://www.errc.org/blog/genocide-and-the-pig-farm-end-in-sight-to-the-lety-controversy/183">purchase</a> the farm. Horváthová believes that most Czechs now <a href="http://www.romea.cz/en/news/czech/jana-horvathova-today-czech-society-perceives-removing-the-pig-farm-from-the-roma-genocide-site-as-necessary">agree</a> on the need to replace the pig farm with a memorial. </p>
<p>Whoever wins the presidential election, Czech and Slovak Roma will continue to face long-running struggles: to win compensation for Romani women <a href="http://www.errc.org/cms/upload/file/coercive-and-cruel-28-november-2016.pdf">sterilised</a> without their consent, to <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/eur72/5640/2017/en/">desegregate</a> the education of Romani school children, or to combat social exclusion. All these questions have deep historical roots, which are only obscured by reverting to negative and unfounded stereotypes about apparently “unadaptable” Roma.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88437/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Celia Donert receives funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council as Principal Investigator of an international research network exploring the Legacies of the Romani Genocide in Europe since 1945.</span></em></p>Racist stigmatisation of Roma as socially ‘unadaptable’ has a long history across Europe.Celia Donert, Senior Lecturer in Twentieth-Century History, University of LiverpoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/765162017-07-24T06:19:59Z2017-07-24T06:19:59ZIs life in Norway as happy as it’s cracked up to be?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179278/original/file-20170721-24759-162a4dp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Freedom and tolerance are Norwegian values that don't apply equally to all.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/kongevold/3571950995/in/photolist-6rDbzZ-TzfvEk-jZ1gNm-SSqCaY-eC45mE-oED3TU-eYkDRR-eBZS2g-eC455y-VkWcF2-Wfr3qS-WFmDpj-b2xrwz-eC44Kh-dKMVw4-efx8ov-rbj4JV-9kBade-p1cDda-oMQNjF-91JQc1-nJwGiS-eRw6FB-f24avG-TPTN6q-p6eGEW-9ZTB9S-Dsf8RB-WDidtv-osnbbp-qmGcoy-oJuSsE-ddeUzp-eBZUv4-akp7b6-pVEyt8-fAwfQQ-U6CZbA-8unRwN-pQjzqL-y9TMxj-rr3mcb-jAeWeS-nsRv9X-69bTSJ-ptHMMp-q1ddj9-8f8jdh-qQNmxu-p6gLYb">André Kongevold / flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>For progressives around the world, it has become almost a pastime to romanticise the quasi-socialist Scandinavian countries. Nations such as Norway, Finland and Sweden are – to many – not only examples of wealth and well-being but also bastions of social progress and tolerance.</p>
<p>Norway, in particular, consistently leads the world in <a href="http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/#/11111111111">quality of life</a> and <a href="https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2017/">happiness</a>, and the country is <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2016/02/10/norway-syria-crisis/80164696/">responding compassionately</a> to the Syrian refugee crisis, unlike its many critics in Europe. But is life in Norway really so great? </p>
<p>I’m not so sure. </p>
<p>As an Australian who worked in Oslo for three years, I found that while freedom, tolerance and happiness are indeed important values there, you can expect to enjoy them only if you’re Norwegian.</p>
<h2>You’re welcome?</h2>
<p>After the the 2011 <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/05/25/the-inexplicable">mass shooting by Anders Breivik</a>, which he carried out in the name of rejecting a “Muslim colonisation” of Europe, Norway emerged determined to defy xenophobia.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179279/original/file-20170721-28498-w4zly7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179279/original/file-20170721-28498-w4zly7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179279/original/file-20170721-28498-w4zly7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179279/original/file-20170721-28498-w4zly7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179279/original/file-20170721-28498-w4zly7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179279/original/file-20170721-28498-w4zly7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179279/original/file-20170721-28498-w4zly7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Flowers and candles in Oslo after the 2011 Norway attacks.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/nrkbeta/5977743910/in/photolist-a7ev1b-3drpmD-6b7TxJ-93Qn72-cUTSRu-e4Z7AL-deyHDe-bkVKjS-8nCcwN-byQBgX-deyG5d-a7NjLA-8ft6Ln-VsnWAm-a7KrZF-8fwn8o-6p5jBj-cPN6Jh-e4Tswp-a7Krdc-eaqooP-aagfY6-9RRwfz-b5qCUa-9RRwzX-6p5jLh-aiAV7b-e19dE3-S9wgAf-bz3xAs-6p5i1G-p84ahc-aagfEe-aJ19QH-6p5iYw-6b5zHf-e4Z7jA-ptb3SQ-afZwoz-6b1pGr-MHdXuy-e13v3H-ptb51S-oH4S61-VQZKB4-pbHr2q-e19fP7-6R5TTR-6J3s4T-awbhY8">Henrik Lied / NRK/flickr</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 2015, during the height of the European refugee crisis, the country, which has a population of 5.2 million, considered some <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/24/norway-halts-return-of-asylum-seekers-who-entered-via-russia">31,000 asylum cases</a>, a national record. And in contrast to most European countries, Norway extends full social support and protections to all asylees while they await a ruling.</p>
<p>Still, Norway’s far-right Progress Party – to which Breivik belonged in his youth and which holds 29 seats in parliament – has fought to roll back migration and benefits. </p>
<p>Since 2015, Integration Minister Sylvi Listhaug has pursued aggressive restrictions on immigration, particularly for Muslims. As a result, the country deported a <a href="https://www.thelocal.no/20161230/norway-deported-record-number-in-2016">record number</a> of migrants in 2016, including <a href="https://www.tnp.no/norway/panorama/norway-send-back-half-unaccompanied-refugee-minors">minors between the ages of 16 and 18</a>, as per new restrictions.</p>
<h2>A history of exclusion</h2>
<p>This fear-mongering taps into a dark strain of Norwegian history. As recently as 1977, the Norwegian government <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/dec/09/2">forcibly sterilised members of its Romani minority population</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zhiEiCfECws?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Such policies also echo Norway’s treatment of its indigenous population, which I have been studying. Indeed, it seems forgotten in post-colonial societies that Norwegian history is blighted with atrocities against the native Sámi.</p>
<p>Until the second half of the 20th century, the Norwegian government forcibly <a href="http://minorityrights.org/minorities/sami-2/">seized Sámi lands in middle and northern Norway</a> and sought to eradicate Sámi culture. A policy of Norweginisation, known as <em>fornorsking</em>, meant that Sámi children were sent to Norwegian boarding schools, where they were <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/awards-and-festivals/tiff/sami-blood-shines-spotlight-on-assimilation-of-indigenous-children-in-scandinavia/article31892290/">beaten for speaking their native language</a>. </p>
<p>The Sámi were also denied the right to purchase property if they could not speak Norwegian. Today, Sámi people are still suppressed by Norwegian policy and experience <a href="http://www.unric.org/en/indigenous-people/27307-the-sami-of-northern-europe--one-people-four-countries">ten times more discrimination</a> than ethnic Norwegians.</p>
<p>Many Sámi live throughout the country, and though their right to an education in Sámi and to the use of their language for public purposes has now been recognised, these rights are enjoyed only in small municipalities in the rural north that have been designated as Sámi territories. </p>
<p>Generally speaking, to participate in Norway’s society and economy, you must forgo being and speaking Sámi.</p>
<p>While popular and even academic writing in Norway describes immigrants from the Middle East as speaking “kebab Norwegian”, my <a href="http://jhlr.org.nz/">2016 analysis</a> of online comments to Sámi-themed news found a similarly pervasive prejudice. </p>
<p>The analysis shows that Norwegians argue that the Sámi threaten the purity of Norwegian ethnicity and way of life. Some say Sámi cannot be seen as Norwegian citizens, do not deserve indigenous status and have invented their historic oppression.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179269/original/file-20170721-28465-tkq8uu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179269/original/file-20170721-28465-tkq8uu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179269/original/file-20170721-28465-tkq8uu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179269/original/file-20170721-28465-tkq8uu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179269/original/file-20170721-28465-tkq8uu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179269/original/file-20170721-28465-tkq8uu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179269/original/file-20170721-28465-tkq8uu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Art work ‘Spor’ by Hilde Skancke Pedersen inside the Sámi parliament. ‘Sámediggi’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/samediggi/11081728335/in/photolist-hTfKKD-ceGxaj-hTnTMV-hTddWZ-hTe3MB-aEfAVk-cgVN5q-aEiTKL-TaF3R4-UpfKcz-kEjH41-hTwz3o-aEiTnG-hTdKzG-hTnhTY-hTwuF9-kTN2Kt-kEi8o6-kTEorn-kTJXQa-nFWB15-kTFoNJ-hTnLV1-kTNFAr-hTnHRn-npuafj-kEhCPK-kTKCmB-kEjJzh-hTnpCu-oJK3HU-hTnpFA-oGK26G-kTFpJG-kTNFEV-kTNG2g-hTnSy2-kTEohK-kTPEBS-kTJXN6-kTPD91-kTPDC7-kTKCqe-hTnjr9-kTPDdQ-UpfL6i-kTEnbg-kEhBDD-kTFmmE-kTFiVs">Denis Caviglia /Sámediggi Sametinget/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In another display of discrimination, when Tromsø, the major town of the far north, considered designating itself a Sámi zone, opposing voices were filled with hate. Opponents even fired bullets at bilingual signs to express displeasure.</p>
<h2>Assimilation nation</h2>
<p>This racist undercurrent in Norway may derive from an American-style exceptionalism in Norway, whereby Norwegians are told and truly believe that they are world leaders in social policy. </p>
<p>But to survive in Norway, those of a non-Norwegian culture are expected to adopt a Norwegian world view. The compulsory language courses given to migrants really brings that message home. Its curriculum celebrates Norway but presents almost hegemonic views on nearly everything else, from alcohol consumption to social values and Norwegian history. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179257/original/file-20170721-28498-glmtrt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C2%2C1600%2C1061&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179257/original/file-20170721-28498-glmtrt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179257/original/file-20170721-28498-glmtrt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179257/original/file-20170721-28498-glmtrt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179257/original/file-20170721-28498-glmtrt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179257/original/file-20170721-28498-glmtrt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179257/original/file-20170721-28498-glmtrt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A sculpture in Vigeland Park, Oslo. Life in Norway is great for some, but not for all.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/ceekay/3526274817/in/photolist-6nB5DF-djfNTE-cepefy-69Q98R-6awsAJ-59uH7r-5DMNdZ-dH1AnT-aHJk2-isV5LP-jWAMF6-7jbQWW-6awsEh-bFNBtg-59yWX3-7DusLb-59uHte-59yWSq-69UkiG-629WpC-62DE6B-9pKiyg-3GFwFm-8nKKEg-629WGj-7DusL3-5EbL6k-f6DtcF-jgBF4-6diuqQ-aGu6sB-6oy9KN-aDrQwX-4WBXDu-dH74vU-9LiF2h-2Z7572-69UkgE-7DusL9-5V1g3i-ow31mi-d5gwqd-d3DZjW-cy8CES-DVAqa-6awugL-6asifr-a7eFJL-9jWhP-4vdx7">PROC.K. Koay / flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Sámi and Romani are almost entirely absent from the language-course curriculum.</p>
<p>To suggest that all is bad in Norway would be false. I, too, have been thankful for Norway’s affordable health care and generous leave entitlements. And the upcoming <a href="http://europedecides.eu/2016/08/a-forecast-for-the-2017-norwegian-elections/">parliamentary election</a>, to be held in September 2017, presents an opportunity for a broader change, including on immigration.</p>
<p>But not all is rosy in the Norwegian utopia. Next time someone extols the virtues of this “perfect” Scandinavian society, remind them that the Norwegian dream is not available to all.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/76516/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nathan John Albury was recently a research fellow at the Center for Multilingualism in Society across the Lifespan at the University of Oslo.</span></em></p>Freedom, social progress and tolerance are Norwegian values, but not everyone there gets to enjoy them equally.Nathan John Albury, Assistant Professor, Hong Kong Polytechnic UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/740002017-03-20T14:29:44Z2017-03-20T14:29:44ZHow the refugee crisis is dealing another blow to Europe’s Roma<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/161519/original/image-20170320-9117-1ae3avu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=98%2C58%2C1845%2C1302&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/undpeuropeandcis/8636944091/in/photolist-eajgHq-GpiWGE-eajhay-eadAza-eajh1d-eadACZ-eajgBY-eadBWz-eajgob-eajfGJ-eajhwL-eadBdX-eadAb8-eadA1V-eadByg-eadAjZ-eajgPJ-eajg2J-eadC2g-eajfTs-eajhmo-eadAuM-4f7HC4-eajhsA">UNDP in Europe and Central Asia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The refugee crisis in Europe brings with it collateral damage. The flight of people from Syria and other conflict zones <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/refugee-crisis-20183">has been well-documented</a> and the policy challenges for governments have generated blanket coverage. But there have also been spill-over effects on other marginalised groups, particularly the Roma. </p>
<p>Romani minorities like Manouche, Kale and Sinti have lived in Europe <a href="http://romafacts.uni-graz.at/">since the 14th century</a> when they arrived from India, and have been in Europe often for as long as majority populations. You will find Roma in every European country. There are some 10-12m Romani people on the continent, according to the European Commission, and they often suffer from <a href="http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52010DC0133&from=EN">socio-economic marginalisation</a>. They are singled out as unwanted foreigners, and deemed perpetual migrants and outsiders. </p>
<p>This group has consistently struggled to gain acceptance, and now they face the headwinds created by a new influx of people. In October 2016 the Council of Europe <a href="https://wcd.coe.int/com.instranet.InstraServlet?command=com.instranet.CmdBlobGet&InstranetImage=2947279&SecMode=1&DocId=2385346&Usage=2">published a document</a> that examined how Romani minorities in Europe were affected by the 2015-16 refugee crisis. One of the main effects cited in this document was the rise of right-wing populism and attitudes, which has resulted in an increased incidence of Romaphobia in politics and the media.</p>
<h2>Integration</h2>
<p>The link between the two groups is inescapable. Time and time again, Romani communities have been drawn into national asylum policy debates raising issues of inclusion, integration and belonging. Romaphobic ideas can be found in mainstream politics and media. It is not the sole preserve of the far right. In fact, the failure of different states to adequately integrate Roma has been used as a justification to exclude other asylum seekers. </p>
<p>While the <a href="http://frontex.europa.eu/trends-and-routes/western-balkan-route/">Western Balkan route</a> was still open, from Sept 2015 to March 2016, one of the plans to address the refugee crisis was the EU Emergency Relocation scheme. <a href="http://www.euractiv.com/section/justice-home-affairs/news/visegrad-countries-oppose-commissions-revamped-asylum-policy/">The Visegrad countries</a> - the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Hungary – all openly opposed the quotas envisaged under this scheme, even though only Hungary was positioned on the route and was affected by a larger number of refugees seeking access. </p>
<p>The social-democratic <a href="http://www.romea.cz/en/news/world/slovak-pm-we-can-t-integrate-our-own-roma-to-say-nothing-of-refugees">Slovak prime minister, Robert Fico,</a> justified his opposition to refugee quotas with following words:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>After all, let’s be honest, we aren’t even capable of integrating our own Romani fellow citizens, of whom we have hundreds of thousands. How can we integrate people who are somewhere completely else when it comes to lifestyle and religion?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Opposition to refugee quotas was therefore legitimised by recourse to the Roma, and in the words not of an extremist party leader, but a prime minister from mainstream politics.</p>
<h2>Selective empathy</h2>
<p>Of course, the refugee crisis has shown too that Europe can be welcoming to those in need. Post-Yugoslav states along the Western Balkan route took a more benevolent approach as highlighted by an incident in Croatia during October 2015. </p>
<p>It all started when a <a href="http://www.euronews.com/2015/11/06/croatia-who-is-nina-the-little-girl-found-in-a-park">three-year-old girl</a> was found in a park in the small town of Velika Gorica, half an hour’s drive from the capital, Zagreb. For a month Croatian authorities believed that the girl had become separated from her refugee parents while on her way to Western Europe. Local media were filled with sympathy and feverishly reported on the story, hoping to reunite the girl with her parents. After a month of speaking different Middle-Eastern languages to the girl, she responded to a local language: a Bayash language, which is spoken by a large number of Roma in Croatia.</p>
<p>Immediately, the tone of the coverage changed. Croatian national television moved on to asking how parents could leave their child behind, even suggesting that the child was abandoned due to bad behaviour, as if this is something which Roma would do. The empathy and appeal to humanity was lost as soon as it was established that she was Roma and not an “innocent” refugee. </p>
<h2>Policy changes</h2>
<p>The Roma were caught in the crossfire again as the refugee crisis presented an opportunity to change asylum legislation. In <a href="http://www.asylumineurope.org/reports/country/germany/asylum-procedure/safe-country-concepts/safe-country-origin">October 2015</a>, in response to the arrival of a large number of refugees, Germany changed its asylum policy to add new “safe countries of origin” – including Kosovo, Albania and Montenegro – to a list which included other Western Balkan countries. </p>
<p>It was an exercise in political expediency, which sought to slow the flow of refugees through the Balkan states as the refugee crisis ramped up. And so while Germany accepted refugees from some countries (such as Syria) under the new policy, <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/06/germany-roma-march-asylum-seeker-crackdown-160605092954463.html">Roma can now be returned</a> to countries of origin in the Western Balkans. It is, however, questionable, if after decades living in Germany, they have anywhere to return to. And there is the obvious question of whether they are indeed safe in the countries now designated as such, when there is <a href="http://www.irinnews.org/news/2016/06/15/roma-fear-paying-price-germany%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%9Csafe-countries%E2%80%9D-policy">evidence to the contrary</a> from Roma testimony. </p>
<p>Romani communities enjoy only a qualified inclusion within European nation states as they are never fully integrated. Over the years, this has translated into a precarious position as second-class citizens. Stereotypes have been perpetuated which fuel <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/is-romaphobia-the-last-acceptable-form-of-racism">the idea that Roma do not really belong</a> and which foster discrimination which restricts Roma access to education, employment, and housing. Witness recent anti-refugee rhetoric in Hungary <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-migrants-hungary-roma-idUSKCN0RV43E20151001">which has galvanised anti-Roma attitudes</a>. It means that they are particularly vulnerable to the kinds of shocks brought about by the refugee crisis: while the Romaphobic rhetoric escalates, their marginalisation intensifies and is normalised.</p>
<p>The fact that this type of talk has migrated from the extreme right to the mainstream is perhaps the most worrying trend, and serves to highlight the broader story around the refugee crisis. The position of Roma has maybe always been the canary in the coal mine, a signal that Europe has always struggled with a crisis of inclusion of marginalised groups, and a fragile ability to accommodate diversity.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/74000/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>An influx of people seeking shelter from conflict has sharpened attitudes against groups which have been in Europe for centuries.Julija Sardelic, Postdoctoral Researcher, University of LiverpoolAidan McGarry, Principal Lecturer in Politics, University of BrightonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/365342015-01-22T15:24:14Z2015-01-22T15:24:14ZTo understand the Roma, you need to read their literature<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69754/original/image-20150122-12071-zujz6x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Traditional Romani dancing in Spain</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/s/gypsy/search.html?page=8&thumb_size=mosaic&inline=72972331">Curioso</a></span></figcaption></figure><blockquote>
<p>‘Did you go to school?’</p>
<p>‘No, sir, but do not believe that it prevents me from seeing clearly. We too are human beings, I think.’ </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In The Color of Smoke, Hungarian Romani writer Menyhert Lakatos (1926-2007) shows the life of a settlement just before World War II. The novel is filled with amusing anecdotes and razor-sharp observations about the Romani place in society. It presents in an accurate and even anthropological way the daily, sometimes incredible, life of Gypsies in Hungary. It would not be an exaggeration to describe Lakatos as a Romani Proust. </p>
<p>With a population of 10m to 15m, the Romani people live everywhere in the world and form the largest minority in Europe. <a href="http://www.livescience.com/25294-origin-romani-people.html">According to</a> the German novelist Günter Grass, they might be the best Europeans, in that they have always known how to adapt. They have tended to speak both the language of their country and Romany, and to adopt their nation’s religion. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.livescience.com/25294-origin-romani-people.html">Having migrated</a> from the north-eastern part of India centuries ago, one of the distinctive features of the Romani is that they form a minority everywhere. This means that they do not constitute a diaspora (except for the war migrants, such as those the former Yugoslavia). They have been <a href="http://inventionofthejewishpeople.com/">made a people</a> by their common fate, with a little help from the Nazi attitude to minorities. </p>
<p>Yet nowadays, what is the common point between a <a href="http://www.thelocal.es/20131122/the-crisis-makes-spains-gypsies-even-more-invisible">Spanish Gypsy</a>, whose ancestors settled in Spain centuries ago, who only speaks Spanish since the language of his people was banned; a bilingual Romanian <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalderash">Kalderash</a> whose ancestors were enslaved in Moldavia and Wallachia for 500 years; and a <a href="http://www.historytoday.com/becky-taylor/britains-gypsy-travellers-people-outside">Gypsy traveller in the UK</a>, where they are part of a tiny nomadic minority?</p>
<p>Their historical, cultural and linguistic differences arguably outweigh what they have in common. This makes it very hard, not to mention discriminatory, to generalise about “the Gypsies” – not that this stops leading figures from doing so, based on nothing but their own ignorance or mistaken beliefs. </p>
<p>These differences become clearer in the literature written by Romani people, which became more widely known from the 20th century onwards. It allows us to listen to unique voices, hear their point of view, and get more accurate information than is likely to otherwise be available. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69794/original/image-20150122-12095-b1lim8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69794/original/image-20150122-12095-b1lim8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69794/original/image-20150122-12095-b1lim8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69794/original/image-20150122-12095-b1lim8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69794/original/image-20150122-12095-b1lim8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69794/original/image-20150122-12095-b1lim8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69794/original/image-20150122-12095-b1lim8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69794/original/image-20150122-12095-b1lim8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Appleby Horse Fair in Cumbria, north England, is one of the renowned meeting places for gypsies and travellers each year.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/jimmonk/9018622851/in/photolist-ceJowd-bXmZgi-bXn1Q2-bXmYaF-bXmYQx-eK9ch1-eJWNnr-eJWMH8-ceJqom-ceJmws-bXn1u4-ceJnAs-ceJmSw-ceJq9Y-ceJpc9-ceJmod-bXmYmB-bXmWkc-ceJnDQ-ceJozA-bXmWyD-bXmWUZ-ceJnwu-bXmW1v-bXmXde-ceJqzd-ceJqYb-ceJpyb-ceJmWS-ceJp7h-ceJnnu-ceJnkd-bXmYYT-bXmXfD-ceJoRL-ceJnfo-bXmWPF-ceJpgo-ceJoMG-bXmWeB-bXmZHR-ceJm93-bXmXat-ceJmBA-bXmW4e-ceJnhS-ceJp8y-eK9dV9-877npz-bXmZna">Jim Monk</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Defining Romani writing</h2>
<p>It can be difficult to define Gypsy literature. You can’t place it in a specific geographic area. This makes it independent of national categories, and can create problems with the writing sometimes, since literature tends to invite the imagination of the reader to settle it in a particular space. </p>
<p>Romani writing sometimes suffers from the perception that the people are not indigenous to the country in which they are based. The nomadic stereotypes tend to mean that they can only ever speak as a minority within their country. They are always seen as Romani writers rather than, say, Hungarian or English writers. </p>
<p>Neither can you define it in terms of a common language. Some Romani writers write in <a href="http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/508791/Romany-languages">Romany</a>, while many others write in their national language. It is hard to talk in terms of aesthetic similarities, since we are talking about literary works that span most formats, including novels, tales, poetry, prose and plays. </p>
<p>As for a cultural frame of reference, the authors’ cultural universes are as distinct as the countries to which they belong. But reject these other criteria and you can be left only with ethnicity, which risks sounding like discrimination, albeit a positive version, and miserably reduces the author to his work. </p>
<p>While it is impossible to deny that these people belong to a nation – their own nation – the best antidote to trying to over-classify them as one homogeneous group is to read what they have to say. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69557/original/image-20150120-24465-1iwltfu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69557/original/image-20150120-24465-1iwltfu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69557/original/image-20150120-24465-1iwltfu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69557/original/image-20150120-24465-1iwltfu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69557/original/image-20150120-24465-1iwltfu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69557/original/image-20150120-24465-1iwltfu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69557/original/image-20150120-24465-1iwltfu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69557/original/image-20150120-24465-1iwltfu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Romani trumpeteers in Greece.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&language=en&ref_site=photo&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&use_local_boost=1&search_tracking_id=u-YjdX-PfM2RYqvKv6JWpQ&searchterm=romani&show_color_wheel=1&orient=&commercial_ok=&media_type=images&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&color=&page=1&inline=148436168">dinosmichail</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What kind of writings?</h2>
<p>It is striking how almost all literary works by Gypsy writers include in their speeches the voice of the other, and their prejudices. Both educational and defensive, this allows the “gadzo”, or non-Gypsy reader, to enter the work more easily.</p>
<p>Many texts are life stories, placing them at the limit of literature. Other stories are notable by their banality, but this is precisely what makes them interesting: because Gypsies are not usually represented as being part of the ordinary, this can make for extraordinary writing. </p>
<p>Through Gypsy eyes, the protagonists are for once not immediately branded as different, weird or foreign. They are not Romani in the plural of a confused set of people supposed to be all alike, but singular and subjective instead. They are men and women first of all, who are also Gypsies. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69558/original/image-20150120-24441-dbe0nr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69558/original/image-20150120-24441-dbe0nr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69558/original/image-20150120-24441-dbe0nr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=940&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69558/original/image-20150120-24441-dbe0nr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=940&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69558/original/image-20150120-24441-dbe0nr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=940&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69558/original/image-20150120-24441-dbe0nr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1182&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69558/original/image-20150120-24441-dbe0nr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1182&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69558/original/image-20150120-24441-dbe0nr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1182&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ceija Stojka.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ceija_Stojka_Wien2008.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Ceija_Stojka_Wien2008.jpg">Manfred Werner</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Many texts also enable Gypsy people to rework a collective past that national histories continue to forget and almost deny. <a href="http://www.theromanielders.org/elders/2/4/">Ceija Stojka</a> and <a href="http://romove.radio.cz/en/clanek/18396">Philomena Franz</a> tell the story of their years in the Nazi death camps, for instance. <a href="http://wordswithoutborders.org/contributor/magda-szecsi">Magda Szécsi</a> in Hungary speaks about how Romani where treated during the Soviet era. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.cairn.info/resume.php?ID_ARTICLE=TSIG_037_0118">Coucou Doerr</a> tells of his Gitana life between France and Spain during World War II. <a href="http://www.theromanielders.org/elders/2/12/">Sandra Jayat</a> tells of her bohemian life in Paris in the 1960s. <a href="http://rombase.uni-graz.at/cgi-bin/art.cgi?src=data/pers/maximoff.en.xml">Mateo Maximoff</a> uses the testimony of his ancestors <a href="http://www.depechestsiganes.fr/mateo-maximoff-chantre-des-cultures-tsiganes/">to describe</a> the Gypsy slavery that lasted five centuries (until 1865) in the very heart of Europe. </p>
<p>The only way to grasp what I’m talking about is to read these writers. They are not books about Gypsies (always with that indifferent plural), but books in which authors speak on behalf of themselves. It will make your convictions flicker, change your view of the world, and give you a good read too.</p>
<h2>Top three Romani books</h2>
<ul>
<li>Menyhert Lakatos <a href="http://www.lovelybooks.de/autor/Menyhert-Lakatos/The-Color-of-Smoke-An-Epic-Novel-of-the-Roma-1115953000-t/">The Color of Smoke</a> </li>
<li>Ceija Stojka <a href="http://www.artbook.com/9783869840833.html">Even Death is Afraid of Auschwitz</a></li>
<li> Various <a href="http://www.herts.ac.uk/about-us/corporate-governance/our-structure/subsidiary-companies/uh-press/romani-studies/the-roads-of-the-roma">The Roads of the Roma: A Pen Anthology of Gypsy Writers</a></li>
</ul><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/36534/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cécile Kovacshazy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The only way to understand the Roma is to read their literature – it allows the authors to speak for themselves, and can change your perceptions.Cécile Kovacshazy, Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature, Université de LimogesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/259332014-04-25T05:18:17Z2014-04-25T05:18:17ZEurope’s hidden shame: Romani Nazi death camps barely merit signposts<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/47018/original/qjpbjn8w-1398345721.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Europe's untouchables: the Roma and Sinti</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/kristinaulmer/4815485236/in/photolist-36WAp4-DckTv-7WpPbs-aqgcT7-6PnMvh-8ct79x-dvjKmw-iDBHUY-6kqwjN-cZv4Cw-nh9wxY-5UKPvp-C4ef9-kzo9nT-czfENu-kfGoCe-5SampL-6ud6z8-82V6od-8kwBZw-b48pQ-bMwp2H-GvChK-6aD3ey-2ATA1x-8ct8wR-ao1VdE-JwJdW-5Scsqw-8FoaTm-2J9sfs-6QqzJV-2J58Pt-CoF3n-644qA9-8dQzXm-91tAcS-4tSj7s-CoF33-6QPqob-z3Fkr-jt8Hdg-4ufvjg-7yFQKG-2jCrFi-dgvDSs-dgvCvT-5Vv5Bc-d6Zsi-4fk3BZ">Kristina Ulmer</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Gypsies, tinkers, pikeys, travellers – everyone knows the terms, not to mention the even more derogatory ones. The <a href="http://www.sintiundroma.de/en/sinti-roma.html">Roma and Sinti people</a> have been the subject of prejudice and discrimination in Europe for centuries. </p>
<p>This has ranged from gypsy hunts in 16th century Bohemia, to incarceration and extermination under the Nazi regime, to present day discrimination against a population of more than 12 million people across Europe. </p>
<p>In the UK, <a href="http://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/1402/Prejudice-Rife-As-Stonewall-Launches-New-Project-To-Combat-Discrimination.aspx">a third of residents said in a survey</a> a few years ago that they were prejudiced against gypsies, travellers and Eastern European Romani. This scale of bigotry pervades much of Europe. </p>
<p><a href="http://fcit.usf.edu/holocaust/people/victroma.htm">Somewhere between 220,000 and 500,000</a> Roma and Sinti people are estimated to have lost their lives during the World War II. This imprecise statistic is a deliberate result of the disregard given to the process of forced labour and extermination that they went through.</p>
<h2>The people beneath the Jews</h2>
<p>In Nazi racist ideology such people were beneath contempt and considered to be worth less than Jews, so they did not see a need to record their incarceration or death. The lack of detailed record by an otherwise fastidious and technically obsessed regime is one of the reasons for the absence in history and concentration camp museums of the gypsy holocaust, or <em>porrajmos</em>, as the Romani call it. </p>
<p>Of the concentration camp sites across many of the countries that the Third Reich successfully invaded and annexed during World War II, there are few signs of the places where the Roma and Sinti were incarcerated and the vast majority lost their lives. It would seem that even remembrance is denied to a culture where the oral rather than written tradition is more common in recounting history. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/DARK-TOURISM-FOLEY-LENNON/dp/0826450644">My own research</a> into the field known as dark tourism – the attraction by visitors to sites of death, destruction and mass killing – has recognised the enduring attraction of concentration camps and sites associated with the Nazi holocaust. </p>
<p>These sites exist to preserve a memorial and educate future generations about the mistakes of the past. Their preservation is normally linked to education, promoting future tolerance and understanding. Auschwitz, near Krakow in Poland records more than one million visitors per year; and Sachsenhausen, just north of Berlin achieves close to 400,000 visitors every year. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/47016/original/c4wnjngn-1398344998.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/47016/original/c4wnjngn-1398344998.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47016/original/c4wnjngn-1398344998.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47016/original/c4wnjngn-1398344998.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47016/original/c4wnjngn-1398344998.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47016/original/c4wnjngn-1398344998.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47016/original/c4wnjngn-1398344998.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lety camp only has this sign.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">John Lennon</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The limited number of sites associated with the gypsy holocaust has also been the subject of exploratory work. For example the remains of so-called gypsy camps in many parts of the Czech Republic – where there was a significant Roma and Sinti population prior to the war – have been lost and their locations are rarely commemorated. Indeed, <a href="http://www.holocaust.cz/en/history/camps/lety">Lety Concentration Camp</a>, one of the largest Roma and Sinti camps is commemorated by a single sign (in Czech) and just one interpretive board. </p>
<p>The site of this former camp is now covered by a sprawling industrial pig farm and pork processing plant established after the war and of such a scale that there is no vestige of the former buildings. <a href="http://www.antifa.cz/content/czech-roma-holocaust">Czech nationals collaborated and participated</a> in identifying and incarcerating Roma and Sinti, but this dark period of the country’s history is a narrative that is yet to find a proper voice.</p>
<h2>Echoes of the past</h2>
<p>This lack of commemoration and concern is not limited to the past. In contemporary Europe, Roma and Sinti still suffer discrimination and prejudice. It is notable that the European Commissioner for Human Rights Thomas Hammarberg <a href="http://www.romea.cz/en/news/world/the-shameful-history-of-anti-gypsism-is-forgotten-and-repeated">declared in 2008</a>, “today’s rhetoric against the Roma is very similar to the one used by Nazis and fascists …” </p>
<p>Roma and Sinti <a href="http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/voices/looking-past-poverty-life-roma-ghettos">often live in ghetto-like conditions</a> around Europe. Their settlements are characterised by crumbling infrastructure, high rates of unemployment, low educational participation and poor levels of educational attainment.</p>
<p>In the UK between 75,000 and 300,000 gypsies and travellers <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/181669/DFE-RR043.pdf">are functionally illiterate</a>. The average school leaving age <a href="http://www.sec-ed.co.uk/news/roma-children-spread-the-word-on-their-culture">is under 13 years</a> and the propensity for depression and other mental health problems <a href="http://romasupportgroup.org.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Roma-Mental-Health-Advocacy-Project-Evaluation-Report.pdf">is 20 times higher than the norm</a>. Domestic abuse is common and infant mortality rates are among the nation’s highest. </p>
<p>This depressing and tragic evidence of discrimination has set these peoples apart from much of Europe for centuries. Their problems and issues go largely unreported and even their tragic past is either partially ignored or deliberately overlooked. </p>
<p>It has been said that until a nation can confront the very worst of its past, it cannot progress and grow. Here we have a tragedy that is both part of our shared past and a real element of our present. This excluded and oppressed minority require both a voice and our urgent attention.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/25933/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Lennon does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Gypsies, tinkers, pikeys, travellers – everyone knows the terms, not to mention the even more derogatory ones. The Roma and Sinti people have been the subject of prejudice and discrimination in Europe…John Lennon, Director of Moffat Centre for Travel and Tourism Business Development and Vice Dean for Glasgow School for Business and Society, Glasgow Caledonian UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.