Gypsy Poland 1960
Here is some fab,slightly romantic archive footage of Gypsy life in Poland - early sixties. In Europe during the Nazi Holocaust- Offical fig.1.5m Gypsies killed- These would have been Gypsies with papers, in those days most Gypsies did not have papers. From Eur Gypsy sources we hear that 100,000’s of gypsies were slaughtered before getting to the camps. Unoffical sources estimate the ethnic cleansing of Gypsies by Nazi’s was more in the region 4-6 million!
Gysyies have never had a chance to voice their own Memorial or grief over this ‘censored’ tragedy. Google Codona www.travellerstimes.org.uk robert barton trust www.gypsy-traveller.org
Oral Accusations Against Gypsies →
Gypsy society is being accused wrongly becauseof a legend which is popular among publicity. This slander, which is not suitable to humanity and religion, is about Prophet Abraham to be thrown into fire by King Nemrut 45 centuries ago.
According to the legend a brother and a sister named Cin and Gen were forced for incest relationship to make possible Prophet Abraham to be thrown into fire (This was the only way to dismiss protector angels.). They and their descendants (It’s claimed by people who tell the legend that they were named Çingene pointing at their ancestors names) were cursed by God because this behaviour according to the legend! It’s believed by many people that marrying with Gypsies is forbidden according to Islam because of the event.
This is why it’s not common to marry with Gypsies among non-Gypsies in our country. There have been problem between Gypsy and non-Gypsy families when their children wish to marry eachother. My wifes family also tried to hinder their daughter to marry with me. But they couldn’t hindered our marriage. It’s not easy to find parents who accept their children to marry with Gypsies…
This legend is not true. There is nothing about the legend in the Koran. If people read the Koran, understand real Islam and not to believe this kind of legends, there wouldn’t be any social problems between Gypsies and non-Gypsies. This problem have to be resolved!
I continue to tell people realities about this kind of legends as a person who read the Koran and a person who bears responsibility of being human for 16 years. I am organizing panels, I appear as guest on tv programs to explain problems of our people. I wrote a book, I publish articles on web pages. My articles are being translated to foreign languages. I gave lectures in religional foundations and Ankara Theological University about the issue.
All these activities are for our country and humanity. Only thing i want is social peace. I hope no personel benefits.
Realities about Prophet Abraham to be thrown into fire are explained in The Koran translation of Presidency of Religional Affairs published in 1983 and 2001. You could also read some passages there about marriage. There is nothing forbidding marriage with Gypsies in the Koran.
Presidency of Religional Affairs sent a momerandum (658-09/06/2000) to all muftis with my request. It’s underlined in the momerandum all imams and people have to be informed about the issue and realities about the legend.
People have to read the Koran and the momerandum to learn truths about the legend blaming Gypsies. People have to be saved from to have this kind of prejudices about Gypsies
*Mustafa Aksu: Researcher and author
Mustafa Aksu, one of the famus Gypsy entellectuals of Turkey. He wrote a book named “To Be Gypsy In Turkey”
irtibat: aksumustafa@gmail.com
Roman Ruhu
English subtitles
A memorial to Romani Holocaust victims stands near the site of the former concentration camp at Lety, now in the Czech Republic.
In January or February 1940 the first mass murder of the Holocaust took place in the concentration camp at Buchenwald, when two hundred fifty Romani children from Brno were used as guinea pigs to test Zyklon-B, later used in the gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau. In Czechoslovakia, special camps for dispatching Romanies were built at Lety and Hodonín. On 31 July 1941 Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reich main security office and the leading organizational architect of the Nazi’s final solution, ordered the Einsatzkommandos ”to kill all Jews, Gypsies and mental patients.” In Slovakia, the ”Decree on the Organization of the Living Conditions of the Gypsies” ordered that Romanies be physically separated from the rest of the population.
(via Romani Holocaust)
I’m doing some cursory research on Wikipedia and I came upon this photograph. The caption reads: “Romani [gypsy] woman with German police officer and Nazi psychologist Dr. Robert Ritter”. Dr. Ritter did some “research” for the Nazi Party about the Roma, which eventually led to massive genocide in the ’40s–– instead of Holocaust, which has inescapable Jewish connotations, the mass murder of Roma by the Nazis is called “Porajmos”.
That’s one of the parts of WWII history that most people don’t know because most history texts focus on the Jewish Holocaust; we don’t usually hear about the Roma, the homosexuals, the black Germans, the Slavs or Soviets, or the mentally disabled. (More on that here.)
But mostly I wanted to share this because the look on the woman’s face is completely heartbreaking. She looks like she’s pleading.
Call the Witness →
Call the Witness is a project of the Roma Pavilion, which takes place as a Collateral Event in the framework of the 54th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia 2011. A makeshift exhibition evolving over the course of the Venice Biennale preview days through the flux of live “testimonies”— works of art, performances, talks, and conversations by and with artists, thinkers, and politicians—Call the Witness considers the situation of the Roma and Roma art as emblematic of a world filled with inequality and oppression today, and in solidarity with the largest minority in Europe speculates about another, hopeful future… (Read More)
Who Are The Roma? →
The Roma people (or “Gypsies” in the common vernacular) have come under the media spotlight again following reports that extreme right-wing vigilantes in Hungary have made threats on the local Roma population, forcing them to flee to safety elsewhere, with help from the Red Cross.
But who are these Romani people who have lived in Europe for centuries and seem to always exist on the fringes of society; and who have inspired much literature, music, legends and misconceptions?
For one thing, the English word “gypsy” is a corruption of “Egyptian,” based on the mistaken assumption that the Roma came from Egypt.
Roma, who have endured extreme poverty, slavery, prejudice, discrimination, social exclusion and even mass murder (culminating in extermination by Nazi Germany) throughout their long history in Europe and elsewhere, are widely believed to have migrated westward from northern India in the early Middle Ages.
As such, the Roma have left evidence of their settlements across the Old World from South Asia, through the Middle East and into Europe.
There are currently at least 12-million Roma in Europe (some estimates run as high as 20-million or even more). They are concentrated in Eastern Europe and the Balkans — in many of these countries Roma comprise the largest ethnic minority.
In a book about the European Roma, “Bury Me Standing,” the author Isabel Fonseca wrote: “Gypsies have no home, and, perhaps uniquely among peoples, they have no dream of a homeland.”
She also described the Roma as living “outside history.” (Read more)
Romani History →
A new theory on Romani history based on ongoing research into recorded and factual evidence is being prepared by Ronald Lee and other scholars, including Ian Hancock, Marcel Cortiade and Adrian Marsh. Using language studies, blood groupings, DNA tests and the factual evidence in the writings of the period by Firdausi and other scholars at the Ghaznavid court of Mahmud and later, the Persians, Armenians, Turks and Greeks, the theory suggests that a group of Indians numbering in the thousands were taken out of India by Mahmud Ghazni in the early 11th century and incorporated as ethnic units, along with their camp followers, wives and families, to form contingents of Indian troops to serve in the Ghaznavid Emirate in Khurasan as ghazis and in the bodyguard of Mahmud and his successors. The existence of such troops is well documented in contemporary histories of the Ghaznavids, as is their participation in the battles in Khurasan. The theory goes on to explain that in 1040, the Ghaznavid empire was overthrown by the Seljuks and that the Indian contingency, numbering around some 60,000, were either forced to fight for the Seljuks and spearhead their advance in their raids into Armenia, or fled to Armenia to escape them. In any event, the Indians ended up in Armenia and later, in the Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm. These proto-Romanies remained in Anatolia for two to three hundred years and during that time they abandoned their military way of life and took up a nomadic lifestyle based on artisan work, trading, animal dealing and entertainment. Gradually, small groups wandered westwards across the Bosporus to Constantinople and from there up into the Balkans to reach Central Europe by 1400, leaving local groups in all the regions they had passed through. Roma made their home in almost all countries of Europe where it has been, and still is, the failure of all of the governments of those countries to provide protection for Roma against persecution and massive discrimination by the police, local authorities and the local population that are the causes of the present conditions. Under the Geneva Convention on Refugees, this is tantamount to official persecution and allows Roma to seek refugee status in signatory countries. Little action is taken to prevent massive job discrimination in the workplace, housing and public sectors. In Romania and elsewhere, employment ads in the local papers are allowed to state: No Roma wanted or words to this effect. Roma are in effect living in a state of Apartheid in the New Democracies. In the Czech Republic signs appear in windows of discotheques, cinemas and restaurants stating: No dogs or Gypsies allowed! Now that Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland are EU members and the other new democracies that have large Romani populations are in line for EU membership in the near future, it remains to be seen whether conditions will improve for the Roma, or will proposed improvements be endlessly delayed or even abandoned. If the evidence of the treatment of Roma in some of the long-established EU countries is any example, such as the deplorable refugee camps in Italy, the campsite problems in Britain, prejudice and actual persecution in Germany, Austria, France, Britain, Italy and elsewhere, the future of Sinti and Roma in Europe is not all that promising. The problem is not so much one of ethnic or national rights of Roma as minorities, where the present focus now lies, but of fundamental human rights as guaranteed under the United Nations Charter of Human Rights.
Baxt hai satimos tiri patragi! Good Luck and Good Health on this, International Roma Day! Opré Roma!
Workers at the committee
Eva Davidová
Workers in the committees
Eva Davidová
At the fire where the first Romani flag and anthem was introduced. From left is Jarko Jovanovič, behind him with the flag is Ladislav Demeter, and then Grattan Puxon.
Photo by Eva Davidová
The first World Romani Congress was held near London in 1971 and was funding by the World Council of Churches and the Government of India. Twenty-three representatives from Czechoslovakia, Finland, France, Great Britain, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Spain and Yugoslavia attended, as well as observers from Belgium, Canada, India and the United States. And five sub-commissions were created to examine culture, education, language, social affairs, and war crimes. The green and blue flag from the 1933 conference of the General Association of the Gypsies of Romania, embellished with the red, sixteen-spoked chakra, was reaffirmed as the national emblem of the Roma people. The song “Gelem, Gelem” was adopted as the Roma anthem, and the word “Roma” was accepted by the majority. Thus, the International Gypsy Committee, founded in 1965, was renamed to Komiteto Lumniako Romano (International Rom Committee).
