A long article in the New York Times on Małgorzata Mirga-Tass, a Romani artist who represented Poland at the last Biennale in Venice.
Survivors of the Nazi genocide of Sinti and Roma are worse off than other groups when it comes to compensation. A commission set up by former Interior Minister Seehofer (CSU) is calling for compensation for this disadvantage. But the traffic light coalition does not want to implement it.
At the beginning of the 20th century, in Thessaloniki, the second largest city in Greece, more than a third of the population was Jewish. The series Le Bracelet of Fire, directed by Giorgos Gikapeppas, has been released on February 4 on the public television channel ERT and from January 25 on the Ertflix group platform and retraces for the first time the history of a family of Thessaloniki through the darkest events of the 20th century.
However … The first episode, at the 37th minute and 45th second has a “Gypsy”, called Angelis is saying:
I stole, I stole (past continuous)
But it is allowed for the Gypsies to steal.
God gave us this right.
And he “explains” that the Romans gave an order to a Gypsy to forge the 4 nails to crucify Jesus. But when the Gypsy found out it was to crucify Christ he swallowed one. From then onwards God gave the Gypsies the right to steal.
This later tale is one that Roma told in Western Europe (but not in Greece) as the reason for their continuous travels (and originally as to why they claimed to be pilgrims).
In any case, that is a bunch of stereotypes…
Gerard and Sylwia Linder are a married couple working for the integration of the Roma-Polish community. They run the Jamaro Association, thanks to which children from both communities can go on holidays or holidays together. On Dzien Dobry TVN they told what their life together looks like and how the combination of two families from different cultures (Polish and Romani) looks like from their perspective.
Exactly what one doesn’t need. A brawl between Roma families in Sofia’s central railway station. According to an eyewitness, a group of men of Roma origin attacked two boys with clubs and metal pipes. One boy called his relatives, who came and the fight escalated. Police and gendarmerie arrived at the scene.
An online educational session prepared by the International Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust will be devoted to the Roma Holocaust. It will take place on February 23, the Auschwitz Museum announced.
“The Roma were recognized by the German Nazis as enemies of the Third Reich, therefore they were sentenced to isolation and extermination. In February 1943, their deportation to KL Auschwitz began. A family camp called Zigeunerlager was established in Birkenau. The Roma incarcerated there came mainly from territories of Germany, Austria, the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and occupied Poland. The Zigeunerlager existed until August 2, 1944. At that time, about 4,200-4,300 men, women and children were loaded onto trucks and taken to the gas chamber” – reminded Dr. Maria Martyniak, responsible for the projects educational in the museum.
A video of a young girls severely beating another one in total indifference of most other people around has gone viral in the Czech Republic. The Romano Journalist Patrick Banga reacts.
A discussion with the Romano journalist Patrick Banga about Roma in the Czech Republic. Officially, according the Census, there are only 20’000 Roma even though the government acknowledges that there are at least 250’000.
The article makes a few incorrect statements: Roma appeared in the Czech lands, in Bohemia and Moravia as early as the 13th century. They are thus there since 800 years. Unfortunately, during World War Two, most of the Czech Roma were deported and only a handful survived the Holocaust. Roma from Slovakia were resettled in what is now the Czech Republic by the communist regime after the war, which created a problem when Czechoslovakia split, as the Czech did not want to grant citizenship to those Roma.
A new museum in Montreuil en Bellay will be created to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust. This location was an internment camp in France for Roma.
Other news are much more usual: An association devoted to the promotion of Roma culture (well, it is a bit of a stereotyped culture) celebrates its ten years. In the North, a family is facing expulsion. In the Southeast in Grenoble, neighbours of a squat are complaining. And finally, the story of a former fort near Paris which is supposed to be turned into a centre for oncology and is literally full of garbage. Until 2021, Roma were sorting out the garbage there.
A Sinti centre in Elle, Germany, received a letter from the accident insurance. So far nothing really special. But the letter was addressed to the “Kindergarten in the social hotspot of Gypsy square”. Not really politically correct. No one know how this happened. And frankly, how did the letter arrive in the right place???
More on the upcoming memorial on the site of the former concentration camp for Roma in Lety, in the Czech Republic.
In just one year, the Roma and Sinti Holocaust Memorial in Bohemia should stand in Lety u Písek. The company Protom, which won the tender, undertook to complete the monument in 345 days.
Minister of Culture for the ODS Martin Baxastated:
“It was an event that was forgotten for decades, now the construction of the memorial here in Lety has been inaugurated. It will create a place that will be a permanent reminder of what happens when we slacken in our efforts to defend the values of freedom and democracy.”
The construction of the monument will cost less than one hundred million crowns. The winner of the indoor and outdoor exhibition competition should be announced this month. The Museum of Roma Culture would like to open the monument in 2024. The German government has also promised the museum funding for the outdoor exhibition. Norwegian funds will also contribute 26.5 million crowns to the memorial.
Ondrej Ferko leads the Devjatkakare čhave choir, with almost 40 children from the Luník IX housing estate in Košice. They performed during the Pope’s visit to Slovakia and in the television competition Czechoslovakia has talent. “In three years, we have destroyed stereotypes for other educators, who thought that nothing could be done with these children. And we also destroyed the children’s self-doubt,” says Ferko.
At the beginning, Milan Dulina, director of the Ľ Elementary School, also joined the work. Together with choirmaster Ferko, they explain, among other things, how they work with promising singers and also how artistic training has changed the results of children at school.
Ferko added “Roma children are not born knowing how to sing well, it takes a lot of hard work”.
The Antiziganism research center at the University of Heidelberg has a new head: Prof. Dr. Tanja Penter. The Rector of the Ruperto Carola, Prof. Dr. Bernhard Eitel appointed the professor of Eastern European history as director at the beginning of the year. In this function she succeeds the Heidelberg contemporary historian Prof. Dr. Edgar Wolfram. The institution, which was established in 2017, investigates mechanisms of prejudice formation and practices of discrimination and persecution of Sinti and Roma in Europe from a historically comparative perspective.
The Documentation and Cultural Center of German Sinti and Roma is showing paintings by the Benedictine monk Lukas Ruegenberg until March 19. Together with numerous fellow campaigners, the 94-year-old supported families in the Roma settlement of Habeš in Slovakia. This resulted in impressive and colorful paintings. The public vernissage will take place on Wednesday, February 8th at 6 p.m.
An article about the role and contribution of Roma to the history of circus in Sweden.
Alžbeta Ferencova, an actress, singer, dancer, who plays the main character in the series “Iveta”, talks about the portrayal of Roma in the series and about her great-grandmother, the first Roma writer Elena Lacková, in an interview.
The series Iveta opens up Roma topics in Slovakia, such as racism, stereotypes and eastern Slovakia. It was filmed by the Czech director Jan Hřebejk. The mayor of Trebišov, who was offended by the portrayal of his city, has also spoken out.
In the Stodolní Street in the center of Ostrava in the eastern part of the country, about a hundred Roma demonstrated in the early evening on Wednesday. They protested against the fact that security guards of some bars in this area allegedly physically attack Roma visitors for no reason, and the police allegedly do nothing about this violence. The crowd reached the nearby police station.
The event was called by Roma activist David Mezei. “There were two such cases in January alone, when the security guard beat up a young visitor for no reason just because he is Rom. It doesn’t work like that anymore. The police only save money, but they never investigate anything,” Mezei was angry, with other participants of the demonstration shouting in agreement.
On February 2, 1943, in Imbramowice, near Wrocław, the Germans murdered 43 Roma, including women and children from families who lived there with Polish families at the time. It is also known that seven people escaped, the Germans caught them and murdered them the next day in Wolbrom. There were 50 victims in total.
The secretary of the Roma Association in Poland, Władysław Kwiatkowski is related to the families of the victims of the German murder and commemorates this murder 80 years ago.
May they rest in peace.
The memorial to the Roma Holocaust on the grounds of the former pig farm in Lety will be completed within a year and will cost 199 million CZK (4.2 million EUR). In February, the winner of the competition for the indoor and outdoor exhibition of the monument will be announced.
Yesterday evening, the National Council unanimously passed a motion for a resolution to the government with the aim of recognizing the genocide of Roma and Sinti during National Socialism as a historical fact and establishing August 2 as a national day of remembrance for all victims of this genocide.
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