Author Archives: Roma Foundation

Germany News Western Europe

Germany, the Catholic Church, and Roma

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Munich Archbishop Cardinal Reinhard Marx wants to conduct a review of the historical responsibility of the Catholic Church for the persecution of the Sinti and Rom during the Nazi. Marx visited the documentation and cultural centre of the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma.

The visit also dealt in particular with the role of the then Archbishop of Munich, Cardinal Michael Faulhaber (1869-1952) and his attitude towards Sinti and Roma.

Austria News Western Europe

Bibi Sara Kali

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The three sisters Snezana (Simonida Selimović), Tanja (Jasmin Behnawa) and Melisa (Zeynep Alan) travel to their mother’s Serbian home village and thus begin to confront their own identity. Jelena, the mother of the siblings, who could hardly be more different, went to Boljevac to celebrate Bibijako Dive (“Aunt’s Day”) and died shortly afterwards. The festival is celebrated every year on January 31st, the same day on which the play in WERK X was first performed in Vienna.

In “Bibi Sara Kali” the confrontation with the alienated Roma culture and its customs is brought to the stage in a self-deprecating, humorous and authentic way.

“It’s always wonderful to see the audience so enthusiastic. Being able to tell our stories is of course something special,” says director Simonida Selimović in an interview with KURIER. She herself was born in Serbia, but came to Vienna at the age of seven. Growing up in two cultures, I can identify with my siblings’ struggle for identity.

News Eastern Europe Slovakia

Miss Slovakia

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A young Romni student from Nitra is among the 12 finalists for this year’s Miss Slovakia contest.

She is twenty years old and, in addition to her studies, she is also an activist. “I am a member of the Roma Youth Leadership Academy, where we are currently preparing the third Congress of young Roma men and women. This event will be run under the auspices of the Office of the Plenipotentiary of the Government of the Slovak Republic for Roma communities,” she said.

News Eastern Europe Slovakia

Police Brutality in Košice

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The very long story of the police brutality against Roma in Košice which started in 2009 and saw Roma who had sued the police being brought to court is finally coming to an end. The European Court of Human Rights who had condemned Slovakia in the process awarded 20’000 EUR to each of the Roma.

At long last!

Austria News Western Europe

Austria’s Burgenland

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Austrian TV Station ORF Burgenland will start a new series on Sunday, February 12, 2023 as part of the TV folk group program “Romano Dikipe”. “In the footsteps of vanished Roma settlements” is the title of the series that investigates the situation of the Roma in Burgenland today. In each program, a different location is visited in order to talk to Burgenland Roma and Romnja about their lives, but also about the past. The reports are in Burgenland Romani, the language of the Roma in Burgenland, and have German subtitles throughout. The new series is based on the comprehensive historical work of the two Burgenland historians Herbert Brettl and Gerhard Baumgartner. The latter is also a studio guest on “Burgenland heute” on Saturday, February 11, 2023 at 7:00 p.m.

News Eastern Europe Slovakia

Slovakia, Education, and Roma

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The Slovak President Zuzana Čaputová came to the village of Toporec in the district of Kežmarok to see the impact of education on Roma. In that village, education is very important to Roma and the impact on their lives is visible: They live much better than their less educated brethrens.

The president considers the village of Toporec to be an example for the whole country.

News Eastern Europe Romania

Interview with Alina Şerban

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An interview with the actress, screenwriter, director, and Romani activist Alina Şerban who wishes to have more time for travelling, more time for herself this coming year. She says “The biggest dream for this year would be to travel more, to give myself time to breathe and develop without work. Until now, I didn’t really know how to do this without work, because work saved me. But looking back, I don’t know how I spent my years, I just see a lot of work. I hope to enjoy life more this year.”

Germany News Western Europe

Germany, Universities, and Roma

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For centuries, Sinti and Roma were excluded and persecuted in Germany. To this day, the fight for recognition is tough. This also includes a student association that wants to give Sinti/Roma and diversity at universities a voice.

Czech Republic News Eastern Europe Slovakia

ERRC Reports

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Two reports by the European Roma Right Centre highlight the discrimination of Roma in the justice systems of both the Czech and Slovak Republics.

Germany News Western Europe

Roma, the Holocaust, and Compensation

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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.

Greece News Western Europe

Greece: Series and Stereotypes

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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…

News Eastern Europe Poland

Poland: Interview

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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.

Bulgaria News Eastern Europe

Bulgaria: Brawl

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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.

News Eastern Europe Poland

Auschwitz Museum on Roma

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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.

Czech Republic News Eastern Europe

Czech Republic: Beating

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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.

Czech Republic News Eastern Europe

Roma in the Czech Republic

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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.

France News Western Europe

French Chronicle …

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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.

Germany News Western Europe

Germany: Really???

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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???

Czech Republic News Eastern Europe

Lety Memorial

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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.

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