The Roma culture days have started in the Polish city of Lublin.
The Romani language is the first topic covered in a ten-part series of reports entitled Visegrad Romani Magazine. It is prepared jointly by three Roma television stations: Dikh TV from Hungary, TV Romana from Slovakia and ROMEA TV from the Czech Republic.
An article on Ukrainian Roma in Poland, and the story of discriminations in Poland and in the Ukraine.
This coming Monday will celebrate the anniversary of the Roma rebellion in the Roma camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau. This unprecedented event is one of the essential elements of our history. (…) It is a symbol. Courage and heroism should be a beacon for contemporary Roma. Determination and resistance, even in a seemingly hopeless situation, give hope
– said the president of the association Roman Kwiatkowski in an interview with PAP.
A portrait on one of the major writer about the Polska Roma and the one who promoted the career of Papuša, the Romni poet. His books are still the bible on Roma in Poland.
Well, if you are not white, you are not so welcome in Poland …
Poland is represented this year by the exhibition “Charming the world” by Małgorzata Mirga-Tas. How was it created? And will it be possible to see it in Poland?
Roma culture is strongly associated with dance and music, but seldom with visual arts. This changes slowly, among others thanks to Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, who now represents Poland at the Venice Biennale – the most important event of this type in the world.
The artist is a Romni and has devoted all her work to date to the fight to change the historical narrative of the Roma community. Both the romantic one, showing the Roma people as free, dealing mainly with music and wandering around the world, and the ominous one – ascribing to them a tendency to cheat and trick others. She does it in an artistically original, intriguing and, above all, convincing way. – I don’t want to fight the whole world, naively thinking that it will suddenly change everything.
A year ago, at the cemetery in Imbramowice, near Wrocław, the construction of a monument financed by the Institute of National Remembrance was completed on a collective grave of 50 Polish citizens of Roma nationality, murdered by the Germans on February 2 and 3, 1943 in Imbramowice and Wolbrom. At that time, due to the limitations related to the pandemic, it was not possible to consecrate the tombstone. It was successfully consecrated last Sunday.
An interview of Ludlima Krikunova who fled the Ukraine and is now in Poland.
A project by the Polish-Romani artist Małgorzata Mirga-Tas was inaugurated in the Polish pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale. For the first time in the over 120-year history of the Biennale, the national pavilion is represented by a Roma artist. The pavilion opening ceremony was attended by: Undersecretary of State in the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage Wanda Zwinogrodzka, director of the Adam Mickiewicz Institute Barbara Schabowska and director of Zachęta Janusz Janowski.
The art of Małgorzata Mirga-Tas is an attempt or a tool to unlearn thinking that lead to the current war, say Joanna Warsza and Wojciech Szymański, curators of the exhibition “Przeczarowanie świat”, which will be shown at the Polish Pavilion in Venice as part of the Art Biennale 2022.
There is a bitter saying about the hospitality that the Polish government boasts in the world: everyone helps the Ukrainians, and the Roma help the Roma.
In brief, the Poles do not want them. At the end of March, when the war was already a month old, one of the volunteers said she called the voivode’s helpline to place a group of Ukrainian Roma in a refugee centre. She heard: “Gypsies have lice and we don’t take them.”
The bad conditions in the Roma housing estate in Maszkowice (Małopolskie Voivodeship) have not improved, the Commissioner for Citizens’ Rights is alerting. The residents of the estate have lived in terrible conditions for years. The commune has not done anything to improve the situation and the Human Rights Defender is intervening.
Yes, it is more difficult if you are Rom, or Arab, or African.
Bad, and sad that in the 21st century, such obscurantism still prevails.
On June 19, 2020, during the renovation and construction works at the market square in Tarnogród, the remains of Roma Holocaust victims were found. The exhumation, carried out by the Institute of National Remembrance, uncovered the remains of 22 people: 8 men, 3 women, probably 3 women, 8 children and 2 fetuses. The Roma were murdered by German gendarmes in May 1942.
The remains were buried in the parish cemetery in Prostynia. The ceremony began in the area of the Execution Site at the monument to the Roma and Sinti located next to the Treblinka I Penal Labor Camp, with the participation of the Roma community and invited guests.
An article about Poland at this year’s Venice Biennale.
According to this article, Roma in Poland had to move out of refugees’ quarters, as other refugees chased them out.
Bad.
Unfortunately some Roma do not really contribute to the acceptance of Roma in the general population. Here, the report of a scam run by Roma in the centre of Lublin.
Bad.
Two articles in the French Press on refugees from the Ukraine. In Budapest and in Warsaw. In Budapest, Roma have been sent to a vagrant shelter, and in Warsaw, they struggle to find lodgings.
Right after the outbreak of the war, two Roma women and eight children came. The oldest crossed the border barefoot. They have not been registered. It is not known what happened to them. They disappeared – says Dr. Joanna Talewicz-Kwiatkowska, who has been supporting the Roma community for two decades, president of the Foundation for the Website of Dialogue and co-founder of the Poland-Roma-Ukraine group on Facebook.
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