May 16th, 1944, Roma concentration camp inmates started an uprising against the wardens in Auschwitz. The “Zigeunerlager” was definitively closed on August 2nd of that year.
The curators of the Barvalo exhibition held a discussion Saturday with the Romanian Romani actress Alina Serban.
An article on the Roma camp in Lesbos, Greece and its horrid conditions.
Sad.
Little news this week in France on Roma. The Barvalo exhibition in Marseilles, a camp closed near Fos also in the Marseilles region. Finally, the story of a Romni whose child was forcibly removed based on the testimony of a man who turned out to be a racist. Bad.
Romno Kher (Roma House) sees itself as a place of learning, commemoration and encounter. Here, education not only means supporting children on their educational path, but also providing materials on the history and situation of the Sinti and Roma for schools and for the majority society. For example, based on the exhibition on the entire 600-year history since the Sinti were first documented in Germany in the 15th century: A history of discrimination that culminated in the Nazi genocide. But the exhibition also tells of survival strategies, of jobs, music, storytelling, right up to current topics such as the State Treaty and the Berlin Monument.
The German Greens are against the proposal to qualify Moldova and Georgia as “secure states”, a measure that would allow Germany a speedy dispatching of refugees from those countries back in their homeland.
Two cases of houses in Berlin which are mostly rented by Roma, where the residents have been expelled and need to go, making space for newer constructions.
Several articles are devoted to the new exhibition in Marseilles in the museum of European and Mediterranean Civilisation entitled “Barvalo”
The chairman of the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma, Romani, praised Brandenburg as exemplary with regard to its minority policy. “By making the fight against antiziganism a state goal, the state government is showing its responsibility to history and outlawing antiziganism as well as antisemitism,” said Rose on Tuesday after a conversation with Prime Minister Dietmar Woidke (SPD). “It sets an exemplary signal for our democratic constitutional state.”
The new exhibition in the museum of European and Mediterranean Civilisation in Marseilles.
Not much about Roma in France this week. Two articles on the judicial system: One where two Roma who were accused of stealing copper were freed for lack of proof; the other, the case of a child removed from her mother based on a wrong testimony. The usual story about the closure of camps in Bordeaux – they simply pop up again somewhere else. And finally, an intervention in the French senate about the lack of social care for Roma children, and the fact that the Roma population living in camps does not decrease. There are roughly 15’000 of them. Since at least 20 years.
Mehmet Daimagüler, the German antiziganism commissioner, criticises the Police and the fact that they are profiling Roma.
The camp of Westerbork in the Netherlands, a camp from which many Jews and Roma were transferred to death camps, wants to put more emphasis on the victims of the Holocaust. The military tattoo will no longer be blown at the 4 May commemoration in Camp Westerbork this year, instead the bell of camp will be rung before the two minutes of silence.
Not much this week in the press about Roma in France. In Lyon, Roma are being housed in bungalows. Definitively better than the camps. Ear Paris, Roma left a camp. In Western France, a camp was closed. And in the South two Roma from Bosnia were arrested while attempting to steal bicycles.
Ilona Lagrene, who grew up in Heidelberg, received the Gold Staufer medal from Lord Mayor Peter Kurz for her services to the country and her commitment to Sinti and Roma.
Well done!
The statements of the Labour MP about racism continue to draw criticism.
The British Labour MP Diane Abott had to resign following an outcry after a letter she wrote to a newspaper in which she suggested that “prejudice” experienced by “white-seeming people” is distinct from racism against black people.
This when one in three Roma and Travellers have experienced racism in the UK.
A posthumous book entitled “Tsiganes” by Patrick Williams, a French anthropology professor who died in January at the age of 73 has just been published.
We definitively disagree with the title, which is typical of the French confusion about Roma.
Not much this week. Ab amusing (and inaccurate) article on the French slang expression “nachave pelo” meaning in slang “get away”, “run”. It comes from the verb našav, to flee or to escape, and pelo, a testicle (and not a man as they say). Near Paris, an abandoned camp is an ecological problem, and near Bordeaux, the future closure of a camp means many inhabitants will loose their lodgings, and no replacement solutions have been organised.
The German Grimme Prize is considered the most important prize for German TV. The winners have been known for a while, but they only now received their prizes. In the “Information & Culture” category, Peter Nestler was honoured for his documentary film about the injustice against German Sinti and Roma families. He tells of Romani Rose’s family, their resistance and their insistence on justice (ZDF/3sat, 112 minutes).
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