HAS THE PORRAJMOS ENDED?

[LELA SAVIC]

August 2, the remembrance day of the Roma Genocide during WW2 and the current wave of Romaphobia in Europe.

Being Roma or if you like a gypsy, is not romantic like in the movies. We do not always dance and sing, we are not free like a gypsy, with no land and no obligations as many people I have encountered in North America believe it to be.

It is actually not easy being a Roma: people very seldom understand who you are; they think of you as a lower race, they claim that you should not be alive and constantly accuse you of anything. When you are Roma, you will always be the other.

Today, August 2 is the day to remember the Romani Holocaust, the massive killing of the Roma people in WW2. While the exact number of Roma killed in the Holocaust remains ascertain, historians estimate that 70% of all of Europe’s Roma were killed, along the Jews and the homosexuals by the Germans and their allies.

Yet, 70 years later, while we have come a long way from anti-Semitism and homophobia, the fight against Roma-phobia is far from progressing.

The suffering of the Roma people has not ended, persecution persists and discrimination remains.

Hitler did not kill enough of them, said Gilles Bourdouleix, the deputy mayor of French city Cholet, regarding the Roma people last week.  While such comments are very hurtful for the Roma community and the people who have survived the Holocaust, this is nothing new.

Just last month in Marseille, while a Molotov cocktail was thrown in the Romani settlement of Hellemes, the mayor of Marseille; Didier Réault invited people to do the same in Capelette, one of the biggest Romani settlements in Marseille. Réault did not withdraw his statement and said there was an overreaction when people blamed him for “incitement to murder”.

In Italy, the numerous cases of Roma settlements that are being burnt are countless. Until recently, in Croatia, numerous Roma children were being put in classes for the mentally disabled while they are not, they called it special schools. In Slovakia and Czech Republic, Roma women were being sterilized without their knowledge or consent, in an effort to ‘reduce the Roma population’. In Hungary being Roma as so dangerous that many women die their hair in blond so that they can pass for Hungarians; neo-Nazis march in the streets of Budapest waving Arrow-Cross inspired Arpad-flags, wearing symbols resembling those of the Nazi era, their campaigns, in which  statements such as ‘Roma are animals that should be exterminated’ are circulating on public television. 

Shocking you might say, yes it is. We face widespread racism and discrimination and the political climate Europe allows others to express their prejudices and hatred without many sanctions.

So as all the Roma around the world are gathering to commemorate the Romani Holocaust, I feel as though it has never really ended. Our struggle is still present, in the streets, in the speeches of the people, in the ways our women are sterilized, our people are terrorized, our villages are burnt and our people are killed, because we are ROMA.