Copyright
Roma, 38/39:5-29 (1993)
Contrary to the popularly assumed image of “gypsies” as a free and untroubled people, the Romani population everywhere in fact endures systematic, gross deprivation of their human, social and civil rights. The situation at the present time is approaching chronic proportions, but continues to remain under-acknowledged in world media.
Antigypsyism in the New Europe
Ian Hancock*
As very erroneous ideas of the present state and manners of the Gypsies are pretty generally entertained, it may not be improper or useless to endeavour, in this place, as far as truth will warrant, to lessen the prejudices which exist against them. Though they have almost always been considered and described as rogues and vagabonds and have generally been treated in all countries as such, the imputation rarely seems to rest upon proof. On the contrary, they who have so described them have mostly admitted that they have taken their character on hearsay; while those who have had opportunities of really knowing them, have generally affirmed that they have not found them to be such.1
So wrote Samuel Roberts over a century and a half ago in his defense of the Romanies (“Gypsies”) of Europe. Few advances have been made at the popular level since that time to correct those “erroneous ideas of the present state and manners” of the Romani people; instead, manifestations of “the prejudices which exist against them” have sharply increased. The organization of a conference in Germany to find ways to deal with the “Gypsy Scum” (Das Zigeunergeschmeiss), and the subsequent creation in that country of the Central Office for Fighting the Gypsy Nuisance {Die Zentrale zu Bekämpfen der Zigeunerplage) in 1899 under the directorship of Alfred Dillman were grim forerunners of what awaited them in the 20th century.2 For Romanies the Holocaust (called the Baro Porrajmos, or “great devouring” in the Romani language), was the most extreme, though not the first, genocidal policy enacted against them since their arrival in Europe at the end of the thirteenth century. The first attempt was in 1721, when their complete extermination was ordered by Emperor Charles VI. In countries such as England, Holland and Finland at different times in history, it was a hanging offense merely to have been born a Romani.3
That the fate of Roma in the Holocaust, and their plight in contemporary Europe have generated only marginal concern are only two manifestations of the fact that, outside of the academic world, little is understood about Gypsies generally. Despite the continuous presence of several million Romanies throughout western lands since the Middle Ages, the average person’s associations are with the “gypsy” of fictional literature of Hollywood movie, the same sources that influence journalists’ reports in the media. Another aspect of the problem facing Romanies is underscored by the failure nevertheless of institutions such as The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council—which are familiar with Romani Holocaust history—to acknowledge it appropriately or fully, or to demonstrate a genuine interest in interacting with the contemporary Romani community to improve the situation.4 That the Porrajmos was able to happen at all without any intervention by, or evidence of concern from, the outside world, was because of the widespread lack of perceived human worth placed upon the Romanies as a people. When the question of this indifference was raised following the war, one French physician asked, rhetorically, “everyone despises Gypsies, so why exercise restraint? Who will avenge them? Who will bear witness?”.5 The excuse that the rest of the world did not know what was happening cannot be maintained in the Romanies’ case :
Whatever the real state of knowledge or ignorance among the German civilian population during the Second World War about the transport and the murder of millions of German and non-German Jews in Europe, the initial internment of the Roma was kept secret from no one. Concentration camps were built on the outskirts of the capital city, and the internment of the Sinti and Roma was not only covered by a number of Berlin newspapers, but was even joked about in their columns. Psychologists engaged in racial research paid official visits to Marzahn to study and take extensive film footage of the Romani children at play there. A major trainline ran right past that camp, and its few survivors recall that train passengers who pitied their situation, and who knew or suspected that the interned Roma were surviving on only minimal rations, occasionally threw packages of food down into the camp enclosure as their train passed by.6
A summary of the events affecting Roma in Nazi Germany bears repetition firstly because of the general paucity of readily-available information dealing with Romani Holocaust history, secondly to place the Porrajmos in the historical context of European antigypsyism, and thirdly to understand the post-war lack of concern for what happened in the Third Reich and the frightening increase of antigypsyism in the present day.
The Treatment of Roma in Nazi Germany
In 1920, Roma were singled out as Lebensunwertes Leben or “lives unworthy of life,” in a study by that name published by psychiatrist Karl Binding and magistrate Alfred Hoche,7 a work which had a profound effect upon Adolf Hitler and the theories of which became fundamental to the formulation of his later race policies of exterminating genetically ‘‘worthless life.” During the 1920s, Romanies in German-speaking land were being routinely photographed and fingerprinted, and by the end of that decade, containment camps had already been built for them in Germany.8 When the Nazi Party came to power in 1933, Hitler’s cabinet introduced a law to legalize eugenic sterilization, which targeted “specifically Gypsies and most of the Germans of black color.”9 In 1935 Romanies became subject to the restrictions of the Nuremberg Law for the Protection of Blood and Honor, which forbade intermarriage or sexual relationships between Aryan and non-Aryan peoples; The first document referring to “the introduction of the total solution to the Gypsy problem on either a national or an international level” was issued under the direction of State Secretary Hans Pfundtner of the Reichs Ministry of the Interior in March, 1936, while the wording endgültige Lösung der Zigeunerfrage, i.e. the “final (or “conclusive”) solution of the Gypsy question,” was made by Himmler in May, 1938. In June, 1938, “Gypsy Clean-up Week” (Zigeuneräufraumungswoche) was the first of a series of murderous pogroms directed at the Romani population;10 in January, 1940, the first mass genocidal action of the Holocaust took piece in the concentration camp at Buchenwald, where 250 Romani children were used as guinea pigs to test the Zyklon-B cyanide gas crystals.11 On July 31st 1941, Reinhard Heydrich, “Head of the Reich Main Security Office and the leading organizational architect of the Nazi ‘final solution’”12 specifically included Gypsies in his directive ordering its implementation. The Einsatzkommandos were to begin the systematic murder of “all Jews, Gypsies and mental patients.”13 Himmler signed the order dispatching Germany’s Romanies to Auschwitz on 16th December 1942, which stated that “all Gypsies are to be deported to the Zigeunerlager at Auschwitz concentration camp, with no regard to their degree of racial impurity”. By 1945, an estimated 75%-80% of the entire Romani population of Europe had been destroyed.14
During the war trials following the collapse of the Third Reich, nobody spoke out for the Romani victims, and no reparations were forthcoming since the German government, fearing no opposition, disclaimed its obligation to pay them. One Romani survivor, summoned to testify in behalf of someone else against a prison guard—who, it so happened, had been in charge of that man’s own barracks—was given ninety days in jail for assault after feigning deafness and punching the guard when he approached him.15 As late as 1947, Romani survivors in Germany continued to hide in the abandoned concentration camps because they were afraid to show themselves publicly; pre-Nazi laws ordering the arrest of Gypsies not having documented proof of citizenship were still in effect.16 At time of writing Romanies have still not received compensation as a people for their losses in the Holocaust. Instead, Romani refugees in Germany have been placed in camps and subjected to deportations and racist attacks.17 As recently as 1990, at the May 5th meeting in Bremerhaven of the German Democratic Peoples’ Union, representative Wilhelm Schmidt lamented that “so few Gypsies were murdered in the Holocaust.”18
The Contemporary Situation
Three polls conducted in 1991 demonstrated that Romanies are without question the most discriminated-against minority in Europe. The first, conducted in January and jointly sponsored by Freedom House and The American Jewish Committee,19 concluded that “the strongest negative attitudes by far were expressed towards Gypsies.” A reverse-order ranking listing preferences for the ethnic or racial identity of one’s neighbors indicated the following averages for Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland: Gypsies, 78%, Arabs, 66%, Blacks, 53%, Asians, 50%, Russians, 37%, and Jews, 27%.
The second poll, the results of which were released in July, was conducted in Bucharest by the Romanian Institute of Public Opinion.20 Responding to the question of public tolerance of the pejorative portrayal of minorities in that nation’s press, 41 % of those polled agreed that Roma ought to be dealt with negatively. This may be compared with 24% against Hungarians, 11 % against Jews and 4% each against Germans and Serbs.
The third poll, conducted by the Times Mirror Center for the People & The Press and released in mid-September, again ranked Romanies clearly as having the highest negative score, concluding that “Hostility to Gypsies showed no correlation with religion or with economic or educational status. It was extremely strong and virulent across the breadth and depth of the Continent.”21
The one sentiment that unites Western and Eastern Europe is hatred of Gypsies, who along with the Jews were victims of the World War II Holocaust. In every country where the question was asked [in the Times Mirror Poll], Europeans in overwhelming numbers expressed contempt for Gypsies : Germany, 59%, Czechoslovakia, 91%, Hungary, 81%, Bulgaria, 71% and Spain, 50%.22
These findings are substantiated by documentation compiled by the International Romani Union, which has catalogued instances of antigypsyism from practically every country in eastern and western Europe, as well as from North and South America and Australia. Many such cases are in flagrant violation of the victims’ civil and human rights. The following provide a random sampling since January, 1990:
In St. Anthony, Minnesota, in the United States “A Bulgarian delegation was ordered out of a grocer’s store after the manager, who was worried about ‘gypsy-like’ shoplifters, mistook the group for Gypsies he said ‘put everything down and leave; we don’t want your kind of people in this store’.”23 The proprietor said that he would apologize to the U.S. Information Agency visitors “if they weren’t Gypsies . . . and if they were we’d certainly like to get them out faster.” His action was in response to a police department circular, a copy of which is in possession of the Romani Archives, which described individuals in “gypsy-like” dress but who in fact were listed as “Hispanic” and “Spanish-speaking.” In the United States, where the average life expectancy of Romani Americans is between the ages of 48 and 55 (cf. 70.3 for black American and 76.3 for white American males),24 they remain the only ethnic minority against whom laws are still in effect, and for whom special police department “Gypsy crime” harassment units exist.25
In the United Kingdom, British Conservative Party Councillor Margaret Tookey stated in a public address in March, 1990, that she would like to see “all filthy, dirty Gypsies dumped in the sea”.26 A campaign poster for the same political party read “Gypsies: Filth! Crime! One day after the election, we promise to move them out!”27 In the past two decades there have been three public calls from politicians reported for the sterilization of Romanies in Britain, where their infant mortality rate is seventeen times higher than the national average.28
In Spain, thirty Romanies were forced to abandon homes they had lived in for 25 years, some of which were burnt down, in the village of Mancha Real on May 20th, 1991, in response to a petition organized by “some thousands” of local Spaniards. The mayor of Mancha Real told the press that Gypsies “live among us but are not like us; we are going to do everything possible to ensure that these Gypsies do not come back.” Press coverage reported the incident as “ugly racism.”29 Since May, villagers have prevented the rebuilding of those homes, and have forcibly prevented Romani children from attending school. A report from Madrid dated October 11th, 1991 described similar instances of antigypsyism in that city, where the construction of 88 homes for Romanies has been blocked by local white residents.30
In Italy, where only 3% of Romanies live beyond the age of sixty, “a young Gypsy couple was shot to death and a four-year-old girl was wounded in what police called a racist attack,” in late 1991.31
In Czechoslovakia, “Skinheads beat up the enemy—anyone who is not white: Gypsies, Vietnamese, Africans . . . the Skinheads hate Gypsies, whom they describe as a lower species. ‘You can’t do anything with Gypsies,’ one said at a press conference in Prague. ‘Only the terror of physical pain counts with Gypsies’.”31 In April, 1991, Walter Russell Mead reported that “In Prague, I met high school honors students carrying switchblades to use on the Gypsies. ‘They live like animals’ said one of the students, the son of a Czech diplomat, as he demonstrated his blade. ‘By the year 2000 there will be more than a million of them in Czechoslovakia. I wish all the Gypsies were dead’.”33 According to press information, twelve Romanies were killed in that country during the first eight months of 1991; a Turk was mistaken for a Rom and beaten to death by hooligans.34 A report dated August 28th, 1991, indicates that the coercive sterilization of Romani women and the permanent removal of their children is still going on, despite assurances from the Czechoslovakian government that it had been stopped.35
In Mlawa, Poland “thousands of cheering onlookers” watched as hooligans shouting “death to the Gypsies!” beat up Roma, destroyed the homes of nine families, and set fire to their cars. “interviews with the mayor, Gypsies and other residents suggested that the motive for the violence was racial ... ‘Of course it was because we are Gypsies; they hate us for having dark skin.”36
In Russia, two anti-Romani pogroms, in the towns of Pskov and Alapajevskij occurred in the late summer of 1991. Reports indicate that antigypsyism is rapidly spreading in former Soviet territories.37
Throughout Hungary, racially-motivated violence by gangs of right-wing youths against Roma are becoming increasingly prevalent. Following the shooting of a Romani man by police in Budapest in August, 1990, gangs “armed with sticks, chains and knives brutally beat and injured” residents in the Romani community at Csebokszari, including elderly people, pregnant women and children, as well as numbers of non-Romani bystanders who tried to intervene. Residents of the Romani community at Kalocsa were attacked with poison gas spray, and a twelve-year-old boy was stripped and badly beaten. When he ran off, he was shot at three times. Similar attacks have since been reported from other areas.38 The average life expectancy for Roma in Hungary is fifteen years lower than the national average, while the infant mortality rate is fifteen times higher.39
In Kikinda, Yugoslavia, a 15-year-old Romani boy was shot and killed by police in March, 1991; another youth was killed in Kursumlija. A Romani woman was set on fire by a gang of Albanians in Pristina, Kosovo. During the 1990 elections in Slovenia, Romanies were forcibly prevented from voting in the towns, and no polling booths were provided in rural areas.40 The International Romani Union has received unconfirmed reports of numbers of Romani deaths resulting from the civil war. The Belgrade home of the Union’s president, Dr Rajko Djurić, was ransacked and he has been forced to seek asylum in Germany.41
In the town of Lom in Bulgaria, Romani political activity is closely monitored by the police, who intentionally single out and harrass Roma in that country. In the village of Podem near Pleven in May, 1991, fifteen Gypsy houses were burnt down, leaving 150 people homeless. Racially-motivated attacks upon Romanies have also been reported from the town of Plovdiv in south-central Bulgaria.42
The situation in Romania is the most severe. Not only has there been a sharp increase in the incidents of mob attacks on Romanies, but grim evidence is coming to light that the Romani minority was being prepared for a social role similar to that which it had during the five and a half centuries of Romanian slavery. The increase in hostility followed closely the collapse of Ceauşescu’s regime at the end of 1989:
Civilian guides (typically Securitate members) suddenly appeared at the doorsteps of Gypsy homes. Men who were found inside were subjected to rapid executions; some of them had their heads cut off with a single swipe of the sickle Women were beaten and raped in front of their horrified children and parents, who were themselves tortured. Some men and women were tied by the hands and feet and lifted onto trucks that took them to unknown destinations. Many never returned . . . The vast majority of Gypsies live in miserable conditions, suffering from want and even famine. Much has been made in the West of the appalling conditions of the Romanian orphanages and of Ceauşescu’s harsh anti-abortion law. What is generally left untold is that Gypsies constitute the majority of the children . . . By denouncing the Gypsies as popor de culoare (people of color) and as Asians or non-Europeans, the government is attempting to substitute racial ideology for Marxist class idelogy.43
Attacks on Romanies have been reported from all parts of Romania. In April, 1991, twenty-six Romani homes in the villages of Bolentin Plaj and Bolentin Xar, some 15-20 miles southeast of Bucharest, were burned with gasoline bombs or collapsed by means of steet cables pulled by bulldozers. The inhabitants were driven into the woods surrounding the villages and warned never to return. When it was suggested at a meeting between the writer and Messrs. Gavrilescu and Diaconu of the office of Human Rights and Freedoms in Bucharest on August 13th, 1991 that contemporary Romanian racist attitudes had their roots in the centuries of Gypsy slavery in Romania, and that clear parallels existed between the Romani and the African American situations, and the kind of discrimination directed at both peoples, the response was that slavery ended in the 19th century and could therefore have no contemporary relevance. It was also made abundantly clear that any problems involving Roma and violence were the Roma’s own fault, and that as long as Roma maintained their place in society, there was usually little trouble. Mr. Gavrilescu provided The Romani Union with a copy of the official statement on disturbances involving Roma, prepared by Nicolae Dascalu, Head of the Romanian Delegation of Experts on National Minorities, which contained references to the “criminal nature” of the Gypsy people, and the “right of the Romanian people to inflict punishment” in retribution. It also stated, in discussing terrorist outbreaks initiated by Romanians, that “their immediate cause was always the committing of serious crime by a Gypsy.” Despite the widespread occurrence of anti-Rom pogroms in such towns as Basarab, Biga Ion, Bucharest, Carpeniş, Casin, Cilnic, Cuza Voda, Lunga, Huedin, Mihai Kogălniceau, Orezeni, Plaiaşii de Sus, Reghin, Romaneşti, Seica Mare, Tirgu Mureş, Turu Lung and Virghis, resulting in beatings, maimings, rapes and murders, to date only one non-Romani has been charged, although hundreds of Romanies have been arrested during the past year.43 The San Francisco Chronicle for December 12th, 1993 carried the headline “Romanian Gypsies Being Terrorized,” and included a story which began “An orgy of mob lynching and house-burning—with police collaboration—has turned into something more sinister for Romania’s hated Gypsies: the beginnings of a nationwide campaign of terror launched by groups modeling themselves on the Ku Klux Klan. ‘We are many and very determined. We will skin the Gypsies soon. We will smash their teeth and cut off their noses. The first will be hanged’ said one Romanian.” At the same time The New York Times carried an article entitled “To the Gypsies [in Romania], Death is a Neighbor, and So Is This Implacable Hatred.” A woman commented to one human rights organization investigating the murders “Why call it murder? Murder is when you kill human beings.”
Projections for the Future
With the appearance of specialist reports such as those being prepared by organizations such as Helsinki Watch, the Lau Mazirel Foundation, The Rom & Cinti Union and the International Romani Union, and with growing media acknowledgment of the contemporary situation of Romani in Europe stimulated by the findings of the 1991 opinion polls, there is an evident heightening of public awareness of the Romani case. The establishment in recent years of a media watch committee and such organizations as the Romani Jewish Alliance have also begun to combat misrepresentation in the press and on television in the United States, and to bring the facts of antigypsyism (especially in Nazi Germany and present-day Romania) to a wider audience. Interest in Romani Studies is growing, and Romani language courses are available at a number of universities, e.g. in Prague, Paris and Texas. A Romani language summer school organized by the International Romani Union is now held annually in different European countries, and other United Nations human rights organizations are increasingly incorporating special sessions dealing with Romani issues into their agendas. A new European Romani Parliament, EUROM, is being formed, to rank alongside the nations making up the 1992 trade alliance. These developments, while necessary remain, however, in the academic and intellectual domain. Their effect has yet to reach the millions of Romanies who are battling daily to survive and to find a permanent home. Over eighty percent of the eastern European refugees entering Germany and other western countries are Roma,44 and this has already led to the beginnings of an influx of undocumented individuals seeking asylum in the United States. At the present time these people probably number between two and four thousand, but this figure will surely grow. They have not yet become the subject of governmental attention, and are being targeted by police and immigration authorities as criminals; the International Romani Union is attempting to persuade congressional representatives to establish a formal, sympathetic investigative committee to examine the situation before and in the event that it become unmanageable. Such cooperation between the Romani and the non-Romani populations is essential, if a rise of antigypsyism of major proportions, beyond that already happening in Europe, is to be averted; it will require an adjustment of attitudes on both sides.
When the Romanies were freed of the bonds of slavery in mid-19th century Romania,45 there were no forty acres and a mule awaiting them, no reorientation programs established by their former owners to help them. Instead they were turned out into a Europe in which legislation kept them on the move, a population criminal by inheritance. The same was true following the collapse of the Third Reich, when no humanitarian organizations came forward to aid the Romani survivors, a shattered population which instead continued to be subject to anti-Gypsy legislation in all countries. That Romanies now have permanent representation in the United Nations and the Council of Europe, and have created the European Romani Parliament, is admirable testimony to the determination of a people which has known only oppression since encountering the western world.
NOTES
1. Samuel Roberts, The Gypsies: Their Origin, Continuance and Destination (London: Longman & Co., 1836), p. 24.
2. Donald Kenrick and Grattan Puxon, The Destiny of Europe’s Gypsies (New York: Basic Books, 1972), pp. 46, 60; Jean-Pierre Liégeois, Gypsies: An Illustrated History (London: Al-Saqi Books, 1986), p. 92; Miriam Novitch, Le Génocide des Tziganes sous le Régime Nazi (Paris: Publication No. 164 of the Comité pour l’Erection du Monument des Tziganes Assassinés à Auschwitz, 1968), p. 4; Gabrielle Tyrnauer, The Fate of the Gypsies during the Holocaust (Washington: Special Report to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, 1985), p. 17. The self-designation of the Romanies in Germany (as well as of related group elsewhere) is Sinti or Cinti, and for this reason it has become common in discussions of the Holocaust to refer to “Roma and Sinti.” Liégeois is the best available overview of Romani history and migrations; see also Anne Sutherland, Gypsies: The Hidden Americans (London: Macmillan, 1975) and Rena Gropper, Gypsies in the City (New York: Darwin Press. 1975). An account of the American Romani population and its history may be found in Ian Hancock, “The Romani Diaspora”, The World & I,March, 1989, pp. 613-623 and April, 1989, pp. 644-655. Throughout, the word “Romanies” is the preferred ethnonym for all populations of Romani descent.
3. Liégeois, (op. cit, note 2), p. 92.
4. Toby Sonneman, “Op Ed”, The New York Times, January 1992.
5. Christian Bernadec, L’Holocaust Oublié: Le Massacre des Tsiganes (Paris: Editions France-Empire, 1979), p. 34.
6. Katherine Maria Trumpener, Goddam Gypsy: Peoples without History and the Narratives of Nationalism (Paper presented at the Modern European Studies Workshop, Chicago, May, 1990), p. 17. Her principal source is given as documentation accompanying an exhibit Ich bin kein Berliner: Minderheiten in der Schule, organized by the West Berlin Arbeitsgruppe Padagogisches Museum in the Fall of 1987.
7. Karl Binding and Alfred Hoche, Die Freigabe der Vernichtung Lebensunwerten Lebens (Leipzig: F. Meiner Verlag, 1920).
8. Jeremy Noakes, “Life in the Third Reich: Social Outcasts in Nazi Germany,” History Today, 33 (1985), pp. 15-19, on page 18. See also Ian F. Hancock, “Gypsy history in Germany and neighboring lands: A chronology leading to the Holocaust and beyond,” in David Crowe and John Kolsti, eds , The Gypsies of Europe (Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, Inc., 1991), pp. 11-30.
9. That is, individuals resulting from unions between African troops deployed by the French to patrol the Ruhr Valley during the First world War, and local German women. See Gisela Bock, “Racism and sexism in Nazi Germany,” Signs, 8.3 (1983), pp 400-421, on page 408, Sybil Milton, ‘The racial context of the Holocaust,” Social, Education, February (1991), pp. 106-110, “Gypsies and the Holocaust,” The History Teacher, 24(4):375-387 (1991), and “No Blacks allowed,” Chapter 7 in Ina R. Friedman, The Other Victims: First-Person Stories of Non-Jews Persecuted by the Nazis (Boston: Houghton Mifftin Co., 1990), pp. 91-94
10. Novitch, (op. cit.. note 2), p. 7.
11. F. Proester Vraždeni čs. cikanu v Buchenwaldu, (“The murder of Czechoslvakian Gypsies in Buchenwald”), (Prague : Document No. UV CSPB-K-135 of the Archives of the Museum of the Fighters Against Fascism, 1940).
12. Robert Wistrich, Who’s Who in Nazi Germany (New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1982), p. 134.
13. Benno Müller-Hill, Murderous Science: Elimination by Scientific Selection of Jews, Gypsies and Others, Germany 1933-1945 (Oxford: The University Press, 1988), p. 53.
14. For a discussion of the statistics of the Romani losses between 1933-1945 and for further references, see Ian Hancock, “Uniqueness of the victims; Gypsies and. Jews in the Holocaust,” Without Prejudice: Review of Racial Discrimination, 1, 2 (1988), pp. 45-67. See also “Gypsies, Jews and the Holocaust” by the same author, in Shmate: A Journal of Progressive Jewish Thought, 17 (1987), pp. 6-15, and 8 (1987). pp. 14-17. An updated discussion may be found in Ian Hancock, We Are the Romani People, Hatfield, 2002, pp. 46-48.
15. Details of this incident, located in the Nuremberg transcriptions, were kindly provided by Dr. Michael Thaler of the Holocaust Center of Northern California, who is undertaking research on Nazi experiments with seawater and human survival.
16. Liégeois, op. cit., note 2, p. 93.
17. In October, 1988, the Munich city council announced plans to relocate Romanies to a containment center on the site of an earlier Nazi deportation center and slave labor camp, which was now a toxic waste dump with barbed wire and guards posted. See Die Tageszeichnung, October 26th, 1988, p. 4. In 1989 Romanies were forced to take refuge in an abandoned concentration camp in Neuengamme to avoid deportation; see the Frankfurter Rundschau, August 29th, 1989, Die Zeit, September 15th, 1989 and Die Tageszeichnung, September 23rd, 1989.
18. Presstelle der Rom & Cinti Union, May 13th, 1990, Hamburg.
19. Democracy, Economic Reform and Western Assistance in Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland: A Comparative Public Opinion Survey, prepared by Penn & Schoen Associates, Inc., Washington, April, 1991.
20. Prospects for Roma in a New Europe, report presented by the Helsinki Committee of the International Romani Union at the Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe: The Human Dimension, Moscow, September, 1991.
21. The Pulse of Europe: Special Report. Supplement to the Los Angeles Times, September 17th. 1991 (Summary of a 300-page report published by the Times Mirror Center for The People & The Press, Washington, 1991). Romanies are also the most discriminated-against minority in the United States; out of 38 social and ethnic categories, “Gypsies” ranked in bottom place both times in polls conducted by the National Opinion Research Center. See Tamar Lewin, “Study Points to Increase in Tolerance of Ethnicity,” The New York Times, January 8th 1991, p.
A-10.
22. “European bigotry moving into the open, poll finds,” The Baltimore Sun, September 15th, 1991, pp. Al, A9. See also John Tagliabue, “Pushed by Poverty, Romania’s Gypsies Are Wandering West,” The International Herald Tribune, November 28th, 1991, pp. 1, 2, Matthew C. Vita, “Gypsies Find 0ld Hatreds Surging Anew,” The Atlanta Journal, November 29th, 1991, pp.A-1,6, and Carol J. Williams, “Gypsies Felt Curse of Extremists,” The Los Angeles Times, December 20th, 1991, pp. A-18, 19.
23. “Bulgarian officials mistaken for Gypsies, The Wenatchee Safety Valve, April 1st, 1991, pp. 1,5. See also “Mistaken Identity, The New York Times editorial, April 16th, 1991.
24. J. D. Thomas, et al, “Disease, lifestyle and consanguinity in 58 American Gypsies,” The Lancet, 8555, pp. 377-379 (August 15th, 1986), p. 378.
25. Ian Hancock. The Pariah Syndrome (Ann Arbor: Karoma Publishers, 1987), pp. 105-114.
26. Thomas Acton, “The social construction and consequences of accusations of false claims to ethnicity and cultural rights.” Paper presented at the Leiden Foundation Centennial Conference on the Rights of Minorities in Europe, Leiden, September, 1990, p. 13.
27. Fight Back. No. 23 (Spring, 1990), p. 1.
28. According to the 1983 Report of the Save the Children Fund (London).
29. William Bond, “Gipsies seek a new life In town of fear,” The European, September 27th, 1991. See also the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. May 22nd, 1991.
30. Alan Riding, “A War on the Gypsies: The new prosperity fails to help the poorest of Spaniards,” New York Times International. October 12th, 1991, p. 3.
31. “In Italy, Gypsies battle discrimination,” The Baltimore Sun, October 13th, 1985,p,A-l6, and Tom Post, “A Fortress Mentality,” Newsweek, December 9th, 1991, pp. 36-38, on p. 36.
32. Sam Deluce, “Special Report,” The Seattle Times, August 9th, 1991, p. 4. See also John Tagliabue, “Czech Youth Gangs Attacking Gypsies,” The San Francisco Chronicle, October 15th, 1991, page A-13.
33. Walter Russell Mead, “Dark Continent: A Grand, Grim Tour of the New Europe, Harper’s, 282(4), pp. 45-53(1991), p. 46.
34. La Tribune de Genève, August 14th, 1991.
35. Ruben Pellar, The Sterilization with Grant of Gypsies in Czechoslovakia. Document provided by the Prague bureau of the International Romani Union, and the same author’s, “Sterilisierung von Roma-Frauen in der 6SSR,” Pogrom, 159 (May-June, 1991), p. 49. The Czechoslovak sterilizations were first reported in the U.S. Press in the September 15th, 1986, and September 7th, 1987 issues of Insight Magazine. See also Paul Ofner and Bert de Rooj, “Survey on the Sterilization of Roma Women in Czechoslovakia,” The Lau Mazirel Foundation, Amsterdam, July, 1990. [A bulletin issued by the European Roma Rights Center in December 2004 reported that this was still going on in the Czech Republic, ten years after the present essay was written].
36. “Poles vent their economic rage on Gypsies,” The New York Times, July 25th, 1991, p. A-5. See also that paper’s editorial “Hooligans and the Neighbor’s Cow” July 29th issue,1991, p. A-10, which argues that the incident was motivated instead by “sour grapes.”
37. Report from Alaina Lemon, working with the Moscow office of the International Romani Union, dated October 25th, 1991.
38. See the Association Raoul Wallemberg Bulletin for October 12th, 1990. and Destroying Ethnic Identity: The Gypsies of Hungary (New York and Washington: Helsinki Watch Report, in preparation). See also Ian Hancock, The Pariah Syndrome (Ann Arbor: Karoma Publishers, 1987), pp 102-103 [entire text downloadable at http://www.radoc.net].
39. “Hungary’s Gypsy explosion,” World Press Review, October, 1983, p. 35.
40. “Prospects for Roma in a New Europe,” a report presented by the Helsinki Committee of the International Romani Union at the Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe: The Human Dimension, Moscow, September, 1991.
41. “Pres. Rajko Djurić vient de s’enfuir de Yougoslavie,” Etudes Tsiganes, 1991, 3, p. 64.
42. Destroying Ethnic Identity: The Gypsies of Bulgaria (New York and Washington: Helsinki Watch Report, June, 1991).
43. Dan Pavel, “Romania’s Hidden Victims,” New Republic, March 4th, 1991, pp. 12-13.
44. See Tagliabue, Vita and Williams (all op. cit., note 22)
45. Perhaps three-quarters of the Romani American population descend from these liberated slaves, most of whom arrived here between 1890-1910.