Remembering the Roma
This year’s theme for Holocaust Memorial Day, which took place on Saturday, was the power of words. Here, Jess Smith, pictured below, a researcher in Scottish traveller history and author of a number of books on the subject, sheds light on the ill-treatme
THE ROMA people of Europe call it PORRAIMOS (the devouring).
It is believed that the Romany people of Europe emerged from north-west India more than 1,000 years ago. They travelled across the countries working as metal smiths, entertainers and traders. In the fifth century, they travelled to Persia (Iran) and began trading from northern India to southern Europe, living mainly in tents. The first official mention of the Romany people was in Serbia in 1345.
Little is known about them as individuals and, as they wandered from place to place, a lot of fear and suspicion followed in their footsteps.
It is known that their craftsmanship was superior to local metal smiths and this led to guilds complaining to the church and state about the intrusion of the Roma. They were soon relegated to a position of an outcast minority and faced banishment from one country to another. They also were advanced in medicinal herbs and their children were never ill, which led to ignorance and people saying that the Romany were in league with the devil who looked after them.
They were denied citizenship because they refused to assimilate and integrate.
They had their own beliefs and would not conform to those of the state.
Between 1416 and 1774, laws and decrees were passed in German states against Romanies.
In 1554, English law imposed a sentence of death for simply ‘being’ a gypsy.
In 1709, the district of Ober Rhein ordered the Romany to be deported.
In 1714, Mainz decreed that all captured Romany men be executed.
Since they first appeared in Europe their existence has been marred in such a way that the image of the ‘thief’, ‘vagabond’ and ‘rogue’ has only volumised.
Generations believed this forced the ‘wandering foot’ to remain an alien in his own land.
Simeon Simeonis, a monk visiting Crete in 1322, says: ‘They scarcely ever stop in one place more than 30 days … they move from field to field, with their oblong tents, black and low, like the Arab.’
In 1528, Martin Luther edited a small book on them titled
Liber Vagatorm. He admits that he did not write the book but it was the first volume of propaganda to make an impact on monarchs across Europe, including Britain.
Luther writes: ‘I have studied the “cant” language of these people and there is no doubt it is “Hebrew”.’
This was to lead to the belief that both of these groups were an insult to mankind and should be annihilated.
With the Nazi rise to power and their belief in the pure blood of the German race, came the desire to control and eventually wipe out groups who did not conform to this ‘ideal’.
They included Jews, criminals, the institutionalised, handicapped and, of course, the Romanies. Later they were to add the Poles.
Early 1933 saw the passing of two laws dealing with the ‘Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring’ and ‘Regulations for the Security and Reform of Habitual Criminals and Social Deviants’.
Romanies were involuntarily sterilised.
In 1939, the round-up began. The mass deportation began in May 1940, when 2,500 German Romany were deported to Poland.
In November 1941, 5,000 Romanies were gathered for extermination in a camp setting for the first time.
In Auschwitz, the Romanies were tattooed with a camp number, their heads were shaved and their possessions taken away.
45772, 40298, 28229 and 36116 were the numbers tattooed on Romanies who went to Auschwitz, Ravenbruck and Buchenwald.
How many?
Any reliable figures are impossible to validate. Before being rounded up into ghettos and then removed on to camps, groups of Romany were being massacred by roving death squads.
The collation of known figures gives a total of 200,000 murdered, starved or dying.
Adding those who died from ‘euthanasia’ programmes, forced labour or ‘enemy action’, the figure could rise to 500,000 but every year more and more evidence comes forward, so who knows what the actual figure was.
It has taken the Romany people years to heal the scars left by the Nazi genocide.
For more information about Jess Smith and her work, visit www.jesssmith.co.uk