This blog is more of a historical account of how the Romani were treated during World War II than it is about their ethnography. In order to frame why they were treated differently during WWII, I first need to share a little bit of their history.
The Roma people, also known as Romani, have had a hard life. The Romani arrived in Europe from the Middle East and were given the nickname "Gypsies" because they were rumored to be EGYPtianS and moving in order to avoid persecution for being Christian. The Romani's traditional method for record keeping is to tell their stories and history to their decedents and not record events in texts. Because of that it's unknown why or when they left their native land (India), but whatever the reason it set up a domino effect of bad news for them. The Europeans had their doubts about the Romani because they had darker skin and looked a lot different (because they were from India) than everyone else in Europe. The Roma also just kind of showed up and didn't have any land build a permanent residence or any income. They tried to make a living by trading goods and services, but because they were nomads (and their skin color probably had something to do with it) nobody trusted them. In order to eat, some Romani were forced to steal food and that lead to the stereotype that all Roma are thieves. The biggest of the bad news dominos came from the Austro-Hungarian Emperor Karl VI in 1721. He put together the first government sponsored plan to relocate and murder the Romani in the region that eventually became Germany. It wasn't long after that when other European countries followed suit with their own similar laws. Finally, scholars in the 1800's came to the conclusion that the Roma weren't as culturally advanced as other territorially settled peoples and were considered less evolved because of that (Hajdu 2003). That ideology made it okay for everyone to treat the Romani as a subhuman beings.
When Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933, he declared the Roma and the Jews to be second-class citizens. With that, both groups were stripped of their civil rights and eventually sent to concentration camps for hard labor, experiments, and death. Not all Roma made it to the concentration camps because an unknown number were killed where they lived or on their way to the camps. In the concentration camps, the Romani were allowed to live in family camps where as the Jewish families were broken apart. This was because the Romani went crazy when separated from their families so it was a lot easier for the guards to control them if the families were jailed together. Life inside the family camps was not easy for anyone. The Roma were given very little food, which was bread, and that was often withheld as punishment. They would lick condensation off of the windows or drink their own urine because they were so thirsty (Hajdu 2003). The Roma have high standards of hygiene and a strict code of cleansing called Mokadi or Mokkadi, (I found it spelled both ways and each spelling had the same meaning) but were unable to keep up their traditional cleanliness because their living conditions dictated otherwise. Hitler also had the Romani women sterilized as a way to control there population. The females were usually told they were getting an examination, but instead were given a painful injection that made them unable to have children. That was a three pronged attack because it not only physically hurt them, but also caused psychological misery and social anguish. Children are a big part of the Romani culture and are considered the pride and joy of a community. A person's social status is also influenced by the amount of children they have. The more kids a person has, the higher their status so if a woman is unable to reproduce she is considered lower than others with kids and lower than women who could still have children. While in the concentration camp, the Romani were recipients of cruel medical experiments. Some twins were stitched back to back in an attempt to form conjoined (Siamese) twins, and other sets of twins were killed for the sole purpose of performing an autopsy on them. The Roma were also exposed to mustard gas (in order to study who survived with an antidote) and a cyanide based pesticide to test the side effects (the pesticide became the standard gas that was used in the gas chamber to kill the prisoners.) Unfortunately this is only a small picture of what happened in Nazi Germany. To make this a little bit more real, here is a clip from the HBO series Band of Brothers where the Americans find a concentration camp during WWII.
Reference:
Hajdu, Julia
2003 The Roma and the Holocaust of World War II: Victims, Then and Now. Electronic document
http://www.history.ucsb.edu/projects/holocaust/Research/Proseminar/romaholocast.htm,
accessed June 1.
I think that what happened in Nazi Germany was an atrocity and probably mankind's worst moment. As a white American,I personally feel like white men already have a stigma. Were blamed for being the 1% who inspired the occupy Wall street movement and as "The man" who keeps everyone down. In that respect Hitler sure didn't do us white dudes any favors. My personal beliefs align with those of a liberal so I'm also embarrassed that the Nazi's weren't stopped sooner. Hitler was able to take away everything from a group of people just because he didn't like them (he was extremely ethnocentric), and I can't imagine what it would take for me to be that cruel. Hitler also conducted a lot of unethical medical experiments. As an aspiring scientist I think about what would happen if Hitler found a cure for something like Ebola or cancer. Would it be ok to use that treatment because it came from the deaths and suffering of thousands, maybe millions of people who didn't have a choice in the experiments?
ReplyDeleteI also can't forget about the real victims, the Romani. The poor Roma were tortured, maimed, starved, and who knows what else, but were powerless to stop it. When I think about their situation I have a hard time seeing why the Roma stayed in Europe. I have a lot of trouble putting myself into the shoes of the Romani because there isn't a lot of history to get a good understanding. Because of that I find myself taking an ethnocentric view of their culture. I only have my understanding and experience of American culture as a guide so I've probably made a lot of wrong assumptions and judgements about the Roma and am a victim of activated ignorance. With that in mind, I know that I would move on to someplace else if I had to resort to stealing in order to survive. I don't know why the Romani stayed where they knew they were hated, but it kinda looks like they were asking for trouble. Even so, the rest of the world had no right to try to exterminate them.