History of the Roma People in Europe

Background Information

There are several different groups travelling the roads of Scotland. There are the Romany descendants of nomadic North Indian metal-working tribes who travelled across Europe to reach Scotland four or five hundred years ago. They claimed to have come from Egypt, so were called Egyptians or Gypsies for short. There were broken clans from the 1745 Rebellion, and families forced from their homes in the glens of Sutherland and elsewhere in the North and West during the 19th century Clearances, and freed serfs from much earlier times. Then there are the travelling Show people, who claim a very different descent. All of these groups occasionally make their home on vacant sites in Glasgow. One part of Shettleston is labelled on the map Little Egypt. In their long visit the travellers have experienced much hostility from the settled peoples, who must themselves at some earlier date have been travellers in order to arrive here. And as the travellers picked over the leavings of the earlier arrivals to find and salvage metal, they also found and preserved songs and stories, so that much of Scotland's heritage of song has been recovered by folklorists from traveller singers like Jeannie Robertson and the Stewarts of Blair.

History of the Roma People in Europe The history of the Roma is one of continuous struggle and persecution. Since their entry into Europe, the Roma have been outlawed, enslaved, hunted, tortured, and murdered. From the time of the Slobuzenja (Abolition of Romani Slavery) in 1856, to the present day, the Roma have fought for their just social and human rights, largely to the deaf ears of world governments and an indifferent public. The use of the names Rom, Roma, Romani, or the double 'r' spelling, are used when possible, instead of the names 'Gypsy' and 'Gypsies'. However, it may be necessary to use Gypsy and Gypsies within a cultural or historical context. For the purpose of this timeline, Roma is used when possible. Rom, Roma, and Romani should not be confused with the country of Romania, or Rome the city. These names have separate, distinct etymological origins and are not related. Approximately a thousand years ago, several groups of people migrated from northern India, dispersing throughout Europe over the next several centuries. Though these people were part of several tribes (the largest of which are the Sinti and Roma), the settled peoples called them by a collective name, "Gypsies" -- which stems from the one time belief that they had come from Egypt. Nomadic, dark-skinned, non-Christian, speaking a foreign language (Romani), not tied to the land - the Gypsies were very different from the settled peoples of Europe. Misunderstandings of Gypsy culture created suspicions and fears, which in turn led to rampant speculations, stereotypes, and biased stories. Unfortunately, too many of these stereotypes and stories are still readily believed today. Throughout the following centuries, non-Gypsies (Gaje) continually tried to either assimilate the Gypsies or kill them. Attempts to assimilate the Gypsies involved stealing their children and placing them with other families; giving them cattle and feed, expecting them to become farmers; outlawing their customs, language, and clothing as well as forcing them to attend school and church. Decrees, laws, and mandates often allowed the killing of Gypsies. For instance, in 1725 King Frederick William I of Prussia ordered all Gypsies over 18 years of age to be hanged. A practice of "Gypsy hunting" was quite common - a game hunt very similar to fox hunting. Even as late as 1835, there was a ‘Gypsy Hunt’ in Jutland (Denmark) that "brought in a bag of over 260 men, women and children." Though the Gypsies had undergone centuries of such persecution, it remained relatively random and sporadic until the twentieth century when the negative stereotypes became intrinsically moulded into a racial identity, and the Gypsies were systematically slaughtered. The Gypsies of Europe were registered, sterilized, ghettoized, and then deported to concentration and death camps by the Nazis. Approximately 250,000 to 500,000 Gypsies were murdered during the Holocaust - an event they call the Porajmos (the "Devouring"). The Gypsies under the Third Reich The persecution of Gypsies began in the very beginning of the Third Reich - Gypsies were arrested and interned in concentration camps as well as sterilized under the July 1933 Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring. Yet, in the beginning, Gypsies were not specifically named as a group that threatened the Aryan, German people. This was because under Nazi racial ideology, Gypsies were Aryans. Thus, the Nazis had a problem: how could they persecute a group enveloped in negative stereotypes but supposedly part of the Aryan, super race? After much thinking, Nazi racial researchers found a "scientific" reason to persecute at least most of the Gypsies. They found their answer in Professor Hans F. K. Günther's book Rassenkunde Europas ("Anthropology of Europe") where he wrote: “The Gypsies have indeed retained some elements from their Nordic home, but they are descended from the lowest classes of the population in that region. In the course of their migrations, they have absorbed the blood of the surrounding peoples, and have thus become an Oriental, western-Asiatic racial mixture, with an addition of Indian, mid-Asiatic, and European strains. Their nomadic mode of living is a result of this mixture. The Gypsies will generally affect Europe as aliens.”