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The Germans did the most collateral damage to the population of the Romanies during Nazi-occupied Europe before and during the Holocaust, or O Baro Porrajmos in the Romani tongue. Zigeuner is the German slang word for the Romani. Years before the Nazis, “it was not illegal to murder a Romani and there were sometimes ‘Gypsy hunts' in which Romanies were tracked down and killed like wild animals; forests were set on fire to drive out any Romanies who might have been hiding there" (35). The German Romani are the Sinti people (the name they called themselves). The Holocaust had reduced the Romani population by an incredible seventy percent. Johannes Behrendt of the Office of Racial Hygiene stated that “[a]ll Gypsies should be treated as hereditarily sick; the only solution is elimination. The aim should therefore be the elimination without hesitation of this defective element in the population" (42).
Despite the devastating blow of the extermination of three fourths of the Romani population, the extreme lack of redress was an additional sickening blow. Not one person testified on behalf of the Romani victims at the famous Nuremberg Trials! Regarding the issue of the zigeuner population in the concentration camps, the Nazis attempted to “justify - or differentiate – the killing of Gypsies by stating that they had been punished as criminals, not as Gypsies per se. And they succeeded…" (Fonseca, 274). No reparations were made to the victims or to the Romanies as a people. The United Nations also did nothing for the Romanies nor did the US War Refugee Board. In 1982, “the Nazi genocide against Sinti and Roma was officially acknowledged by Helmut Schmidt" (Fonseca, 275).
In 1998, the “then President of the United States Bill Clinton (himself of Romani descent) appointed him [Ian Hancock, author of We are the Romani people] to represent Romanies on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council" (Hancock, xiii). He was the only Romani on a 65-member panel to represent the Romanies.
The Romani people began anciently as a settled, not nomadic, high caste members of Indian society in the warrior class. From the time of their sojourn into a prisoner-of-war status onward they were classified as foreigners and non-Muslim, placing them lower on the social hierarchy scale. Soon afterwards, the stigma of being slaves dropped them to the lowest member of society. In the areas where the Romani people did not enter a country initially as slaves, the criteria used to form opinions about them was their foreign appearance, their foreign language, and their non-mainstream behavior. The appearance, language, and behavior of the Romanies constitute the core elements of their culture. What are the elements of their culture?
So far, their actual appearance and culture have not been addressed in this presentation. Should it make a difference at this point what they looked like or what they believed in? Would the fact that they had at that time lost their “homeland" identity be sufficient justification in not allowing citizenship in a country they have been forced to live in for over 500 years? Is their nomadic status in other countries also sufficient reason to justify the prejudicial, discriminatory, and harsh treatment they received by the hegemonies and the mainstream locals? If the reader does not agree with a belief or a code of conduct of the Romani people, would that make a difference in how the reader will perceive the historical treatment of them? Should it make a difference from a pluralistic perspective? Also, if the reader has had some negative experience with a Romani individual or individuals, does it change the perspective held on the historic treatment of them? Should it? Or, does the history of the Romani people offer some understanding and create a lowering of the “stereotype wall"?
Amazingly enough, to this day, much of the culture and belief systems of the Romanies remain intact. Family ties and roles, ritual and moral purity, and internal social unity are the core elements of their belief system throughout all of the fragments of the Romani society. What makes them ritually or spiritually unclean also rest at their core. Their appearance and skin color varies widely, as in many cultures, but there are still remnants of similarities within the subgroups of the Romani people at large, which occur with many other cultures as well. It is beyond the scope of this research to explain the individual variations of culture, beliefs, and appearances within the subgroups. However, understanding that there is a wide range of diversity among the people at large is crucial.
The main recognized subgroups of the Romani are:
The Danubian group (Kalderash, Lovara, Curara, etc.);
The western Balkan group (Istrians, Slovenes, Havates, Arlija, etc.);
The Sinto group (Eftavagarja, Kranarja, Krasarja, Slovaks, etc.);
Rom groups of central and southern Italy;
British (Welsh, now extinct; today only Anglo-Romani survive, speaking a mixture of English and Romani);
Finnish
Scandinavian
Greco-Turk
Iberian (today represented by Calo, the Hispano-Romani dialect of the Romani called Gitanos by non-Romani). (http://web.quipo.it/minola/romani/language6.htm).
The Romani are further classified into categories such as “migratory, semi-migratory, and settled groups." The Roma are also classified by their trades, which is intertwined with their perceived social status, the highest being musicians. They are also categorized into “city-dwelling and country-dwelling inhabitants." The country-dwellers are more able to effectively preserve their culture. Another division to be had amongst the Romani themselves are the “adherence or non-adherence to various traditions and rules, according to which Roma are classified as ritually ‘clean' or ‘dirty'.
Every group or family considers something different as dirty or inferior. However, there are Roma that are universally pronounced unclean. Examples of Romani belonging to this category (not necessarily a group), are those who eat horse meat (considered a sacred animal), or a family whose daughter married outside the Romani group." The Romani are divided by wealth, as in mainstream society. The richest group traditionally has been the musicians, and the poorest “are considered the Roma from the camps in eastern Slovakia."
Appearance, such as how light or dark-skinned the Romani are classifies them. There is a tendency for lighter hair and skin among the Wallachian Romani. They are also “most often seen in the classic Romani attire – long, colorful skirts, three-cornered scarves on their heads or shoulders. Gold has special significance for them, in moveable, wearable, durable money value, but also for medicinal and spiritual protection from diseases. The Wallachian Romani are also fluent in their native Romani tongue. (“Divisions Within the Roma", 26-022000, _ HYPERLINK "http://www.romove.cz/en/article/18844" __http://www.romove.cz/en/article/18844_).
Roles are “positions that people occupy in a group or society. These positions are defined by social relationships; people take on roles in relation to other persons. Performance of a role is guided by social expectations for the role player's behavior (including dress), knowledge, and attitudes (Dress, 7). Sociofacts are “social behaviors or how people organize themselves in relation to one another." Society is “often used to refer to a group of people living and working together in a systematic way" (4).
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