Roma, Gypsies, at Mauthausen Concentration Camp, Austria WWII

Mauthausen Concentration Camp, near Linz, Austria, originally was populated with criminals deemed detrimental to the commonweal, in 1938.  That category then broadened to include ethnic minorities, and "undesirables;"  German Sinti were decimated.

We understand there is a Documentation and Cultural Center of German Sinti and Roma in Heidelburg, Germany, see this general overview we just found (we have not been there) at ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentation_and_Cultural_Centre_of_German_Sinti_and_Roma/  We were at the Nazi Documentation Center in Nuremberg, however, and if this is of the same calibre and thoroughness, it is worth at least a full day's visit.
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Mauthausen was built by prisoners from Dachau, Germany, see http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/mauthausen.html. A year later, not only criminals but racial, religious, national and political groups seen as undesirable groups were designated as detriments, and imprisoned at Mauthausen. By 1939 there were already 300 gypsies from the Burgenland area there. See "Gypsies in the Holocaust" at ://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/gypsies.html

Memorial, Mother Germany, Mauthausen Concentration Camp, Mauthausen, Austria

The Mauthausen concept included this main camp, and 49 "permanent sub-camps". In looking at death statistics, other concentration camp complexes or hubs like this only counted the deaths at the main camp. Say 35,000 for the main camp, and 2,000,000 including the larger complex. Maybe "just" 100,000+.  Or 200,000. The records were intact upon liberation, but somehow nobody was made to put the figures together, so nobody did. See Death Statistics for Mauthausen at ://www.scrapbookpages.com/Mauthausen/KZMauthausen/History/deathstatistics.html/.  See the breakdowns by group.
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Exhibit, Zigeuner (Gypsies) at Mauthausen KC, Mauthausen, Austria. Photographs, text.

Data on the Roma genocide:  See the Holocaust Encyclopedia at ://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005219/  There are also photographs there.
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Wall Plaque Memorial, Roma and Sinti, (Gypsy groups), Mauthausen Concentration Camp, Mauthausen, Austria


Guard tower, barbed wire, wall, Mauthausen Concentration Camp, Mauthausen, Austria

Death by execution (shooting), disease (especially typhus), gas, hanging, malnutrition, exhaustion, at a rate of some 300 deaths per day upon liberation. This was a punishment-labor and death camp where trying to get down the long staircase into the quarry and breaking rocks killed many itself.  Many more, the exhibits state, were simply pushed off the cliff above into the quarry - those killed in that way were called "the parachutists."

Many deaths were not recorded toward the end of the war because the Austrian police had taken over and most of the staff escaped. See ://www.scrapbookpages.com/Mauthausen/KZMauthausen/History/deathstatistics.html/  Three thousand more died after the Americans took over, including the handover to the Russians soon after liberation, from similar causes to before - exhaustion, disease, but now there is note of inmates killing each other (no further information on that), and the starving dying of sudden abundance of over-rich food.

A crematory oven, two layers. Mauthausen Concentration Camp, Mauthausen, Austria

The Gypsies.  Records are sparse, compared to the fates of other populations. How many were executed at gullies, and pushed in, and never arriving at the camp. As a refresher course in the variety among this population, read the Summary for Gypsies, not only listing how they were killed in the camps, but their identifications.  See the "Sinti" and "Roma" specified in particular at Mauthausen.  See ://summary.jeetu.co.in/s/Gypsies/.

The listing of Gypsy groups is similar to earlier posts here from other sources, but this is more extensive:

• "Romanichal , the Gitanoes , the Sinti , the Rudari , the Manush , the Boyash , the Ungaritza , the Luri , the Bashald , the Romungro , and the Xoraxai ."  

Add the four Rom tribe-nations:

• the "Kalderash , the Machavaya , the Lovari , and the Churari ." 

 Other names for the Romani:

• "Gypsies, Tsigani, Tzigane, Cigano, Zigeuner, and more. 

•  Roma linguistically are in three basic groups:  Domari in the Middle East, and East Europe; Lomarven of Centrare divided into three populations:  "the Domari of the Middle East and Eastern Europe, the Lomarvren of Central Europe, and the Romani of Western Europe.

Tens of thousands. How many. Mother Germany. Mother Austria. Beyond comprehension. Are we also so seeded.
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Bucolic view of the killing quarry down there, here at the cliff-top, Mauthausen Concentration Camp, Mauthausen, Austria

Amulets of our Lives. The Tradition of the Thing as Comfort, Guide, Pathway. For Fortune and Fetish.

A shell in our pocket, a smooth stone kept in the bureau drawer, under the liner; perhaps a coin from a far place. Read the history of amulets, things that we do not part with, and that, eventually seem to attach as though they wanted to remain. A long-forgotten bit, re-seen.
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Things that go with us.

For gypsies, the ability to "see" through things, by means of things, facilitated by things, to sense truths perhaps in things, or find the way among many paths because a thing indicated this direction or that, all a part of long tradition and culture. How different from us. Any different in substance, or just in smaller aspects of form.

Book of experiences.

Go back to the 19th Century through this book, Gypsy Sorcery and Fortune Telling, by Charles Godfrey Leland, 1891, online at ://www.sacred-texts.com/pag/gsft/gsft17.htm/ That site is to Chapter XIV, entitled "Gypsy Amulets." The author takes us to London, where there is an Indian Gypsy, Nano. who had much to say of the origins of a particular broad-bladed knife the author held dear, and substantiation for what he said - such knives were used for execution, and the author came across others. Follow the accounts of knives in gypsy lore, the sharp tip and its significance, what pointed gifts really bring (quarrels), the charm that results from the sticking of the knife into the table (that signifies piercing someone's heart, not the table).

Amulets.

For luck, perhaps a Maria Theresa silver dollar, 17th to end of 19th centuries, currency, Arabian peninsula and elsewhere. See its history at ://www.asharq-e.com/news.asp?section=3&id=6038/. This Austrian "thaler" was high in silver content, good for jewelry, Maria Theresa had 16 children so it was hoped its holder would become pregnant, and men kept it for the luck of the double-headed eagle on the back. The site references a book on the amulet use of the Maria Theresa thaler. The Saudi Riyal replaced it. Also used in Ethiopia, see ://ethiopundit.blogspot.com/2004/08/salt-to-thalers-to-birr.html/ Thaler. Dollar.

More: Interest in the author's fossil shark's tooth, a shell, and shells of the revered sea snail is especially revered; an Indian arrow-head, but of no value was a mere English sixpence with a hole pierced. The author was in Homberg (Hamburg?) at the time, and the police allowed no gypsies to remain in Homberg, so he lost touch with one group before he could give them his amulet. He gave the shell to another, a young girl who expressed absolute faith in the power of it. He had said it would do her no good unless she had faith, and her response was faith in the thing itself. He passed it on to her.

The Object: From symbolism to embodiment

Our religions, too, ascribe a sanctity to things - we are all of a piece. Just touch the image, kiss the icon, you will be healed. Rub the toe of the Bishop.

Gregory of Nin, Croatia, 10th Century Bishop. Rub the toe. Sanctity there.

When does the symbol cross over, into becoming an amulet where an aspect of deity resides. From page 237:

And it will last, while one fetish endures, that the hierophant will call it a mere "symbol," and the ignorant worshipper, absolutely unable to comprehend him, will worship the symbol as the thing itself—as he is really expected to do.

Examples: The shell

Veneration of the shell: That appears also in our art, "Venus on the Half Shell," do an Images search. Conch shells, the large ones with the sound of the ocean, or, some say, a voice inside, that mysterious sound some traditions, especially the Jewish, call the bath kol, see ://www.bible-history.com/isbe/B/BATH+KOL/. But it recurs. The voice that tells you which way to go. Or is inaudible, when you want to know. But you hear something. The conchomateia oracles use such a shell. Hearing can be deceptive. We can deceive by ear.

In the Lord of the Flies, by William Golding in 1954, a novel (routine in school curricula), a conch shell is the horn to call the group, a symbol of order, of civilization, civilized behavior, see ://www.sparknotes.com/lit/flies/themes.html/

Our interest: the Hindu, if the Roma or Gypsies originated in that area, see ://www.economicexpert.com/a/Conch:shell.htm/. It is there. The conch shell is the announcer, the sea-oriented bugle for military alerts and religious practices.

Recognizing things with power.

Killing victims to get luck, to get luck back perhaps, to ensure a strong foundation. Part of western culture as well as others. Read pages 241 ff- remember, this is entirely online.

Gypsies among Witches.

Witches to gypsies are not horrible, evil servants of the devil (once immutable dogma). Just women with supernatural powers, using them as they wish.

Witch's cage, Levoca, Slovakia (Inquisition period)

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Trace the "witch" flying in storms, that may have begun as an image of one riding to clear the air of plague, and when plague persisted, blaming her; to images from the Algonquin Indians of the great bird, a giant eagle, Wuch-ow-sen, stirring up storms and thereby actually healing the air, clearing it. When the eagle was hindered by a magician, the people died. Or to the Hebrew Azrael, Angel of Death. Track western humanity's history of barbarous beliefs.

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What we did is far worse than what any gypsy believed, is that so? Who does the harm here, except as perpetuated in the mind of the persecutors.

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The gypsy witch in the tower of Homberg: read at page 245-46. The raven, the little black granny, all that remained from the smoke of her burning. Come here, save me as well, cries the girl in the tower.

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The witches' tower in Heidelburg was taken down.

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Heidelburg, Germany. No witches' tower left.

Then go to Rouen, France:

Tower, Rouen. Joan of Arc, Witch, was held there

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Gypsy forms in theater and literature.

Find gypsy roots in theater, and literature. This, from page 248, after a long presentation of Punch and Judy and Faust plays, puppeteers and stage.

This is the true Faust drama of the Middle Ages, with the ante-Shakespearian blending of tragedy and ribald fun. But this same mixture is found to perfection in the early Indian drama—for instance, in "Sakuntala"—and it would be indeed a very curious thing should it be discovered that the gypsies, who were in all ages small actors and showmen of small plays, had brought from the East some rude drama of a sorcerer, who is in the end cheated by his fiend. Such is, in a measure, the plot of the Baital Pachisi or Vikram and the Vampire, which is borrowed from or founded on old traditions, and the gypsies, from their familiarity with magic, and as practical actors, would, in all probability, have a Faust play of some kind, according to the laws of cause and effect. In any case the suggestion may be of value to some investigator.

Bosnia, Slavonia, Hungary, beliefs and those beliefs transported into the minds of rulers and lore. Queens wanting cradles made of seven kinds of wood, or to be made by blind people for luck. Then, of course, the thunderbolt and its meaning. Look in any culture, probably. To the Slavonian gypsies, a connection between the thunderbolt and a prehistoric axe form. Not unique. Cultures sharing. Serbian gypsies - the double nut, making a heart shape - a powerful amulet, encased, like a casket, a shell, with mystical directions - plant it and ..... Jack and the Beanstalk?

Other cabalistic signs. The serpent. Track it not only to gypsies, but to Egyptians - gyptians. Gypsies. Names. Links. Even to Brahma.

O, internet. What surprises await the nimble-fingered clicks. The lightish rub on the touchpad. AAh.. Now I see....

Survey Sites - Roma

A must read is ://www3.baylor.edu/~Charles_Kemp/gypsy_health.htm. This is a site to help healthcare providers understand Roma customs, in order to provide better care, accommodate relatives and their interest, and other areas that may be different from our approach. We like those sites that are intended to assist practical relationships, rather than those that just seem to take a recreational look at other people, a kind of cultural voyeurism. There is a fine line between that detached curiosity and genuine human interest. We value the human interest, and offer information in that way. We try.

More on the Baylor survey site, Charles Kemp. This one looks exhaustive - http://www3.baylor.edu/~Charles_Kemp/gypsy_health.htm. It is geared to informing those treating the Roma or otherwise dealing with them, to clarify health concepts, social system, beliefs, any background that would assist in understanding. How they stay invisible, by design, taboos, some origins of persecution.

UNESCO - article on preservation of Roma cultural identity. This also has an excellent for ordinary people about the Gypsies: focus on continuity and fidelity, roots in conscience and human and social values, and ongoing identity without rooting itself in a particular geographic spot. See and read carefully at "The Gypsy Destiny," http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1310/is_1984_Oct/ai_3455602.

The Patrin Web Journal, at ://www.geocities.com/Paris/5121/index.html. This one - has it all. Any area you want to know, longer than the Baylor site, but each topic so clearly laid out. I could and should put it in every post here.

Cycles of Abuse: Anti-Roma in Belfast

Current Events

Is there a hard-wiring for sameness, identifying security with being among others just like us. Ireland has had its centuries of pitting religious group against religious group; with that possibly waning, see the targeting move to other groups more easily victimized. See the prejudice in Belfast now against Roma from Romania.

These Roma are not the traditional Irish Travelers with their own "gypsy" roots. These come from Romania, see video at ://news.google.com/news?pz=1&ned=us&hl=en&q=Romanian+gypsies+Belfast/ and news at ://www.clickromania.co.uk/content/view/609/44/ . Apparently they had been "hounded out" from Romania.

Inadequacy of news coverage:

This issue was not addressed in any account we have read so far. How will the Travelers still in Ireland, and this new European group, relate; or aren't there enough left in the Travelers actually on the road still; to come in contact with a settled group from Romania. What has the immigration pattern been for European Roma to Ireland? Perhaps there will be little cultural recognition? Who can follow? Would the Travelers and Romanian Roma welcome one another, as needed support; or will the Travelers reject them as different, and engage in their own targeting. What has happened elsewhere.

The Gypsy Lore Society notes at ://www.gypsyloresociety.org/cultureintro.html that the Travelers and other gypsy groups have differing languages, roots, history, before coming to America, and keep their distance. Will that be the case in Ireland.

Roma in Great Britain - a history, as elsewhere, of prejudice. Roma sometimes called "Rom"

Voices of regular people. Go to this line of comments, descriptions of ongoing prejudice, this site in Kent, England. ://www.bbc.co.uk/kent/have_your_say/community/romany_voices_archive21.shtml. Find the one where the whites live on the first floor of the building (is this public housing?), the disabled live on the second floor, and the rom live on the third, and the food passes up, so if there is not enough, the rom go hungry. Scroll down to the 2/19/06 entry by one who identifies as a "romney gypsey."

The idiom in the entries is difficult to read, for this US person, and so many words we do not know - best to pick an entry that moves you and read it aloud as though you were the person writing. Then it becomes human drama again, even at the everyday level - as poignant as the stars.

Do we need a global kind of exorcism. Is this abuse of populations an outgrowth of what we see in relationships among individuals. What kind of interventions can channel the urges to productive results. Impossible?

In the area of domestic relations violence, there is an established concept of the cycle of abuse: this site addresses in a low-key way the three stages: tension building; acting out the abuse; stated remorse; followed by gradual but as time goes on, shorter and shorter periods of tension building, then more abuse, more extreme, more stated remorse, and the victim is pulled between wanting to believe stage 3; unwilling to act in stage 1 when there might be time to address it with help; enduring or dying in stage #2. See basics at The Cycle of Abuse, at ://www.drirene.com/cyclesof.htm/

Is abuse learned. See the dynamic at Domestic Violence at http://www.gmdvp.org/domestic_vio/gen_info/dynam2.htm/ But in domestic abuse, there is the chance, the option, of getting out of the relationship.

What do entire populations do. Domestic violence. Population violence. Outlets for hard-wiring, or learned and unlearnable.

"The Walking People" - resource novel, Irish Travelers; Migration, NY.

To visit Ireland is to see great poverty in various communities, encampments, but without the formal designation of Travelers to set them apart. How is an outsider to determine the background of the people there - indigenous-Irish-Norse/Irish; or the traditional tinker, Traveler. We did not see real Traveler wagons. Business thrives for the cushy rubber-tire, waterproof clip clops, however.

Tourist "Gypsy" Wagon, Ireland

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Tourists can rent these caricature wagons with the slow horse plodding from town to town and back again- my aunt caught pneumonia that way some years ago, we think - but that must get dull. Does the isolationist slow ride do any justice to the lives that were lived in wagons, and in community.

The Irish and Scottish nomadic groups do not refer to themselves as "Gypsies." The groupings are distinct, see overview of the Rom, the Romnichel and Hungarian-Slavic nomadic groups, traditionally thought of as "Gypsies," and then the Irish and Scottish "Travelers." See The Gypsy Lore Society at ://www.gypsyloresociety.org/cultureintro.html/.

For a glimpse into the lives of the Irish Travelers, read the novel, "The Walking People," by Mary Beth Keane, see review by Jonathan Yardley May 10, 2009, at ://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/08/AR2009050801409.html/

The book does not hold interest intensely once the characters leave Ireland; but there find a cultural retrospective, the story of an Irish mid-20th Century tinker boy, a member of the Travelers. The "tinker boy" and two Catholic farm girls cross paths, have ups and downs, and migrate, with families' knowledge, and the girls' mother's approval, all together to New York. They settle in their various ways, and he becomes part of the great digs beneath Manhattan to New Jersey for water tunnels and the like, below the subways. Electricity had not yet come to the west country areas, in the 1950's. Most interesting for us was the Irish part, and the first few years in New York. No spoilers to be given here.

Then hear and see the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem (complete with Irish Aran sweaters that are not Traveler in origin, see ://clanarans.com/ca/catalog/) sing, "The Whistling Gypsy Rover" at ://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ0kAZJy_3o&feature=related/. Here are the lyrics: ://www.thebards.net/music/lyrics/Gypsy_Rover.shtml/. This next version is too polished. Go if you must to://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_egTUhbfD0/.

Ah, the ideal - then the reality. As in looking at any lifestyle, any set of issues, any people.