Roma integration. Spain's Successes: Better Integration of Gitano in Housing, Schools, Jobs

 Roma Integration.

Spain.

 .
At last: we find an optimistic headline regarding integration of gypsies, or Roma, in housing, employment, schools at least at the lover levels. Title -- "In Spain, Gypsies Find Easier Path to Integration" -- see
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/06/world/europe/06gypsy.html/

Gypsies, known as "Gitano" in Spain, are enjoying higher degrees of education and employability (50%) than elsewhere. Gitano children are in elementary school, the same neighborhood schools as other children and not shunted off to facilities for the mentally handicapped, as we understand has been the case in much of Europe. Mediators at the schools help with relationship issues. The article says that over 50% of those children's parents are homeowners. About 92% are in housing that is considered "standard".

They are moving into areas of work that are not the traditional dealing in cattle or selling goods.

What did Spain do right, beginning some 30 years ago. Spain focused on housing and jobs, not so much on prejudice-correction, or civil rights. Jobs and housing first, let the rest follow, and it has. Direct "attacks" on forcing integration fail in other countries. Go to the basics.

Ongoing problems: huge dropout rate from the schools, once out of the elementary levels. Some 4% of gypsy people live in shacks. There is prejudice -- hard to get a taxi if you are in traditional gypsy dress,
for example.

Government: the constitution, a democratic one, requires police protection for gypsies. Past Gardia Civil abuses have been reduced. The policy is to provide housing among others, not just among fellow gypsies.

Can those policies work elsewhere: it takes funding for administration, and places with substantially larger gypsy populations in even more entrenched poverty may be insurmountable in the short term.

Still, the point is made in Spain: focus on housing and jobs. To aim at prejudice first is not as effective. "Acceder" is the group that facilitates improvements, and has been effective.

Roma arts. Our Culture Blindness. Gypsies in Romantic Lit, and the NYT - Hans Christian Andersen

Roma in Arts and Culture.
Our Defensive Culture Blindness

Where it Leads the Willing Duped

Hans Christian Andersen, Odense, DK

1.  First question.  Who cares about minorities without clout.  No-one. Fantasy enables us to say, they are fine, they don't need us, they are on their own.

2. Even the New York Times ignores the most important factor in the well-being history of Roma - the forced halts to caravan migrations, movement in the nomadic, seasonal, sense.  See http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/17/world/europe/17union.html?_r=1&ref=gypsies/.

To us, it appears that the well-being of the Roma culture to an important degree for many who were, indeed, Travelers, was the movement.  Any inconvenience to communities was mitigated because the newcomers, moved. In time.  Cultures accommodated each other.  Force migratory population into high-rises without income, without traditional occupations, trouble.

3. Origins of cultural blindness to real hardship.

See how the great storyteller, the originator -- not a mere re-teller -- of tales that enabled children to face their nameless fears through fantasy -- himself was deluded. Hans Christian Andersen.  Childhood's greatest unspoken fears, address them through lives imagined in others.  But not so for reality.

The accounts of Hans Christian Andersen as to Gypsy populations he found in northern Jutland, further the romantic notion that people are fine without a place to stay.

Gypsies in Jutland?  Denmark? Gypsies in 19th Century Jutland.  Seen but not seen. The 19th Century Jutland and Gypsies.  What?  Is Mitt Romney a Roma, Romani, Rom'nie by heritage?  Does background, if demonstrated, affect attitudes toward the downtrodden. Should it>

"I was approaching Viborg in a heavy downpour when, along a bumpy land, I came across a tinker family; the woman carried an infant on her back and had another child by the hand, the man had knapsacks slung over his shoulders, they wished me good day in a friendly fashion and went on their way, for there was nowhere for them to find shelter.  When my man told me who they were I grew quite blissful; this truly poetic people live in our Denmark; they have their own language, own customs, live the life of nomads and wed their own kind with their own ceremonies, without the interference of the clergy."

Fair use quote from Hans Christian Andersen, the Life of a Storyteller, Knopf 2001, by Jackie Wullschlager at page 94.

Compensation Sought, IBM Cards. WWII Roma Persecution. Romani and the Holocaust. Update and Topic Review

Reparations. Persecution.
Roma in the Holocaust
Update, and topic review
GIRCA v IBM

Records and Courts Fail to Compensate.
Too Late. Sorry.  Now, Go Away.

Gypsies Sue IBM
IBM wins.


Next step:  Put online all the pleadings, arguments, evidence. 
For educational purposes.

A.  Procedural setting

The Roma case is dismissed in 2006, for not having been filed in the "time limit".  See Holocaust suit.  See Swiss High Court Rejects Gypsy Holocaust Suit Versus IBM, Cites Time Limit, at http://www.smh.com.au/news/Technology/Swiss-high-court-rejects-Gypsy-Holocaust-suit-versus-IBM-cites-time-limit/2006/08/19/1155408031630.html

Read about the lawsuit.  Try Gypsies vs. IBM. But there must be a more formal docket name, for IBM facilitating the holocaust by providing the punch cards and other expertise for the holocaust.  Go instead to http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/07/08/ramasastry.holocaust.ibm/index.html. I have not read or followed up on it yet.

War compensation has been provided to other target groups, but has been far less to Gypsy groups.  Action is moving in that direction, says site.  What does Mitt Romney say? Romney Roma Romani Rom'nie?  Or is later success enough to disavow earlier ancestral connections in persecution.

See suit filed in Geneva in 2002 by the Gypsy International Recognition and Compensation Action Association (GIRCA) http://www.business-humanrights.org/Categories/Lawlawsuits/Lawsuitsregulatoryaction/LawsuitsSelectedcases/IBMlawsuitHolocaustclaimbyGypsies

It had been progressing.  See http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2004/jun/23/secondworldwar.internationalnews

But who can sue IBM and win anyway? There will always be a way to put equity last, and technicality first where money is involved.
.

B.  Review:  Did the Roma have a case? 
The Gypsy - Roma Experience

1.  Gypsies at Lodz, or Litzmannstadt, Ghetto. Poland.

There is now a "ghetto route" that interested persons may walk in the old ghetto at Lodz, with sites marked and events or inhabitants described. The annual commemoration is pending, see see http://www.ghetto.lodz.pl/index.php/.  At 83 Wojska Polskiego Street, for example, stop number 34, where Gypsies were processed, and transported to their deaths.  Fair use quote from the brochure:

"At this site, German authorities established a camp for Gypsies (Zigeunerlager) in the area boarded by Sulzfelder Str. (Wojska Polskiego), Kondradstr. (Głowackiego), Kriminalstr. (Starosikawską) i  Blechgasse (obrońców Westerplatte) Streets. Of the 5000 Roma men, women and children deported from Austria and incrarcerated here between November 5, 1941 and January 12, 1942, over 600 died from diseases or were murdered in the camp; The remaining were gassed in the death camp at Kulmhof am Ner (Chełmno-Upon-Ner) during the week of January 5 to 12, 1942."

Fair use.  See http://www.ghetto.lodz.pl/index.php/en/memorial

2.  Gypsies at Buchenwald

Roma at Buchenwald. Find this memorial and account at The Nizkor Project, Germany's Romany and Sinti People, Commemoration of Buchenwald, Germany, see ://ftp.nizkor.org/hweb/camps/buchenwald/press/reuters-040395b.html/  There is a new memorial for the group, that prefers the Romany and Sinti designation, and testimonials as to the brutality there.

Find this appalling statement at the Nizkor.org site,  that the Camp remained open for business after the War and 10,000 people died in it under the administration of the Soviets: Fair use --

It will also acknowledge another fact hushed up under communism -- that for five years after World War Two, Buchenwald remained in use as an internment camp run by Soviet occupation forces. Around 10,000 inmates, mostly Germans, died. Here is Buchenwald, in Germany. See Germany Road Ways, Buchenwald. Read the buildup to the WWII holocaust at http://www.travellersinleeds.co.uk/_travellers/HistBeforeHitler. Census, registries, forced photographs, fingerprinting, surveillance, restrictions on travel, imposed detention.

Holocaust. Buchenwald Concentration Camp, Germany.

3.  No individual victims' names equivalent for Yad Vashem for Roma found to date

Records for individuals such as Jews in the Holocaust have been consolidated, as part of an ongoing effort to collect, coordinate, report.  See http://ww/yadvashem.org, and the online victims' names list.

That takes money and influence, as well as perseverance.  But perseverance gets nowhere without money and influence, is that so?

Read about the Holocaust, its events and Nazi-Fascist country-city laws leading up to it in Europe, and more low-key everyday persecutions, and the horrendous results, at http://www.holocaust-trc.org/sinti.htm

Estimates of Gypsy deaths alone run from 300,000 to 1,000,000 - these were largely illiterate people, without the birth or other records of other groups like the Jews, so the numbers range, and are derived from other information -- see http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/07/08/ramasastry.holocaust.ibm/index.
.
However, there are other sites with collected testimonials and information about groups, and anecdotes , see http://remember.org/witness/wit.vic.gyp1.html/  That site points out the German dilemma -- that Roma were Aryans, but did not fit the German ideal.

Nonetheless, Roma deportation and execution was put under Himmler's control, and he carried on. The remember.org site includes information and anecdotes as to Treblinka, that also received and executed Jews.

A history of Roma history of persecution, and the Holocaust, is rather in narrative form, the group experience; not individual records or testimonials as to those individuals.

Search each concentration camp, roma in ________, gypsies in ____________/

And the history is expressed in creative arts.  See Site: The Hungarian Quarterly, Vol. XLII , No. 162, Summer 2001. This is "The Holocaust in Gypsy Folk Poetry," by Karoli Bari. http://www.hungarianquarterly.com/no162/064.html.

As in the Buchenwald site, above, designating certain groups as expendable, such as Roma even in concentration camps, is a global human failing.  See  The Common Good, Who Speaks for It, fodder post.

4.  Gypsies in Auschwitz - Birkenau

Roma were designated as enemies of the Third Reich, see http://en.auschwitz.org.pl/h/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=11&Itemid=3/  As such, they could be isolated and exterminated, and were. As were the Jews, Gypsies were identified as racially inferior, thus not eligible for the privileges of others. A special Gypsy family camp at Auschwitz was set up to receive what appears to be most all of the Roma population, excluding the thousands at Lodz who had already been killed there or at Kulmhof, and then dispose of them.

See Auschwitz, in Poland, at Poland Road Ways, Auschwitz, an extermination camp.

See also Theresienstadt and Auschwitz, Places of Petr Ginz.

The German action was extreme, but unique in degree, not concept. Many cultures designate certain groups as dispensable, despicable, unworthy, deserving of what they get - usually a back of the hand, and even genocide. See the fodder concept for people who are attacked, open to targeting, with corresponding belief systems justifying it, the expendables.

In modern times, or among the more affluent, this can include even people with money who are fed bad food, expensive medicines, sold ideas that are not supported by a religious founder. Watch who gets a profit at the expense of the others. Treated as fodder.

Auschwitz Concentration Camp, crematory

These are the ovens, the crematoria with the chimney, at Auschwitz, Poland, that borders Slovakia, see Poland Road Ways, Auschwitz.

There was a special "family" camp at Auschwitz for gypsies, where entire families were imprisoned together. Read the US Holocaust Museum accounts at http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005219.

That source says that, of the million gypsies in Europe before the killings, some 220,000 were killed, many were killed by mobile killing units, especially in Russia and Ukraine, without records. See Babi Yar, Kiev, Ukraine, gypsies, Jews, others, at http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/babiyar.html; and at http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/babi_yar.htm

5.  Roma in Theresienstadt



Theresienstadt, Terezin, Train transport, loading, unloading area CZ

Here is the station area at Theresienstadt CZ, where the trains brought in the Jews, Gypsies and other targeted persons during WWII. This was an old garrison town in the Czech Republic, turned ghetto and way-station to extermination and labor camps. Tens of thousands also died here.

Were there Gypsies in Terezin.

There were hierarchies even among undesirables, that shunted the bottom people mostly elsewhere, see Places of Petr Ginz; and the Terezin Study Guide, developed to teach students the history and issues.  See http://www.american.edu/cas/terezin/upload/Terezin-study-guide.pdf/

It appears that Theresienstadt was originally designated as a destination for "privileged" Jews, those in bureaucratic positions, or otherwise in some position of influence. Is that so?  Read the history at the study guide. From Terezin, however, where people also died from the conditions, they were transported to further camps for execution or slave labor.

6. Roma at Jasenovac, Croatia



Hear and see this memorial at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4317038589131761601#Ustaški zločin nad civilima - Jasenovac.  Croatian Death Camp. This site is in Croatian, but it takes no translating. Holocaust footage. More graphic than you probably have ever seen.  Ever.
.
Numbers vary wildly - no one appears willing to dig up and count, lest the results support the other side, but we have seen 85,000 to 600,000 killed, and it is difficult to find for the different groups killed here, but gypsies are included specifically.  See http://www.vosizneias.com/60743/2010/07/25/jasenovac-croatia-peres-croatian-wwii-camp-was-a-show-of-sadism/

Jasenovac's artifacts were sent mostly to the Holocaust Memorial Center in Washington DC.

Transport train, boxcars, Jasenovac Concentration Camp, Croatia

See Jasenovac at Croatia Road Ways.

The transport train on display at Jasenovac is riddled. We cannot tell if the bullet-type holes are vandalism from later, or original.

The museum building at Jasenovac is locked and broken. Not even a rest room. I don't think they want you there. The area's walkway is used as a bike path.

7.  Roma at Mauthausen


See Roma, Gypsies at Mauthausen, Austria; and Austria Road Ways, Mauthausen KZ Konzentrationslager.

C.  Roma Experience of the Holocaust in Literature 

 
1.  "Zoli" by Colum McCann, see http://www.amazon.com/Zoli-Novel-Colum-McCann/dp/1400063728

"Zoli" at 47-48: Slovakian Gypsies were sent mostly to work camps, beaten, tortured, jailed, curfews, spitting, badges, barbed wire. In other countries, the focus was on extermination - but Slovakia was a satellite state. Some reprieve, not much.

After Hitler came to power, read about the events at http://www.travellersinleeds.co.uk/_travellers/HistHitlerPower. Laws against intermarriage, transports to Dachau and Buchenwald (see photo), registrations, differential passes, Auschwitz, and continuing throughout WWII, see http://www.travellersinleeds.co.uk/_travellers/HistGermanOccupat.

2. Poetry:  See FN 1; and a search for holocaust in literature

D.  Why the surprise at Roma invisibility?

1.  Gypsy illiteracy reduces their visibility.

The literate ones also are remembered because they wrote, or others wrote of them, like Ann Frank in Amsterdam, or Petr Ginz in Prague. See Netherlands Road Ways, Anne Frank and Etty Hillesum, diarists. Gypsies often died unknown.

Some expressions survive. See FN 1.

2.   Impact of Holocaust, Gypsies and Roma Populations, News, research

The Holocaust Museum in Washington DC, see site at http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005219, provides the history and photos. Still, there may be an agenda there, to present what is sought to be presented.

Need more emphasis on the impact of Nazi policy on this group.

The Holocaust Museum site gives this information about Reynhard Heidrich (a/k/a Heydrich), a high-ranking Nazi officer who was assassinated by Czech resistance in Prague, see Places of Petr Ginz, Occupation. Heidrich had big plans for deporting 30,000 gypsies to the camps, but was persuaded to focus instead on the Jews, reducing the numbers of deportations at that time.

Zoli, in the novel of the same name, speaks of the mass killing of Gypsies at Theresienstadt and Auschwitz, at p. ___.  Author:  please provide more.

..................................................

FN 1

Fair use quote from a long article, here believed to be an unknown author, a Gypsy poem in experiencing the holocaust.  From this Hungarian site, a journal in English  http://www.hungarianquarterly.com/no162/064.html, now at http://www.hungarianquarterly.com/index.shtml (but we cannot locate the poem - have emailed to confirm fair use, and do hope acceptable)

"Little bird, o little birdie,
Fly far away, carry the news,
Tell how I'm in constant terror,
tell how I'm in constant terror!
German lager, how hard it is,
German lager, how hard it is,
The prison guards are so evil,
The prison guards are so evil!

"Hey there, Hitler, curses on you.
May God trample upon your face
like people walk upon the streets,
like people walk upon the streets.

"Machine guns are barking away,
Machine guns are barking away,
My pursuers are getting close,
My pursuers are getting close.

"God, give me some of your fortune,
Give a little bit of your own,
Help me get onto trackless tracks,
Help me pass along trackless tracks.

"God, send me a drop of rainfall,
God, send me a drop of rainfall,
Mingle it up well with snowflakes,
Mingle it up well with snowflakes!

"Mingle it up with snowflakes,
Mingle it up with snowflakes,
So the green shoots of grass may grow,
So the green shoots of grass may grow!

"Cover the trail of my footprints,
Cover the trail of my footprints,
So I may find tranquillity,
So I may find tranquillity!

"God, oh God! How you have thrashed me,
God, oh God! How you have thrashed me,
Perhaps nobody more than me,
Perhaps nobody more than me!

"German lager, German lager,
There a gun was always barking,
All my family was wiped out,
All my family was wiped out!

"I've lost all my family,
I've lost all my family,
Oh, what can I do, all alone,
Oh, what can I do, all alone!"

Romani in Film; Topics

 Update:

1. EMIR KUSTURICA:

Try director Emir Kusturica's groundbreaking 1988 film The Time of the Gypsies., This clue from the National Geographic site, ://worldmusic.nationalgeographic.com/worldmusic/view/page.basic/genre/content.genre/roma__gypsy__music_778/  He was born in Sarajevo, not of gypsy parents, but has found an affinity with them.  See 2005 NYT at ://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/08/magazine/08EMIR.html

Then Black Cat, White Cat - see review of this film and other works in the New York Times, Sunday, September 5, 1999.  See videos related, on YouTube, at ://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBbzcj1t2WY&feature=related/; and at  ://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdRPRvhXSCo&NR=1/.  Enjoy the music. Mr. Kusturica characterizes the music as Unca-Unca, or oontsa-oontsa, a 2/4 beat, combining rock 'n roll, reggae and elements from times gone by - "a mess,  but a nice mess."

And find, in Images for Black Cat, White Cat, even more fun.

He is the only child of Muslim parents, but apparently they were not practicing Muslims. See article. By 1999, he lived in Normandy with his family.

2. JASMINE DELLAL.

PBS has this: "American Gypsy: Stranger in Everybody's Land," film by Jasmine Dellal, at ://www.pbs.org/pov/pov2000/americangypsy/index.html. The estimate there is about 1,000,000 Gypsies in America. See review at ://www.americangypsy.com/the_film/full_description.html

 
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Cross reference to another of our sites - see comment there about Roma in Cesky Krumlov - populations living well together - Roma in Czech city, Cesky Krumlov

We have no ethnic connection to Roma, but a deep interest in why humans need to scapegoat others. We also have no information on dialects, but would like to know more.

Desegregation, Civil Rights, Self-Determination Issues. Roma Leaders, News. Updating Coming.

Conferences, Refugee Camp Issues, Schools Desegregation Progress;
issues pending; or otherwise to be discussed. *

Alarms.  Hopes.  Despairs. Cheers.  Steps ahead and back. Ongoing research for progress.

1.  Conferences.  From 2002. Lodz, Poland. Romany National Congress.  Site of largest ghetto for Jews and Gypsies in WWII, at the Marysin district.

• Populations compressed, deprived. Racial bias. Chairman Rudko Kawczynski.  Issue:  He warned that the Roma face a "demographic time bomb" -- that the populations are growing so rapidly that a Palestinian problem, of others keeping Romany people in the equivalent of camps, may result. The young people will not be quiescent during that process, and the numbers of Roma may approach 20 million in Europe and Eastern Europe.  He sees parallels between anti-Gypsy sentiment and anti-Semitic sentiments, both primarily a European phenomenon.  "We will face a Palestinian problem in Europe." See NYT 5/10/2002.  How many are there?  Western Europe 7-15 million -- nobody knows, see Pohl NYT article below. Add 5-10% more for Eastern Europe.

• Disparate groups. Romany Civil Rights Foundation, Hungary. Agnes Daroczi, a leader. Issue:   Need for unity.  Without unified voice, she suggests, how to pressure nations to improve Romany life. See Lodz conference, NYT 5/10/2002. Example of the diversity:  a memorial service was held at Lodz for victims of the Holocause, officiating:  "a Romany mullah from Macedonia, an evangelical Romany pastor from Sweden, and the rabbi of Lodz." Needed, says Pohl NYT article #3 below, is a unifying figure: so far the Roma have no equivalent of a Martin Luther King or Malcolm X or Rosa Parks (who sat on the bus, as a black, in the forbidden white area, sparking a decade of protests) to carry on the Roma cause.

• Holocaust compensation. Further from Agnes Daroczi:  This has been uneven.  Romany prisoners in Austrian camps received both reparations and pensions.  Those imprisoned in Hungary have received nothing even though the funds have been set aside (is this too broad? examples were given).

• Rom exclusion from post-communist era prosperity in western Europe, shunted aside into refugee camps, discriminated against, attacked.

•  Children segregated, sent out of mainstream to schools for the "learning disabled", perpetuating underclass.  School desegregation lawsuits were planned in other news accounts, see Lawsuits, at #2.
  

• Refugee camps.  Wars in Bosnia, Macedonia, Kosovo. Squalor. Cut off from traditional homes, sources of income.

• Assimilation - pressed by most nations - at the cost of Roma identity.  This from Nicolae Gheorghe, a delegate. Is self-determination the best way.

2.  Lawsuits.  

• Service and hiring.  Anti-discrimination. Many modeling after USA civil rights issues (as in Brown v. Board of Education). From 2002:  The Romani Baht Foundation, founded in Bulgaria in 1995, see ://baht2000.free.bg/en.html/.  This organization  filed a lawsuit against a Bulgarian coffee shop in Stara Zagorra for refusing to serve a Roma. Dimitrina Petrova. Mikolsc, Hungary, Dateline. This one won.  Bulgarian Court, Sofia District. Further actions in the pipeline about hospitals, hiring by nightclub owners, etc.  See NYT 5/7/2006, article, Gypsies Gain a Legal Tool in Rights Fight, by Otto Pohl NYT.  An appeal was pending, but already changes had been made at state policy levels.

• European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).  This was founded in 1959, and is located at Strasbourg, France. It upholds the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is different from Court of Justice of the European Communities, that deals with the European Union, or the judicial arm of the UN, the International Court of Justice at the Hague.  This , See ://www.echr.coe.int/ECHR/SiteMap.aspx Spotty record.  Case protesting shunting of Roma children to schools for lesser-abled failed, is being resubmitted.  See School Segregation below.  This from the Otto Pohl article, NYT, below.

Note, in lawsuits, that a decision does not automatically mean change.  Civil law may remain in place for a long time. 

• Desegregation. School segregation.  Roma Anti-Discrimination lawsuits. Otto Pohl NYT article notes Strasbourg Court, European Court of Human Rights (see site above at ECHR), "rejected a case about 18 non-handicapped Czech Roma children allowed to enroll only in schools for the handicapped..."  Why? Estimates:  75% of Roma children are so shunted to the special schools. 
• How can that be?  Look again at the European Court of Human Rights above.  What is going on?

3.  Salute to Special Supporters.  This from NYT 5/7/2006, article, Gypsies Gain a Legal Tool in Rights Front", article by Otto Pohl.  Then we add our own updates.

• George Soros - a supporter of Roma groups, among other causes. He is "global financier and philanthropist," see bio at ://www.soros.org/about/bios/a_soros/  Named at Otto Pohl NYT article.  See this site, Roma Initiatives, at ://www.soros.org/initiatives/roma/  See the broad range of Soros Foundations at ://www.soros.org/about/foundations/ at the Open Society Institute and Soros Foundations Network, "Building Vibrant and Tolerant Democracies".  We need you in the US, also, Mr. Soros.  Thank you.  Search that site by country to see opportunities, activity there.

• Panayote Dimitras - This (in 2002) was the "executive director of the Greek branch of Helsinki Monitor (Finland had sponsored the conference at #1), a human rights group that also operates in the Balkans", had cited cases from Eastern Europe in Greek matters.

• Roma Police Association, Budapest.  Look again at the American model.  This is framed like the National Black Police Association in Illinois, founded in 1972, to foster race-neutral and ethnic-neutral police enforcement practices. 

• Chance for Children Foundation, Hungary, Andras Ujlaky, President (as of 2006),  focusing on desegregation for  Roma children

4.  Formal representation - Progress

• European Union, Brussels. Hungary was elected to the EU in 2004, and elected two Roma to the Parliament there.  This from the Otto Pohl NYT article, in #3.

To be continued. 
..........................................................
* 

For those who have asked, we in our family have no known connection to any Roma ethnic group.  But we are all minorities in some way or another.  Here, this writer in particular feels  a) a kinship,  b) selfish gratitude that I have not been targeted as others, but c) concerned that the discrimination, supremacy issues that underlie any Perceived-Weaker target, can - if hidden as it operates against any group - be used against anyone.  Targeting one, for purposes of advantage, targets us all. Is that so?

The Gypsy Quarter of Nis, Serbia. Conflicting Cultural Claims

 Issues of Competing Ethnic Groups Seeking Preservation, 

Avoiding Assimilation and Cultural Oblivion. 

Nis, or Nish, Serbia

Are there signs of cooperation in preservation of culture issues in Nis, Serbia: Jewish v. Gypsy, or "Romany" as they are known there; and if so, did it last. Read about Nis and the cemetery in the New York Times archives, from several years ago, August 22, 2004, Serbian Gypsies and Jews in Dispute Over Cemetery, article by Nicholas Wood.

Nis - or Nish -  is the third-largest city in Serbia. There is an endangered cemetery there - what is its present status.

Back in 2004, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the Kosova Roma Refugee Foundation together were reported to be clearing rubbish from a remaining section of this old graveyard. A Paul Polansky was in charge. The Montenegro army was helping on weekends. And there was soon be at least some linking to a sewer system. But this may be short-lived, with the remaining Romany families relocated, and money up in the air for building new homes. Many displaced Serbian refugees from the 1990's wars also need homes, and the Romany are not popular with others. It may take a decade to approach resolution.  Is that too optimistic.

Where is this:  Some Eastern European - Balkan areas are so unfamiliar to us that the best way to picture their location is a simple maps search.  Plug in Nis, Serbia, then expand outward until you find familiarity:  the Adriatic Sea, Sarajevo, Greece, those can be anchors. Nis is an inland town, think of a trip, perhaps from Belgrade, Serbia, to Sofia, Bulgaria.

History of the issue:  In Nis, in the 1960's, during an atheistic period in the old Yugoslavia under Communism, Roma began living in areas that once were full of the Jews of Nis. As the Jewish population moved out, the gypsies moved and settled, now generations of them, without formal permissions for building or sewers, apparently condoned and undisturbed.  One Jewish congregation sold their synagogue as they left, apparently.

The problem now is, among the usual clashes combined with periods of peace and coexistence, is sorting out claims of prior residents to what was left behind:  the cemetery. 

There is a cemetery there, an old Jewish cemetery, centuries old, with large "rectangular gravestones" still there with new Gypsy buildings around and on top. The stones are used for daily purposes, much as Abbeys in the British Isles were raided for their solid rock riches with the various purgings between Catholic and Protestant. And the desecration of religious artifacts of the other side. 

How language frames issues.  What is intentional desecration, and what is necessity for use of resources when a place has been abandoned.

Because the Romany have been using the cemetery for their living area, and living purposes, that has been deemed "desecration" - as though there is specific intent to descrate - an accusation by the Jews who had left it, see  ://www.forward.com/articles/6058/  The article from 2004, Historic Cemetery in Serbia Desecrated, describes the living activities as though the gypsies intentionally set out to desecrate.  Is that so? Photos had been collected as of 2003, the year before:  see ://www.makabijada.com/NisEnglish.htm/  At that site, the town is listed as 'Nish', and scroll down to the narrative history.  In 2003, all had seemed lost. 

But that was not so.  Part was saved, and we are looking now for an update to the 2004 New York Times article.  What happened?

What started the new interest

A timeline:  In October 2004, the town gave permission for water and sewer pipes, and a Jewish population, in Belgrade, resumed its interest.  Would the utilities further damage the graveyard.

Nis has about 300,000 people, and there are only about 800 Gypsies. And fewer Jews - say 36, and those may be Serbian Orthodox who married Jewish women. This dwindling leads many to believe that the cemetery will soon be the only evidence of a thriving Jewish population. Only one Jew returned after WWII. There was a substantial Jewish population before, beginning in about 1695, see  ://www.makabijada.com/nishSinagoga.htm/  What when a group leaves. What claims remain. When can a subsequent group rely on the condonation of their settlements in a Gypsy Quarter that had become vacant - perhaps not, but there is a claim to compensation?

The Orthodox Christian Church dominates, see the new Patriarch, who had been Bishop Irenej, at Nis, at ://www.euronews.net/2010/01/23/serbian-orthodox-church-picks-new-patriach/

Here is an email for Jasna Ciric, President of the Jewish Community at Nish, jasnacir at eunet.yu - an address probably changed since there is no more Yugoslavia.  We know there is a huge shortfall in charitable resources, see ://ejewishphilanthropy.com/a-nis-350-million-shortfall/as with any other group, but would like an update.