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The repressed story of Roma slavery – Delia Grigore

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The repressed story of Roma slavery – Delia Grigore

In the 1990s I wanted to write my doctoral thesis on traditional Roma culture, whose ethnic identity I aspired to reaffirm from the point of view of a novice activist, but I knew almost nothing about their history of slavery.

I had only heard some stories told by elderly Roma, such as “we worked for the boyars” or some tale from Roma folklore that read “Mom and Dad are no longer slaves”, but I didn’t have a clear idea of ​​what slavery had represented in the story. of the Roma of Romania and in the history of this same country, for how many centuries it had lasted and much less on the consequences of slavery on the legal, social, economic and, above all, moral level.

In fact, I knew very little about Roma slavery when I timidly crossed the threshold of the department dealing with national minorities in the ministry of culture. “I am a gypsy, I graduated in literature and I would like to do a doctorate on the traditional costumes of the calderash”, so I answered the question of what I was doing in his office that Vasile Ionescu, also a Roma and consultant for the Roma issue, had asked me. “We don’t work with gypsies, only with Roma,” he replied dryly. He had seemed very harsh and unfair to me.

But I understood, then, that the history of racism towards Roma in Romanian culture begins with the false name attributed to it: gypsies (gypsy). In the Rom language the word gypsies does not exist. The term comes from medieval Greek athinganos o athinganoi, which meant “pagan”, “untouchable” or “impure”. The word was first used in 1068 in a monastery in present-day Georgia by a monk during his explanation of what the heresy of the athinganoi, considered nomads, fortune tellers and sorcerers, and who advised his Orthodox Christian parishioners to avoid those heretics.

In the Middle Ages, the Romanian word gypsies it indicated the legal status of servant or slave, and not an ethnic group. And here are already two meanings of the word: first heresy, then legal status outside the hierarchical system of society. The slave/gypsies it was not part of the social structure, it was situated outside it, it was simply a bargaining chip and was owned by the prince, the boyars or the monasteries. Following the word gypsies it remained in the Romanian collective memory and is now used in the current language with a derogatory meaning.

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Reading the very few history books that dared to tackle the difficult topic of Roma slavery, but even more by studying the documents preserved in the archives, I understood that the current identity of the Roma of Romania has been structured around a history of social exclusion. and institutionalized racism: from the first attestation of the Roma in Romanian territory, in 1385 (when the Roma are given the status of slave), through the Romanian holocaust (which proposed and managed to exterminate tens of thousands of Roma), for the forced integration or cultural genocide of the socialist period, to the murders and fires set in the homes of Roma in the years between 1994 and 2000 and again to the abuses, persecutions and violence used by the police against Roma communities by 1990s until today, when these episodes increased with the pandemic.

Excluded from the condition of human beings by the laws of the country and by “customary law” and finding themselves in a state of dependence not only economic but even more personal and legal, Roma slaves were considered a commodity, since they were exchanged, sold, donated, inherited and subjected to abuse and violence, even victims of rape, torture and murder committed by their “masters”.

A Roma family was not recognized as part of a community, but was intended as a means of producing new slaves, a kind of domestic generator. Slavery has also deeply affected Roma children, removed from their families by the will of their masters, exchanged, donated or sold, sometimes at prices lower than those of animals, as they are considered not good enough for the job.

An incomplete emancipation
Under the pressure of abolitionism in progress in the West, which in the nineteenth century tried to get rid of a retrograde and inhuman institution such as slavery, and in the context of the efforts of Romania of the time (then Țărilor Române, Romanian land, i.e. Moldavia and Wallachia) to gain the sympathy of the West, the liberation of the Roma from slavery in 1856 was the conclusion of a difficult and relatively lengthy process, hampered by strong opposition from the Orthodox Church and most of the boyars.

However, legal emancipation did not lead to a radical transformation of the status of the Roma in society. The reformist program of the revolutionaries of 1848 and the politics of the governments that followed one another neglected the economic problem – in particular the right to own the land – and the moral aspects, limiting themselves to legal emancipation and sedentary lifestyle, sometimes forced , of the Roma. There were no Roma inclusion policies, which led to their relapse into the previous state and the stigmatization of their ethnicity.

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The consequences of slavery are still visible today in the collective mentality inherited from the past, full of stereotypes and prejudices. The study of a significant part of Romanian folklore, especially proverbs, anecdotes and fairy tales, demonstrates a marked feeling of irony and contempt towards the Roma. Roma are seen, more and more often, as bad, treacherous, thieves, criminals, dirty, non-human beings.

This negative legacy, the absence of training institutes and representation of the Roma cultural model, with the notable exception of the national Roma culture center Romano kher, and the lack of correct information in school curricula and the public space, lead to the stigmatization of the Roma identity, the internalization of this scar and the rejection, often by the Roma themselves, of their identity.

Here is a new form of slavery: moral slavery that not even a law can abolish without the firm and unanimous contribution of all strata of society, from public authorities to intellectuals.

A new educational model
By discovering all these things, the Amare Rromentza association has tried to contribute to the dissemination of knowledge and the promotion of understanding of the history and culture of the Roma, especially among young people, Roma and non-Roma, through the realization and presentation, over the years 2007 and 2008, of the pièce Rromanipen, realized together with the students of the Roma section of the Faculty of Foreign Languages ​​of the University of Bucharest and the Roma students of the other faculties.

The first reaction of the young people was that of amazement. Some non-Roma have expressed rejection, skeptical of the stories of slave-owning ancestors. I have brought them arguments in support of historical truth. There were also angry reactions from young Roma, who wondered why their slave ancestors had not rebelled against slavery. I told these young people about the struggle for freedom carried out from a legal point of view by some Roma slaves who are free but illegally detained by their masters.

The reaction of the scientific community, especially of Romanian historians, has been to downplay the seriousness of Roma slavery, defining it as “servitude” which, although synonymous with “slavery”, was described as less serious and more similar to a feudal regime, although there are fundamental differences: with the first we mean an economic dependence only, with the second a personal dependence.

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In the relationship Strategic directions for ethno-educational inclusion of Roma (Strategic guidelines for the ethno-educational inclusion of Roma) I proposed a series of measures aimed at the knowledge and understanding of historical truth, to enhance the Roma ethnic identity and to promote a correct image of the Roma. Thus Amare Rromentza created the concept of ethno-educational inclusion, an approach in which the education system officially includes Roma by recognizing, promoting, guaranteeing and cultivating their ethnic identity at all levels of education and in lifelong adult education. It is a new educational strategy that can be applied to any ethnic group or any national minority.

Because even a Roma student with high academic performance, who studies in a school with excellent equipment and highly qualified professors, if he does not recover the identity component, will not benefit from a complete training.

After such a tragic history, Romanian society has a huge moral and material debt towards the Roma, and therefore the recognition of slavery and the reconstruction of the Roma and Romanian collective memory is a must, which presupposes much more than the institution of a day dedicated to liberation from slavery (February 20), as it happens today.

We need national research programs, programs in the publishing field, the complete and correct presence of the history and culture of the Roma in programs, manuals and school libraries, in the media, in any type of training aimed at adults, the creation of public monuments, research institutes and the promotion of Roma cultural memory and Roma cultural heritage (research institutes, museums, theaters, provincial and local cultural centers, collections of Roma books in public libraries, etc.).

The reconciliation between Roma and society, in other words between former slaves and former slave owners, cannot be achieved except, on the one hand, through the recognition and acceptance of history by society and state institutions and, from other, through the institutional reconstruction of the Roma identity to regain dignity. This is in the hope that Roma children will eventually be considered full citizens and never again ghost slaves of their diversity.

(Translation by Elena Di Lernia)

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