Creative inclusions

I attended a seminar at the University of Greenwich.

Persecution and Genocide: The triggers of Romani History?

Was organised by The Greenwich Traveller Education Service in conjunction with the University of Greenwich for Gypsy Roma Traveller History Month.

Speakers

Romani Rose, Chairman of the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma

“Telling the German Public about the Holocaust against the Sinti and Roma”

Janna Eliot, translator of Settala , and the author of Settela’s Last Road, based on it, “The face of the victims”

Dr Brian Belton, YMCA George Williams College: “Earlier persecutions of Gypsies/Travellers in England and their legacy today.”

Valdemar Kalinin, Camden, Hammersmith and Fulham Education services: “The Soviet Romani contribution to the defeat of Nazi Germany”.

Dr Ethel Brooks, Rutgers University: “The uses and meaning of testimony on genocide, reflecting on material from the Shoah visual Archive”

Gabor Boros of the Boros Ensemble: “The links between the nineteenth century Magyar appropriation of Romani music and Hungarian anti-Gypsyism today”

Damien LeBas jr. of Travellers Times: “Did it all change? Reflections on the new Romani historiography.”

And to wrap the day there was an opening at the Stephen Lawrence Gallery in the University of Greenwich The Otto Pankok Sinti Exhibition, Curated by Moritz Pankok

The Context of the Seminar

“The new Gypsy/Roma/Sinte/Traveller politics of the second half of the 20^th century is often attributed to the realization that the Nazi Holocaust showed that old survival strategies no longer worked. This took a while to seep through. At first people just wanted to forget, then the terrible necessity of remembering became evident. As with the Jews, the testimony of survivors began to be recorded, provoked partly by the beginnings of holocaust denial and historical revisionism, some of it from unlikely quarters. But while some Jewish scholars sought competitively to minimise Romani suffering, others, such as Miriam Novitch and Donald Kenrick were pioneers in documenting the Porraimos.

Putting the Romani holocaust into historical context, however, required a much more general critique of the accepted story of the Roma. For the Nazi holocaust was hardly the first genocide of Gypsies. Attention turned to the genocidal persecution of Gypsies/Roma/Travellers in the 16^th century, as Europe’s nation states were being born, and the historical aftermath of marginalisation and slavery, which equally had to be acknowledged with pain. Mateo Maximoff, himself interned in a Vichy concentration camp, was the first Rom to write about the Nazi holocaust after 1945. During his life as a writer he moved from early denial of his family’s slave past to making it the subject of one of his most important novels Le Prix de la Liberté.

The qualitative difference between genocide, and mere persecution and marginalisation began to emerge. A different set of questions were posed about origins were posed in our 2008 seminar. A revised general narrative of the last 500 years of Romani history saw existing Gypsy/Romani/Traveller group identities as beginning to take their modern form through the survival strategies in different countries after the 16^th century genocides, and then being thrown into the melting-pot by the 20^th century genocides – which are not yet concluded, as we hear of the UN’s ongoing complicity in the slow poisoning of Roma in the concentration camps at Mitrovica, and listen to the ranting of Italian fascists in government again. And yet we balk at a Romani history which will define Gypsies/Roma/Sinte/Travellers just by their victimisation.

But although it may be the experience of racism, anti-Black, anti-Jewish, anti-Gypsy, which brings those groups together politically, racism, cannot be allowed to define them. Like Black History Month, Gypsy/Roma/Traveller Month seeks to bring together the diverse experience and cultural achievements of different groups. Through real, critical history we can dispel the “mystery” of the past, and by looking at its historical roots deconstruct contemporary racism, and put another narrative of community relations in its place. “

Thomas Acton

2^nd of June

I had a meeting with Liz Whitehead from Fabrica Gallery in Brighton to discuss my R&D project and to see if there are any particular contacts that Liz could recommend for me to contact in the South East. We talked in great lengths of how the project is going what I should do next and the different approaches that I could take.

Liz was very helpful, she knows my work and me very well and she was able to see and identify particular areas for me to consider, she was also able to place the work in a specific way that I didn’t think about. She advised me to contact few individuals that may be able to help with advice or get involved in the project.

1^st of June

I attended the launch of Gypsy Roma Traveller History Month 2010 at the Arts Pavilion Gallery, Mile End Arts Park, London and so the exhibition “The Holocaust against the Roma Sinti and Present Day Racism in Europe,” which has been brought to London specially for GRTHM this year.

Here is a short introduction to the exhibition and to the Roma and Sinti

“Roma and Sinti have been living in Europe for centuries. They form old-established and

historically deep-rooted ethnic minorities in the individual countries. The way of life of the

Roma and Sinti in their native countries is totally different from the popular ideas and clichés about “gypsies”.

The Holocaust against the Roma and Sinti represents a fundamental break with history, as

the ethnic minority had been integrated into the society of the majority for centuries. On the basis of the National Socialist racial ideology, Roma and Sinti were gradually deprived of their rights, their basis for the provision of their families and finally deported to the death camps.

The objective of the policy of mass murder organised by the National Socialist state was the extermination of the ethnic minority from its youngest to its oldest members. Hundreds of thousands of Roma and Sinti fell victim to the Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Europe – a crime which is unique in history and which is still unimaginable in its extent.

The experience of the Holocaust has etched itself deeply into the collective remembrance of the Roma and Sinti minorities. The majority of the populations in their respective homelands, however, has no awareness of the dimension of this crime. To this day it has been banished from the public remembrance of the European nations. Failure to initiate an extensive historical assessment have, therefore, enabled the Nazi’s propaganda’s preconceptions about the minority to linger on, virtually unaltered, in its virulence. The prejudicial structures, which still define the image of the Roma and Sinti today, have been significantly influenced by the inhuman racial ideology of the National Socialists and their fascist allies. The exhibition strives to make the historical roots of present day racism against the Roma and Sinti visible.”

… from the press release.

30-31 May

It has been a year exactly and I when back to Gloucester to visit the Cathedral and the plantation in the Garth. I was pleasantly surprised to see how much the project has grown, all the trees and plants are doing so well. I am planning, now that I will be working in Bristol for the next few weeks, to visit again and tide up the plants, they could really do with a little trim.

25^th of May

I got onto the Eurostar and when to Paris for 5 days. I have been invited for a long time now to visit a school friend Vane, who is a diplomat at the Embassy of Macedonia in Paris.

I when with the intention to visit Galleries and create possible contacts, also myself and Vane have been discussing the possibility of using the Embassy space, which is a very old and beautiful building, as an exhibition space.

In spite of the weather I had an amazing time, I love Paris anyway is such an amazing city with so much to see and do, you never get bored!

I visited many interesting galleries, especially I liked the area of Marais in the 3e Arrondissement. I was very impressed by Palace de Tokyo http://www.palaisdetokyo.com/fo3/low/programme/ and the Le Plateau, Frac ile-de-France http://www.fracidf-leplateau.com/en/index.html

The last night in Paris I met an artist Lena Andonova, friend of Vane’s. Lena is a very nice young artist who is living and working in Paris, originally comes form Macedonia from Negotino which is 10km from my birth town Kavadarci. She is also working part time at the Palaise de Tokyo.

All three of us when to an opening at L’equipe de la Galerie, which is only few kilometers outside Paris, a very interesting publicly funded gallery that works closely with Palace de Tokyo. Here we met another artist that Lena collaborates with Stephani Hab.