>>Flags/National Symbols of Europe<<
About the EHL/The Staff/Contact Us
Submit Articles & Content
Online Language Translation
Join our Mailing List
Donate to the EHL
Bookmark the EHL to Favourites!   

         
Click a Flag to Translate

• History of Christianization of Europe
• Soviet Union, Communist influence
• Map of European ethnic groups
• Map of Fascism in Europe (1922-75)
• History of Islamic conquest in Europe
• Religions & ethnic groups in Russia
• Detailed map of French colonization
• Detailed map of British colonization
• Napoleon's conquests & legacy
• Ethnic & religious map of pre-Nazi Poland

--MORE & NON-ENGLISH--

• Muhammad cartoon crisis in pictures
• Stalin's private summer home
• Ravenna: capital of Gothic empire
• Czar Nicholas II's Ukrainian palace
• European traditional costumes/dress
• Inside the Vatican, house of all wealth

--MORE & NON-ENGLISH--

• Islamic Mujahidin vs. Spain & El Cid
• Poland-Lithuania vs. Teutonic Order
• Nevskiy's Russia vs. German Crusaders
• Prussia vs. France (Nazi Propaganda)
• Qadafi: Europe will soon be Islamic
• Ivan the Terrible vs. Muslim Tatars
• Soviet Propaganda: Defeat of Germany 

--MORE & NON-ENGLISH--

• The Gypsies in history and today, Europe's public enemy
• History of Jihad in Chechnya
& Caucasus vs. Russians
• History of the Muslim Tatars in Russia
• Ethnic & religious history of Serbs, Croats, & Bosnians
• Breakaway states and independence movements in Europe
• The ancient Germanic Runic alphabet and Runestones
• Inside Bulgaria, 1st Slavic nation,
land of Thracian masters of gold
• 510-year struggle for Albanian homeland, and 552 for Kosovo
• 4,000-year-old white mummies of China, bringers of Buddhism 

--MORE & NON-ENGLISH--

The Gypsies in history and today, Europe's public enemy
by James Mayfield (Chairman, European Heritage Library)

Print this Article    •    About the Author    •    Bibliography/Sources

This article is about the Gypsies, also called the Roma or Sinti, who populate Eastern Europe and have been a source of problems for centuries. It tracks the origin, traditions, and history of the Roma over the past centuries.

Who are the Roma/Gypsies?

The Roma are one of the most unique cultures the world over, and remain a source of mystery, conflict, and often ethnic violence. They are popularly identified by the image of wicked poverty, illiteracy, theft, disease, and begging. In fact, these seemingly closed-minded stereotypes are legitimate. The very name used to refer to the Roma, “Gypsies,” is believed to derive from early European words for theft, and has percolated into English slang as “to jip someone,” meaning to rob or swindle. With the modern drive for multicultural appreciation, the proper name Roma has been encouraged, although dormant hatred in Europe makes calls for respect for the Roma largely comical. They are often called “Sinti,” although this is less frequent and refers more often to Indian communities. The names Romani and Romanny are also used, usually in reference to their language. Over the past several centuries of their nomadic settlement in Eastern Europe and the Russian Steppes, they have been treated as a bacillus or parasite and have even frequently been expelled, purged, or even in the case of World War II, exterminated altogether. It was not only the Germans who massacred the Gypsies along with the Jews and homosexuals, but Hungary and Romania (both Axis nations) took the opportunity to put many of their Gypsies to death.

The oft-used unofficial flag of the Gypsies based upon that of India, including the Chakram wheel which signifies reincarnation

The most striking feature of the Gypsies is that they are clearly non-European, nor even “white.” So too, their culture, religion, identity, dress, and language are completely isolated and unique, although they borrow from local traditions of the host country in attempt at survival. The origin of the Gypsies is not universally agreed upon, although it is clear that they descend from North India, as their facial and skull features make clear. Their language and widely varied dialects root in the Indo-Aryan languages that were brought into India from Iran by the “Aryans” in the 15th century BCE, and include Farsi, Urdu, Punjabi, Hindi, Tajik, and all languages in northern India. Because of the lack of national identity or state formation in Roma history, the Roma do not have a monolithic language or set of traditions that are synonymous with other Roma communities only a few villages over. The Roma language is written in the Latin alphabet due to modern calls for minority representation, although it is rarely written in the Cyrillic alphabet due to the reluctance of European societies from making any effort for what is largely perceived as a social parasite.

Roma are distinctly non-European, and have the genetics of India with some superficial features of Europeans in an attempt at survival. (Click to enlarge) (from ABC News)

Roma descend from the North Indian racial group to which Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, and Nepal belong. (Click to enlarge)

It is unknown how or when they migrated from the northern Indian basin all the way to Eastern Europe, but it is clear that it took many centuries. They may have moved westward in the time that the Iranians ruled an empire stretching from Thrace to Afghanistan. Their western movement may have begun during Alexander's conquest of the Iranians and the opening up of European and Arab trade markets to the Indian subcontinent in the 4th century BCE. Most likely, their migration began later in history, when much of Europe was broken into regional principalities and squabbling kingdoms in the early Middle Ages. This opened the way for the Gypsies to look for greener agricultural opportunities in the Russian and Hungarian Steppes that were now open for settlement with such weak central governments. Turkic peoples like the Cumans and Kipchaks easily settled in the fringes of Eastern Europe because of this, and the Gypsies may have exploited the same opportunity. Reasons for their westward movement are multifold: famine, persecution for a different religion or culture than the local North Indian governments, etc. They are often pinpointed as originating in Rajasthan and the Deccan of northwest India, a desert region prone to malnutrition that may have pushed them westward in the first place. The domination and persecution of India's Hindus by the Muslims from the 11th century onward obviously disjointed their native freedoms. What is certain, however, is that they found no safe refuge in Europe either. They have not assimilated into the nations they inhabit (or many would prefer “infiltrate”), retaining their separate identity, living spaces, family customs, language, and religiosity that keeps this hated community closely bonded despite being so disparate and disunited. They do not miscegenate with the indigenous Europeans, and few even want to associate with the Roma or even look at them as it is. It is safe to assume that since they populate Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Russia, Hungary, Moldova, Greece, and Serbia today, they probably were once far more or equally populous in Russia and Central Asia since it was on the way to the Balkans. This implies that the Roma of Central Asia and the Steppe faced intense persecution by the invading Muslim Turkic peoples who quickly dominated most of Asia and became the masters of the Islamic world from the 11th century until the 20th. The Muslim rulers probably pushed them to the west by force, or the Roma voluntarily migrated to the west, where the local rulers of what is today Ukraine, eastern Hungary, and Romania were seldom able to exert so much universal dominance over their claimed domains. It is unlikely to claim that the Roma assimilated in Central Asia considering that they never did in Europe.

Since settling in Eastern Europe, many superficial aspects of local European religiosity have been added to the native Roma religion to forge a Christian-Hindu-esque syncretism. The religion of the Roma is less close to modern Hinduism than it is to the dualism and nature-spirit traditions of the Vedic religion, its predecessor brought to India by the Iranians (“Aryans”) nearly 3,500 years ago. Spirit and nature worship, superstition, divination, ritual healing, and shamanistic esoterism are common among the Roma with a frequent veneer of Christian dogma. Popular lore of Gypsies cursing local Europeans with voodoo dolls is probably mythology, since the same allegations were hurled against Jews as well. Most Roma do not bother to learn the local languages except those necessary for everyday survival and begging for money. More recently, since global liberalism, some Roma have tried to enter schools and thus learn national languages, but this is considered a fanciful and failed investment.

The Roma as public enemy, and as victims during World War II

The popular image that Roma do not benefit native Europeans whatsoever, and only pilfer from the economy with spiraling property values and dirtying once-beautiful cities has made them a prime target wherever they occupy. Along with the Jews, they can easily be called Europe's most readily-persecuted ethnic group. Although the negative associations reek of racism and prejudice, they are well-founded and true. They mostly populate Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, and Moldova, and coincidentally all of these powers (Moldova was part of Romania) voluntarily joined Hitler's Axis in the war against Communism and all the victim groups that were associated with them. Marshal Ioan Antonescu, the Fascist ruler of Romania, was among Hitler's most avid supporters and was bitterly racist, anti-Communist, and Antisemitic. Hungary, rife with Gypsy populations due to its proximity with Romania and because Hungary ruled what is now Romania for centuries, was ruled by Regent Miklos Horthy. Horthy and Hungary were avid supporter of Germany in both World Wars, and Hungary participated in the Holocaust as did Romania, Vichy France, Germany-Austria, the Netherlands, and Italy. Bulgaria and Tsar Boris III, a supporter of the Germans in both WWI and WWII, had less blood on its hands and took less a part in the genocide and transportation of Jews and Gypsies to Axis concentration camps than the other powers, although this largely has to do with fear of consequence.

Marshall Antonescu of Romania, arguably Germany's closest ally. When it was obvious that Romania, Hungary, and Bulgaria were going to lose the war, all three sides switched to the Soviet Union to spare themselves total annihilation, and Antonescu was overthrown.

Miklos Horthy, Hitler's close ally in Hungary. When the war effort became bleak, he sought peace with the Soviets, and in response Germany ordered his son kidnapped to force him to keep fighting.

Like the Jews, the Roma were viewed as a social parasite and economic drain on most of Europe (even non-Axis powers), and thus were an inevitable target in the genocides. When the racial justification was not used for their forced removal (i.e. the Roma being foreign and non-white), the socioeconomic drain borne of the Roma population was emphasized. Their reluctance for physical labor made them even more readily a target for death or expulsion. They were shipped all over Axis-ruled Europe from France to Ukraine. It is oft-forgotten that the Soviet Union engaged in many genocides that parallel and even surpass those of the Axis, although with less racial ideology, and the Gypsies were exterminated, starved, and displaced all across Russia and Central Asia as well. What is interesting about the Roma situation during the Holocaust is that the Roma seldom became active in politics. The Jews took the opportunity after World War I to create and lead Communist revolutions and movements across the continent, bringing Russia and Germany to their knees using rhetoric of social and economic injustice. The Roma were pacifist and hardly a physical or military obstacle for the Axis, making their extermination perhaps equally tragic as that of the Jews. Nonetheless, without claiming that massacre of Jews or Gypsies was justified, the fact that much of the entire continent and its populations voluntarily chose to exterminate both of these populations reveals that both groups were a major social problem that we must study to fairly understand what drove men to slaughter millions of people. It cannot be falsely passed off as the mania of Hitler or closed-minded Antisemitism as it so often is. Pogroms, attack squads, rogue army purges, and government-sponsored cleansings occurred even where full-on genocide did not occur.

The Roma story during the Holocaust has come to light only recently. It is difficult to determine how many died in the Holocaust considering the disputes that have arisen from the numbers of Jewish dead in the war. Some estimates for dead Roma range from 200,000 to even a million. Since the Roma were less frequently annihilated than the Jews, there were no Roma-exclusive death camps; Roma prisoners were thrown into the tremendous suffering with the Jews and homosexuals alike. They were forced to wear black triangles which signified their lack of use as "asocial" to the Völkisch, Germanic nationalism that was expected to be the purpose of the nation. Despite the bloodshed that put the Roma and the Jews on the brink of extinction, both groups remain social problems in modern Europe in the minds of many (justly or unjustly).

The Roma today: still a social and economic drain

Most Roma live in Romania (some 2,500,000), Bulgaria (800,000), Hungary (650,000), Slovakia (520,000), Macedonia (260,000), Greece, Austria, Germany, and Albania (Open Society Institute, UNDP). To clear up discrepencies, the words "Roma" and "Romania" are unrelated. The quality of life of the Roma has improved in the sense that post-war, American-style liberalism has percolated into Eastern Europe with the fall of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union by 1991. They are, at least on paper, protected from racial persecution and discrimination, are offered almost bottomless welfare and social benefits in the West, and many government offices translate documents into Romani to ensure their representation. They enjoy the opportunity of compulsory and free primary schooling in some urban areas, although the Gypsies tend to stay in their own communities on the sewer-reeking outskirts of the cities instead of ascending the social ranks with a good education or a job. Gypsies are known to marry early, even in prepubescence, as early as 9 via arranged marriage. After marriage, it is unlikely that they will choose schooling, and with only a few years of education, one can imagine how productive and beneficial this hated community is to Europe today. They have more than twice the birthrate of Europeans, who tend to have one child per mother, instead having anywhere from 4-9 children. Some countries have forcibly sterilized them even after World War II, including Cold War-Czechoslovakia and even modern Sweden (source: Economist). Due to their low literacy, perceived stupidity (justly or unjustly), low life expectancy, high disease frequency, and hatred by the Slavic natives in the schools, local agencies and schools are not keen to encourage them to attend schools. In addition, the social rights of Eastern Europe are a far cry from the liberalism of America and Western Europe. Despite their hopes for socialimprovements, the natives still hate them, and can be seen yelling at them, spitting, attacking, pushing, or kicking trash or gutter water at “starving” Gypsies at all hours of the day in many nations from Italy to Moldova.

The standard of living in terms of housing, sanitation, sewage, water quality, ventilation, and transportation of the Roma today is just as it was in the 1500s. Gypsy villages can be found outside of urban cities in Bulgaria, Romania, and Italy where they live and travel to the cities each day to panhandle, steal, beg, and trade their dubiously-sanitary goods on the streets. Their villages are dilapidated houses and sheds with torn-down walls and collapsed roofs. They have mud floors, free-reign animals defecating in grain supplies, and no electricity. Horses and donkeys walk around on government-paved roads, with stray and starving dogs scavenging for food. They are basically subsistence farmers, and rely upon this when they are not begging to survive. They were slaves for centuries in Europe before being let loose on the periphery to feed themselves or die. Sewage runs in the street, and feces can be smelled from hundreds of feet away. Dozens of people live in small dwellings and defecate in public even in the sight of urban indigenous Europeans. They bathe infrequently, and drink from collective wells prone to disease. Because of Western complaints that the Slavs are not doing enough to protect the “basic rights” of the Gypsies, and in an attempt to quell the disease that the Gypsies bring from their unsanitary villages to the clean cities, some Gypsy villages are actually torn down and rebuilt by the government. Bulgaria, far wealthier and slightly more liberal than Romania, has built whole settlements for the Gypsies, particularly outside the beautiful coastal city of Varna (see my photos below). This has likely decreased the high level of disease, but out of the wallet of already-poor and struggling natives who want absolutely nothing to do with them nor want to even see them. Eastern European Slavs hardly enjoy the social services of Western European countries, further agitating the natives that the government is not giving back tax money to the Slavs but to the hated Roma who do not even work or attain education.

My photo of a Gypsy driving his cart through the streets to trade his goods in Bulgaria. (Click to enlarge)

My photo of a semi-government-supported Gypsy village outside of Varna, Bulgaria, with open sewers. (Click to enlarge)

My close-up photo of the Gypsy village with torn-open roofs and walls in Bulgaria. (Click to enlarge)

In Romania, far more poor than Bulgaria, the Roma simply wandering the streets, sleep on the sidewalk, bathe in rain-water puddles, defecate on the roads, and beg and steal from tourists and locals. On my vacation to Constanta (see my photos below), Romania, several tourists were robbed of their wallets and watches by “starving” Gypsy children. The Roma can be seen laying down on the streets and in open doorways coughing and wheezing because of terminal diseases and weak immunities that come with their poor standard of living by their own designs. Roma children and early teenagers can be seen walking around nude even after reaching menstruation age. Most have no shoes. Gypsy parents seem to use the cuteness of young age and the desperate image of a poor child in order to maximize the offerings of sympathetic tourists. Gypsies also have the abhorrent habit of begging outside churches to pilfer from charitable Christian church-goers, as I saw in Ukraine, where Gypsies are as much a blemish on Ukraine's pristine lands and cities as anywhere else. The locals all consider this extortion, lies, and theft, especially because they are not even Christian. In Romania, I saw them exploit religious charity and almsgiving by waiting outside Romanian mosques, where the imams can always be heard yelling at them to leave (unlike Christianity, Islamic duty to give alms or zakat to the poor only applies to believers).

My photo of a Gypsy family begging and peddling at local restaurants in Romania. The little girl walks in the nude.

My photo of a home now abandoned and occupied by Gypsies with an open ceiling in Romania.

An interesting criticism of the Gypsies is that they are frauds who falsely feign their poverty and homelessness to extort money and become rich. Some even believe that they secretly have “palaces” in certain parts of Romania where they pool together their stolen or “donated” earnings to build massive housing complexes with very crude materials like iron sheets for roofs and doors. It is quite dubious that an entire ethnic group would fein poverty and suffer huge disease to this end. One Romanian told me a story that she was ostracized for donating to Gypsies due to a compassionate heart, but after being taken up north to see these “palaces,” she learned the reality of the Gypsy problem. It is certainly true, however, that the Gypsies steal, cheat, and exaggerate poverty in order to get money, as was apparent to me in Romania and Bulgaria when “starving” Gypsy children with sobbing eyes have Ipods and Blackberries that they hide as soon as they find tourists ripe for begging.

Because of their troubles in the East, more and more Roma have immigrated to Western Europe to enjoy more liberal social rights, liberal social programs, and free housing. Thousands of Gypsies live and beg in Germany, Austria, France, Greece, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Macedonia, the rest of the former Yugoslavia, Croatia, the UK, Sweden, Denmark, and Italy. Predictably, they fall victim to the ever-strong racism in Western Europe, and thousands of Gypsies have enjoyed the greater protection and socioeconomic liberalism of the United States. In Italy, the Gypsy problem has culminated into a major social issue. Government-subsidized Gypsy dwellings in parks are often burnt down by natives, homeless Gypsies are attacked and assaulted in back alleys, and rocks and weapons are hurled at beggars, forcing local liberal Italian authorities to intervene to protect the guaranteed rights of minorities and discriminated racial/ethnic groups. Despite the image of modern multiculturalism and liberalism in Europe, racism is still strong and growing to the demise of the Roma and other immigrant groups. In 2008, Italy's minister of the interior initated a program to fingerprint and register Gypsies into Italian police databases. Because of the peripheral and migratory nature of Gypsies in Europe, many Gypsies are not even registered as residents or counted in the population, as seen by the fact that no one agrees whether there are four or twenty million Gypsies in Europe. This program was part of the government's effort to alleviate Italy's rampant street crime in major urban areas such as Naples. Liberal groups responded with accusations of racism, but the government assured them that Red Cross observers would be present to ensure a humanitarian treatment of this hated minority.

Of the estimated 4-12 million Roma in Europe (Economist), UNICEF reports that 84% of Roma in Bulgaria, 88% in Romania, and 91% in Hungary live below the UN-defined poverty level. The blame is often levied against the governments themselves for their poverty, but the Gypsies themselves have refused to better their own living standards by adaptation and survival. With the growth of technology, Roma are being outpaced and further pushed to the boundaries. And with racism and nationalism growing in Europe, their future is as bleak as always.

________________________________________

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

James Mayfield is the owner and Chairman of the European Heritage Library. I am working for a doctorate in history, with a specific emphasis on Islamic and European histories. I am well versed in all world cultures, ethnicities, religions, languages, politics, and historical evolution in relation to and against each other.

BIBLIOGRAPHY/SOURCES USED:

-Open Society Institute, UNDP

-Economist - “bottom of the heap”, June 21, 2008