It won't be any surprise to anyone who has more than a passing interest in History, that the picture is much more complex than might be supposed. A fair amount of time is needed just to discuss who the people under discussion were. There wasn't even agreement at the time. In 1944, the Germans released people that the Dutch authorities had sent to them as Roma, that the Germans considered were not!
The sobering thought for me personally is that, had Britain fallen under a similar or the same regime, my mother's grandparents (if not her mother) could have ended up being 'removed'. They lived in a fairly small town. An ordinary town, full of ordinary, decent people. It couldn't happen here. Could it?
That is an intriguing comment about your wife's antecedents, Chris - were they Romany (or Roma as it is nowadays)??
ReplyDeleteNot my wife’s. My mother’s. I only found out about it about 5 years ago. They were ‘settled Roma’ from East Yorkshire. Oddly enough my wife did a project with Roma (a much more traditional group than my lot) during her studies in Finland, which she really enjoyed doing. Maybe it’s why she knows how to handle me 😆
DeleteChris
Thanks for bringing this to our attention. It is indeed something that I too have little knowledge of . A thought provoking final paragraph.
ReplyDeleteAlan Tradgardland
You’re welcome Alan.
DeleteChris
As Alan has said, the final paragraph makes one think and, given the increasingly polarised nature of society these days, something that could sadly happen here and in other parts of Europe too:(.
ReplyDeleteAye.
DeleteSadly yes it could’ve happened in the UK and it definitely happened here in what was Vichy France (though apparently everyone I’ve talked to here had relatives in the resistance…mmmm). Since many Roma were undocumented in the countries they travelled through we’ll probably never know how many were disappeared.
ReplyDeleteGood point about the documentation. The podcast talked about steps taken by states across Europe from the late 19th C onwards to control Roma*, so there might have been more documented than we think. Not all were peripatetic either.
DeleteThere was also a discussion at the end of the pod about the lack of research resources available. Being from generally poorer sections of the population, the Roma didn’t have the money to set-up foundations in the way that Jewish communities were able to do post-War.
* the prisoners of one camp (in France?) weren’t released until 1946!