Hands off our Holocaust, dromale!
Once again the time of year has arrived when we commemorate the Sarvnash or Sàrmudaripen (Roma Holocaust) and remember those who died at the hands of the Nazis, as well as the survivors and descendants whose lives were so badly affected.
This year, it has come to my attention that yet again, certain dromale (“Gypsy Travellers”) are spreading misinformation aimed at “stealing” our Holocaust, and seeking to appropriate the right to speak for us on a piece of history that did not involve them at all – simply to gain political influence and charitable funding that is not theirs by right.
In the latest episode, a group of dromale have issued a “teaching video for schools” which talks about a so-called “Holocaust of the Romany Gypsies”. This is blatant misinformation: the term “Romany Gypsy” is never used by the Sinte and Roma of Europe, who were the targets of the Holocaust – it is used only by the dromale in Britain. Not only is the word “Romany” (correctly spelt romani) a feminine singular adjective in our language, and therefore totally incorrect in reference to a group of people of both sexes, but the very word “Gypsy” (and its equivalents țigan, gitan, cigan, zigeuner etc) is considered by us as a racial slur on a par with the N-word, with heavy overtones of slavery, exclusion, discrimination, abuse and genocide. We call ourselves variously Roma, Sinte, or Kàle according to tribe – Roma being an accepted umbrella term for all groups.
The term “Romany Gypsy” is used only by dromale in Britain. The “English Romany” do share an origin with us, more than 500 years ago, their ancient ancestors having been Roma who crossed to Britain from France, but they long ago lost the language and much of the culture, and intermarried extensively with non-Roma people, so that they have become a separate population in their own right. Many of their own activists reject any link, even an ancestral one, with the Roma – and recently they have created their own flag so as to assert their separate identity. All of which is absolutely fine, of course, they have a right to assert their own identity, separate from the Roma, and to campaign for their own issues and we happily and heartily support them in that. We agree entirely that their history makes them separate and distinct from us. And if they wish to use an appellation that to us is a massive racial slur, well, that's their choice; they were never enslaved, after all, and so the term does not have the same historical associations as it does for us: but we will take offence if they apply it to us, and especially when they claim that it is the proper term by which to call us.
Moreover, by deliberately misusing their own term of “Romany Gypsy” when talking about the Holocaust, those activists are intentionally erasing the distinction between themselves and us, which at other times they are most insistent about, and implying that they were themselves victims of the Nazis, which they were not. Their population remained safely in Britain while Sinte and Roma were being rounded up and murdered, and furthermore, even if Britain had been invaded they would not have been targeted by the Nazis since they are white English-speakers. The Roma and Sinte were not targeted for being nomadic, since even in the Nazi era a great many had already switched to settled living, but for our non-white ethnicity and non-European culture and language. Non-Roma travelling people under Nazi occupation were forced to become sedentary but not harmed in any other way unless they were deemed to have partial Roma, or Jewish, blood. Clearly, had the Nazis successfully invaded Britain, the dromale would have been treated similarly, and not subjected to genocide.
Furthermore, there are other groups of dromale, such as the Pavees (Irish Travellers), whose ancestry is 100% white European and do not have even a distant historical connection with the Roma -- and yet some of their activists are likewise trying to blur the distinction between themselves and Roma, claiming that they were victims of the Sàrmudaripen; which of course is nonsense because all of the dromale remained safely in Britain during the Nazi era.
Perhaps even worse, certain dromale organisations are spreading the totally false claim that the Nazis were already making lists of dromale for elimination in advance of any invasion. This is absolutely untrue; not only would they not have been targeted except for enforced sedentarisation, but in those days almost all the dromale were undocumented and even the authorities in Britain had no information as to how many, who, or where they were – so it is entirely nonsensical to claim that the Nazis had such information. But on the strength of these false claims, as well as deliberate misinformation aimed at causing confusion about the origins of the various groups, dromale groups have been claiming charitable funding for a Holocaust that didn't affect them in any way and have usurped the right to speak for the Roma victims and survivors, even in Government and the Holocaust Commission.
This policy is clearly deliberate: the culprits are normally very clear about the difference between “us and them”, but they conveniently forget about it when it gives them a political or financial advantage to do so. It is part of a pattern: certain dromale activists have for years been trying to claim the right to speak for us, the Roma/Sinte – because there are now around 300 000 in the UK, so we hugely outnumber the dromale and those large numbers would give them political power.
Naturally, as another misunderstood and mistreated minority group, we are totally willing to support equality and recognition for the dromale and we would hope they would in turn support us; however, when some of their number try to appropriate the right to speak for us and to paint themselves as victims of the Sàrmudaripen, it is absolutely unacceptable. It is precisely analogous to what would happen if white people were to appropriate the right to speak for African Americans and claimed that they too had been enslaved and victimised in the same way. We are, of course, furious about it – and with total justification.
Connected with this is the word poraimos, which those same dromale activists are aggressively promoting as the “Romani name for the Holocaust”. This word was introduced by a dromalo who does not natively speak Romani, claiming wrongly that it meant “devouring” – but the word is extremely offensive because in many dialects of Romani it actually means rape, and the word is seen as extremely unclean, not even to be spoken openly by honourable Roma.
Therefore we call upon all Roma/Sinte, all of our allies, including those dromale who are honest and honourable friends to us (I myself have quite a number of English Romany friends, and we see each other as very distant cousins whose histories took a different path) to be aware of this campaign of misinformation and identity theft, to reject it utterly, and to counter it with correct information. That is the way by which each group will gain equality and respect: by each speaking for ourselves about our own histories, problems and needs. It helps no-one when a minority of dromale activists seek to erase the truth of history merely to augment their own personal power and wealth.