Drastic situation of Romani People
in Italy
By Juan de Dios Ramírez-Heredia
Persecution against gypsies in
Italy is reaching levels of unprecedented severity. It isn’t a stretch to say that our brothers
and sisters residing in beautiful Italy are facing a similar period of violence
and disgrace to that which our ancestors suffered through in the 1930s in
Germany.
The Romani Holocaust, as we
have highlighted numerous times previously, was not the consequence of one
drunken, racist night out in 1940 in which a maniac ordered the extermination
of all European gypsies.
These things, fed by false information about the
danger of certain minorities, simmer over time among the general public.
Gypsies had already been banned from public places such as parks, fairs and
public toilets during the 1920s.
Then in 1934, the year after Hitler came to
power, sterilisation campaigns began whereby men were castrated. And if this wasn’t enough to eliminate the
survival of a people, in 1935 the Laws for the Protection of German Blood and
German Honour, notoriously known as the Nuremberg Laws, were enacted.
Ultimately, when hatred or ignorance prevent us from seeing a human being as
deserving of the same dignity that should be equal for all humans, then the
greatest atrocities imaginable can be committed.
On the night of the 9th November
1938, the ‘Kristallnacht’ (Night of Broken Glass) took place across Austria and
Germany. In those hours, the Sturmabteilung (SA), a paramilitary that operated
under the orders of the Nazi Party, set about burning and destroying
Jewish-owned properties as well as carrying out the most brutal of
lynchings.
All of this happened under
the gaze of the German Government who looked on at the destruction without
intervening.
Well, the same thing happened to
the gypsies of the time. In that same year of 1938, ‘Gypsy Clean-up Week’ was
established which culminated in 1940 with one of the first signs of terror that
opened up the gates for genocide: 250 Romani children were executed in
Buchenwald concentration camp in order to test the efficiency of Zyklon-B, the
chemical that would later be used in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau. In
1945, following the defeat of the Nazi regime, three quarters of the gypsy
population residing in Germany had been executed.
So what is happening in Italy?
To quote Don Quijote, comparisons
are odious. However in this case a
comparison is unfortunately apt. We are seeing too many parallels between the
events of Nazi Germany during the Second World War and what is happening today
in Italy and other parts of Europe. Go out and look if you don’t think it’s
true.
Read the full article here.
Best regards,
ERIO Team
____________________________________________
European Roma Information Office
(ERIO)
Av. Edouard Lacomblé 17, 1040
Brussels, Belgium
Tel: +32 (0)2 733 3462
Email: office@erionet.eu
Web: www.erionet.eu
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