What Is A Policy Memo: Roma People In Hungary

By 1940, Roma gypsies were rounded up and made to live in encampments. These in time became fenced in ghettos. From these ghettos, many were transported by train to detention camps to await deportation. They were forced to wear black triangle markings for being asocial or a green triangle for being professional criminals. Besides being treated as in the camps, they were also subjected to multiple medical experiments, including “special experiments that were supposed to prove scientifically that their blood was different from German blood.” Many of the gypsy women were sterilized against their will, which included any female child over the age of twelve. This was done so they would not be able to continue their ancestral line, thought to be impure inferior and worthless. Most Roma gypsies were exterminated in the camps.

Some Roma hide their ethnic identities because it can be dangerous and bad for their business because of the stereotyping that goes along with being a Roma. Also, depending on the community, they may be threatened, attacked, or discriminated again.

The unwarranted arrests of the gypsies are frequent in many types of vicinity of Wales and England. The police officers raid and torture them without any reason and they are compelled to stay silent in response to that attitude. In addition to that, they are not allowed to have an access to the courts for the justice.

There have been many major revolutions throughout the history of time which have had attempts to change things for the better good, many of these revolutions succeeded and many of these ended up in failure. The definition of a revolution is “a forcible overthrow of a government or social order, in favour of a new system.” And this is exactly what Hungary tried to do in 1956. Good morning/afternoon everyone, my name is Conrad Littlefield and I will be examining the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and proving that it was in fact detrimental to the lives of everyday people. I will be going in depth of the impacts and long term effects it had and the causes of the revolution.

In order to understand the lifestyle of Romanian Gypsies as an indigenous group, this paper will provide insight toward their distinctive subculture, survival means, ability to withstand racial discrimination and unethical living conditions. Historically, Gypsies have been mistreated and isolated within various cultural settings. Their societies have a terrible reputation for theft, begging and lack of schooling, causing a divide amongst the population. Remaining far below the poverty line, these individuals do whatever it takes to survive.

Many circumstances oblige people to move from their native country to a foreign one. From this movement of migration have emerged many ethnic groups. An ethnic group is a restraint number of persons living in a larger society and sharing the same distinct cultural heritage. Some people tend to bury their habits and accommodate to the new way of life. However others hold on to their identity and try to identify their race and maintain it. This enriches societies and makes them multi-racial. Therefore, every ethnic group is essential to complete the mosaic. Although they are sometimes threatened, minorities must fight to preserve their principles. Why must they fight? Because racial identification has many positive impacts on the members.

There are over seven million people currently classified as Roma. Simply being Roma is not easy and many possible Roma have a self-identity problem. Being Europe’s largest minority many would believe the Gypsies would be treated in a good manner. That is not the case most countries do not even consider Roma to be an ethnicity. For this and many other reasons the Roma mistrust the authority. The mistrust is mutual and the Europeans have not felt the Roma fit in with the rest of Europe. Originally thinking the Gypsies were spies for Muslim countries during the crusades, Europeans never accepted them. For their own good the children of any Roma person were taken

First of all, based on the information found during the research, it can be seen that mainstream media portray Roma people in France and Romania in a neutral or negative way, and rarely in positive way. Regardless of the news about Romani is positive of negative, there seems to be more coverage when specific circumstances occur, for instance, crime.

The Roma culture, due to their nomadic life is disparaged by Europeans because they are seen as homeless and thieves. As an American-European who has lived in Portugal for 10 years, I have witnessed the hatred towards the Roma culture in person. The Roma culture, otherwise known as gypsies live in small “Casas de Lata” (Tin houses) in encampments next to neighborhoods. Their views and culture are mainly rejected by society in Europe for the fact that lifestyle, language, customs and behaviors are different. As one of the Hungarians stated in the video, fear is present whenever a gypsy is seen in the street. In Portugal, similar situations are presented, where I would be afraid to talk or even look at people from descendent of the Roma culture.

Winding down, you see that Hungary has been through many years of upheaval, rioting, war, and dictators to get where they are at today. Even today, Hungary still sees riots and demonstrations due in part to current political and social problems that still plague the country. However don’t let that scare you! Hungary is still has one of the greatest economies in the EU and can be nearly self-sufficient in producing its own food. I can’t wait to see how a country with such a topsy-turvy past can come out with such full steam

After a quasi-period of forgetfulness, the abolition of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, and the assimilation of certain Roma (later to be known as Sinti), some of the Balkan and Vlax Roma migrated to Germany after being emancipated in Romania. This new influx would initiate further persecution when Otto von Bismarck in 1886 ordered all non-German citizens to be removed from German lands. In Munich on March 1899, an “Information Service on Gypsies” was established by the Security Police in the Imperial Police Headquarters that identified and fingerprinted Gypsy nomads who were viewed as pariahs. In one response to this, an officer of the Munich police, Alfred Dillman wrote Zigeuner-Buch a detailed account of the genealogical traits of the Roma in Germany. This was

Discrimination within Poland is greatly exercised, ““Throughout my childhood, most poles (especially other children) used to call me “Negro” (pol. “Murzynek Bambo, “which literally translates into “Little Negro Boy, Bamo”). Thoday, other adults call me names like “Negresse,” “mulatto,” and “chocolate.” In the quote, it seems as though accepting migrants of African descent would tarnish the Poland identity and their colonial and postcolonial ways. The people of the Poland community feel as though Africans could never become a part of their community. For instance, ““It’s a waste to try to whiten a Negro,” “Even after a hundred washes, a Negro stays a Negro,” “water won’t help a Negro.”” With this quote, the Poland community is referencing the

Jaroslav Sus, writer of The Gypsy Question in the CSSR, claimed that the communists were justified in attempting assimilation of the Romani into Czechoslovakian culture because the Romani language was, “discordant, stagnant, without written form and therefore without a future, invented by thieves and criminal elements,” (HRW, 11). His claim, that a language spoken by at least 100,000 people was dangerous, could not have been justified had the Roma people not been the subject of hatred in the past. Sus claimed that the Roma were, “thieves and criminal elements,” (HRW, 11), appealing to the citizens of Czechoslovakia to protect themselves from the possibility of a perceived criminal element rising to a position of power. Sus further discredits the Roma by stating, “Gypsies are not a nation, a nationality and in view of the objective conditions of their existence…cannot ever in the future obtain either the status of nationality or national minority,” (HRW, 11), leading to a widespread belief that the Roma people are inferior to the people of Czechoslovakia due to a language that is “scattered” and “without law”. Through these actions, we can see the many ways the regime worked to discredit the Roma language and culture and refused to recognize them as a national minority. Citing Romani people as “outsiders” that threatened the autonomy of the nation and the communist regime, they

Many of the Roma children are taught to lie when begging in an attempt on other civilizations to have more compassion on them. Begging is often looked at by many cultures as the lowest form of work. Furthermore, the Roma children count on this money to help pay bills alongside of their parents. This form of money making has caused the Roma people to have little influence in other societies. Howell and Paris suggest, “Some individuals or groups have more authority than others; that is, people grant legitimacy to their words and actions” (Introducing Cultural Anthropology, 132). Using this logic, it would be rare for the Roma culture to have much authority when they are found on the streets begging for

In the late eighties, Hungary made progressive steps to position themselves for entry into the European Union. Hungary was the first country to breach the forty-year “Iron Curtain” surrounding the Eastern European countries. The “Iron Curtain” was the political,