A new database gives access to the memories of Roma Holocaust survivors
The Czech Republic is one of many countries marking Roma Holocaust Memorial Day on 2 August, the day in 1944 when it is estimated that between 4,200 and 4,400 Roma were murdered in Auschwitz. Up to half a million Roma were murdered in total, including over ninety percent of the pre-war Roma and Sinti population of what is now the Czech Republic. To mark the anniversary a new database has been launched by the Institute for Contemporary History of the Czech Academy of Sciences, bringing together testimonies of Czech and Slovak Roma who survived what is known in the Romani language as the Porajmos – the Devouring. David Vaughan spoke to the initiator and head of the project, Kateřina Čapková.
“Eight years ago, when I started research on Romani history, I was in shock that worldwide, on a global scale, there is no place, physically or virtually, where you would have collections of testimonies of Roma related to the Second World War. I was shocked because in research of any genocide the voice of the victims is crucial, and I would argue that in the case of the Holocaust of Roma this is even more so, because, if you base your research from the documents of that period, you encounter documents that use very humiliating and derogatory terms for Roma.”
These are documents that were created by the perpetrators themselves.
“Exactly – by the Nazis or by the Protectorate or Slovak administration. Despite the fact that Roma and Sinti were murdered because of racist ideology and on a racial basis, the documentation suggests that there were also allegedly other reasons for their suffering, for example, they were called workshy or asocial. You see that this Nazi terminology has an effect on how people, even politicians, speak about Roma today. So, I think it is even more important to have this collection of testimonies and to emphasise the voice of Roma, their perspective, because the testimonies also give the victims dignity. Also based on those testimonies, you can see how diverse the community is, and that any generalisation or stereotypical statement about the Roma as such is totally absurd.”
How have you gone about gathering these testimonies eighty years after the Roma Holocaust?
“Most of those testimonies or interviews were conducted in the 1980s, 1990s or in the first years of this century, and they were published. In the database we are focusing on published testimonies, as opposed to audio or visual recordings. At the same time we are also making the users aware of those video and audio recordings on the webpage as well.”
And so, these were mainly interviews carried out with survivors that were in some way recorded and published.
“That’s the majority of the cases, but at the same time, we also have texts that were written by some of the survivors.
I know the book by Elena Lacková, “I Was Born under a Lucky Star”, which has also been translated into English.
“Yes, and there is a fantastic book written by Josef Serinek, a Romani partisan, published only a few years ago. Also, some other writers decided to write down their wartime experiences, even if it’s not in book form but is several pages or more. And these are also part of our database.”
And how have you worked with these sources, so that people can access them and use them – also through English?
“My original plan was to have in the database the original version of those testimonies. I thought that would be best. But we had several meetings with lawyers – experts on copyright law and also data protection law, and we found out that there is no way we could do that, because the rights of those testimonies go also with the publishing houses and it would be difficult to get them. This is why we had to change our plan and decided to do quite detailed abstracts. There was a process of approximately one year, when we were trying to find the right format, the right structure, how detailed it should be, because if it is too little detailed you do not have the specifics of the testimony. At the same time we did not want to rewrite the testimonies, so we had to discuss the length, also because we decided that there should definitely also be an English version.”
So that means that anybody who speaks English and is looking for authentic accounts of the experiences of Roma during the Second World War, can go to the database, and they will find these detailed summaries. And if they want to go further, they can go to the original sources which are not in English.
“Exactly. So we are pointing to the sources and we are also introducing the publications. In two cases those publications are still available to buy, so we also have a link where you can buy them directly. I would like to mention also that we had a team of people with different areas of expertise. For example, the first draft of the abstracts has to be written by people with knowledge of the Romani language and specialists in Romani studies. So I am very happy to have Radka Patočková, who is director of the publishing house KHER, specialised in Romani literature, in the team, and Eva Zdařilová who is also editing the journal, Romano Džaniben. Then it goes to very experienced language editors. My part of the work is to add the historical context and to control whether all these historical events are described in the footnotes properly. And then it goes to the translators.”
And to return to the database and the website – it works very well. You have a great deal of information with links to other interesting sources, and you include maps of where the different events mentioned by the survivors took place. It strikes me as remarkable, miraculous even, that you have photographs of some of the people whose accounts we are reading, or their families, many of whom perished.
“The photographs are extremely important for the project, and we are very thankful to Jana Horváthová at the Museum of Romani Culture that they were willing to share them with us. They are part of their collections. Originally they are from family photo albums of relatives of the Holocaust survivors, and they are extremely precious for us, and as you can imagine even more for them, because in many cases these are the only pictures of people who were murdered during the war. And sometimes I think even for people who are not that much interested in history and do not want to read the testimonies, I would hope that the web page could work through the photographs as well. The photographs help us to destroy some of the prejudices and to see how beautiful the community has been.”
In so many of the pre war photographs the people are smiling. There is almost a carefree quality to some of the photographs.
“This is in such a contrast to the photographs usually used to illustrate the Holocaust of Roma, where Roma people are in the camps, sometimes even naked – pictures that are usually and without any ethical concerns used in order to illustrate the Holocaust of Roma. I would very much like it if the smiling Roma from the pre war communities could be used instead.”
We haven’t spoken about the experiences, many of them traumatic, recounted in these testimonies. Can you give us an idea of some of the recurring themes or experiences?
“The database definitely shows quite some diversity in the wartime experience of the Roma. At the same time, especially for the Bohemian lands, we can say that there is a very dominant topic, namely the experience of Auschwitz. The vast majority of the Roma and Sinti from the Bohemian lands were deported to Auschwitz. It is probably good to know that only a third of them were first imprisoned in Lety and Hodonín. Two thirds were taken to Auschwitz directly from their homes.”
Lety and Hodonín were two camps within the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.
“The aim of the two camps was to gather Roma before being deported to Auschwitz.”
And their accounts from Auschwitz and also from these two camps in the Protectorate speak of terrible conditions and awful violence.
“In many of the testimonies you can feel that the survivors have a problem to describe what they witnessed because it was so far beyond what you can imagine. This is particularly true for the so-called ‘gypsy camp’ in Auschwitz, which was also very close to the two crematoriums. Not only did Roma face the extremely difficult conditions of the camp itself, they were also witnesses of massacres of others, especially the Jews.”
And because of the specific nature of these accounts, there are often also accounts of acts of bravery and great humanity.
“I would say that many of the testimonies testify that the Roma and Sinti were not passive victims, but that they were brave when facing discrimination. And as we also know from the Jewish context in the Holocaust, resistance has many different shapes. So, there was also resistance in the camps for Roma, in Lety, Hodonín and Auschwitz, where people were trying to help others who were ill or who had little to eat, by self-sacrifice and giving some of their own rations. Also, we have quite a lot of cases of resistance with arms. It is very important to emphasise that there were important Romani partisans, not only in Bohemia and Moravia, but I would say especially in Slovakia. There were also people who were Romani soldiers in the Red Army or in the so-called Czechoslovak military corps of General Svoboda.
“And in the Bohemian lands and Slovakia we have cases where the mayor of a village or the local gendarmes helped some of the Romani families not to be deported. Also, some of the Romani children were hidden. So, how should we interpret this? On the one hand we should be happy about these cases. At the same time, these cases show that there was a possibility to help and to exclude some of the Roma from the transports, which was in contrast to the deportation of the Jews, where no exception could be made by the local administration. There was this possibility in the case of Roma and Sinti, but it was used only rarely.”
What do you think that this project means for today’s generation of Roma in the Czech Republic?
“The database is very important for the Romani community, not only that they can find more information about their relatives or friends, but that they can also find more information from other testimonies to the places where their relatives were during the war, for example. But I really hope that it will help to change the narrative which up to now is very much based on the narrative of the perpetrators to a narrative which has the perspective of Roma at its centre.”
You can find the database at: www.romatestimonies.com.
