In Ragusa- now Dubrovnik, Croatia- late fall is overcast. Clouds choke the southern Adriatic; hard rains hit the walled city, overflow from the gutters and pound the smooth cobblestones below.
November 5th, 1362:
The Ragusan goldsmith Radenus Bratoslauich accepted as a deposit eight silver pieces from two dark-skinned, black-haired men- one Vlachus and Vitanus. Ragusa was an empire built on trade; it had outposts as far away as the ancient mines of Novo Brdo, Kosovo. Its traders controlled Bosnian silver from Srebrenica. Its diplomats fawned and played greater empires- Turks and Venetians- against one another. It invented the concept of ship quarantine and outlawed slavery before any other nation in the world. Its ships later took part in the Spanish Armada.
Radenus refused to return the dark men’s coins; Vlachus and Vitanus filed a petition with the local authorities, who ordered the goldsmith to do so. Ragusan ships then sailed the known world; strangers such as these were not unusual. But the official noted on the petition that these men were Egyptiorum.
The petition survives- in the Dubrovnik Historijski Archiv. It is the first reliable record of Roma in the former Yugoslavia.[1][2]
Gypsy \Gyp”sy\, n.; pl. Gypsies. [OE. Gypcyan, F. Gyptien, Egyptian, Gypsy, L. Aegyptius. See Egyptian.] [Also spelled Gipsy and Gypsey.]
1. One of a vagabond race, whose tribes, coming originally from India, entered Europe in 14th or 15th century, and are now scattered over Turkey, Russia, Hungary, Spain, England, etc., living by theft, fortune telling, horse jockeying, tinkering, etc. Cf. Bohemian, Romany.
Like a right gypsy, hath, at fast and loose,Beguiled me to the very heart of loss. –Shak.
2. The language used by the gypsies. –Shak.
3. A dark-complexioned person. –Shak.
4. A cunning or crafty person [Colloquial].
Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary 1913
Unfortunately for the Roma, their first appearances in southeastern Europe coincided with the Ottoman Turkish invasions of the 13th-15th centuries; the stereotypes began on their entry. Roma were associated with non-Christians; they were dark-skinned, dark haired nomads of no fixed address, traveling according to their professions and the seasons. They were divided into bands- Kumpania- comprised of many families, ruled by Voivodes (Serbian for chieftain), a lifetime-elected position. Their caravans crisscrossed Europe; they left signs of their travel for other groups; bouquets of sticks tied with ribbons, and notches carved on trees.
Rom men were donkey-drivers, bridle-makers, leatherworkers, blacksmiths, sieve and brick-makers, livestock traders and animal trainers. Roma musicians played instruments their ancestors had first picked up in Armenia and Persia. They led dancing bears on chains. Their women wove baskets, told fortunes, begged, read palms and sold herbal remedies. They were nomads- a suspicious lifestyle for settled European communities used to invasions, be it from the steppe or other lands. The Roma found business among Europeans; the animal traders knew about cross-breeding and the health of livestock. The blacksmiths worked cheap and well. The musicians were always welcome.
“The real wild Balkan gypsies rarely bother about a tent, but crouch in the lee of any bush or bank that is near a water and fuel supply. Swarthy, scarlet-lipped, with black brilliant eyes, long heavy elf-locks of dead black hair, and unspeakably filthy, they are scorned alike by Serb and Albanian. The scorn they return tenfold, for they hold that they are the chosen of all races, and that none other knows how to enjoy the gift of life. One came up and boasted that he was the father of thirty-two children.” -M. Edith Durham High Albania 1908
And slowly the European idea of Gypsies formed- that they were heretics, lazybones, thieves, beggars, kidnappers and vagrants. Europeans called them Heiden (heathens), Tatarre, Saracens, Turks, Jews and Pharaones- the Pharaoh’s people. They spied for the Turks; their women were witches. Many of the racist stereotypes heaped upon European Jewry found their way to the newcomers. Isabel Fonseca, relates, in Bury Me Standing: the Gypsies and their Journey, a tale, told by a Macedonian Romni, of how the father of all Roma inadvertently forged the nails that were used to crucify Christ. They became cursed; a discarded fourth nail, glowing hot, haunted them. They could never escape it, no matter how far they traveled.
Europeans told similar tales, the inadvertently was omitted.
Since their appearance in medieval Europe, Roma have been ghetto-ized, expelled, branded and enslaved. Roma were human livestock in Romania until 1864; it was fashionable for Romanian aristocrats to have a Romni slave-concubine. Roma were collectively hung, simply for being Roma; in 1710, Frederick I of Germany had an inscription carved on a gallows: ‘The penalty of thieving and Gipsy riff-raff.’ A decree issued in Prague in 1740 made lynching policy throughout Bohemia. Nineteen years before, King Charles XI of Germany ordered that the Roma within his territory be put to death. The Roma called these dark historical turns Porrajmata- devourings.
And then came the holocaust- the Baro Porrajmos, or great devouring. A badly wounded German soldier, recipient of the Iron Cross at the battle of Stalingrad, convalesced in his hometown in Germany while the Roma attracted greater SS interest; the soldier’s grandmother, it emerged, was Roma. The man was promptly dispatched to Auschwitz. Roma had their own Zigeunerlager at Auschwitz III- Birkenau: the ‘Gypsy family camp.’ That decorated soldier and 21,000 other Roma died there; at least 400,000 Gypsies were murdered during the Baro Porrajmos.
“He is a gypsy, a thing without cross or soul, one cannot call him either friend or brother, and one cannot take his word by anything in heaven or earth.” - Ivo Andrić The Bridge Over the Drina 1946
Roma are no longer lynched- in an organized, state-sponsored manner. The Second World War’s end saw Eastern Europe’s Roma barred from traveling, bartering and plying their trades. They were forced by the new communist authorities to reside in fixed locations. New Mahalas grew outside the capitals and major cities of every east European state. Šuto Orizari, Macedonia- Shutka to those who live there- began as a refugee camp for Roma when Skopje was leveled by an earthquake in the 1960s. Shutka is the largest of these Mahalas, with a population of 40,000, and is the only Roma ‘town’ in the world.
Some nations tried to assimilate them. Others tried to eliminate them by passive means, such as (then) communist Czechoslovakia’s Roma sterilization programs. The fall of communism has given rise to nationalist, right-wing movements that find natural targets in the Roma among them. Economic stagnation makes it easy. Attacks on Roma grow, by both skinheads and ordinary citizens enraged by the idea of gypsies- ‘petty criminals’ and ‘welfare recipients’ among them that are not of their blood. From Germany to the Czech Republic, from Slovakia to Romania, Roma have been beaten and killed. Their settlements have gone up in flames, often under the eyes of police who don’t care to stop what they see. Ideas of the rights of minorities find little resonance in those that commit these acts against a people who do not even possess a native word for war. Roma borrowed the word from Turkish.
[1][2] Crowe, 1995: p. 196; Fraser, 1992.
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