Michal Mižigár in the Czech Senate: Antigypsyism must be taken just as seriously as antisemitism, the Roma and Sinti fell victim to both Czech gendarmes and the Nazis

The song is recognized as a recollection of the Holocaust of the Roma and was also performed for the first time on Friday during the commemoration of the Holocaust at the United Nations in New York City. In his remarks, Mižigár stressed that while they were under the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, Roma and Sinti were not just victims of the Nazis, but also of the Czech gendarmes who served in the concentration camps.

“It is necessary to say that for the Roma and Sinti, the period of the war was all the more painful because this evil was done to them already in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia not by German people, but by Czech people serving as gendarmes in the concentration camps, and after the war, none of them were punished for all the evil they perpetrated against the Roma and Sinti prisoners irrespective of their ages,” Mižigár said. The historian also criticized the “Act on Wandering Gypsies” of 1927, which later contributed to the abuse and discrimination of the Roma.

“The Holocaust of the Roma and Sinti in Bohemia and Moravia was realized with the contribution of Act. no. 117 of 1927, the so-called ‘Act on Wandering Gypsies’, which President Masaryk signed. That law not only turned Roma who were 14 years old or older into criminals, but also formed the basis for collecting data about Romani people that was ultimately used against them,” he told the Czech Senate.

Mižigár expressed appreciation for the fact that the Czech state finally bought out the industrial pig farm that once occupied the site of the former concentration camp for Roma at Lety in Bohemia and thanked everybody who is involved in the creation of a new memorial there. He also appealed to politicians to adopt an official definition of antigypsyism.

“Once antigypsyism or racism against Romani people is taken as seriously as antisemitism is, I will be able to attend gatherings like this one today with the feeling that we have learned our lesson and politicians, when they lay wreaths with ribbons reading ‘Never Again’ will actually mean those words seriously,” he ended his speech. News server Romea.cz is publishing it in full translation below.

Speech by Michal Mižigár on the occasion of the Memorial Day for the Victims of the Holocaust and Prevention of Crimes against Humanity in the Czech Senate

1. Aušvicate hi kher báro / Auschwitz has a great big building
   odoj bešel mro piráno /Where my love sits in prison,
   bešel, bešel, gondoľinel /He sits, he sits and reflects
   the pre mande pobisterel. / So he will never forget me.

  2. Ó, tu kálo čiriklóro, / As for you my little blackbird
ľidža mange mro lilóro, / Take up this letter for me
ľidža, ľidža mra romňake / Take it to that wife of mine,
hoj som phandlo Aušvicate. / So she will know I’m in Auschwitz.

3. Aušvicate bokha báre, / In Auschwitz there is great hunger,
a so te chal amen náne, / We have nothing to eat here,
aňi oda koter máro, / Not a single piece of bread
o blokáris bibachtálo. / Because the guard is so evil.

Dear Ladies, Dear Gentlemen, Dear Guests,

If I knew how to sing, I would sing these verses from the song Aušvicate hi kher báro [Auschwitz Has A Great Big Building], which was composed by Růžena Danielová of Mutěnice. Mrs. Růžena Danielová, or prisoner number Z-8259, came from a group of indigenous Moravian Roma who had become integrated into society. Unfortunately, she was the only member of her family to survive Auschwitz, her husband and five children were murdered there. This Žalující píseň [Song of Accusation], after which Dušan Holý named his monograph, is today a symbol of Romani suffering among Roma from all over Europe. What is sad, of course, is that even 79 years after Auschwitz was liberated, this song has not yet found recognition or its place among circles of historians, in the academic community, or anywhere else where Auschwitz or the Holocaust in general are discussed. Nevertheless, after 79 years, this song will be sung for the first time ever in the building of the United Nations on the occasion of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Although my forebears in eastern Slovakia did not directly experience genocide, they themselves were the victims of persecution and racist laws promulgated by the Slovak State. They lost their right of domicile, they had to live in hiding, two kilometers away from the main road, and they could only go to the village at designated times. In the last days of the war, German soldiers used my forebears to dig ditches ahead of the arrival of the Red Army. My forebears experienced their own suffering in the winter woods, their own hunger, illnesses and fear. Good relationships with the priest or the mayor did often protect them from Hlinka Guard members seeking revenge. The Second World War destroyed the natural development of the integration of the Roma into society and deprived them of absolutely everything.

For the Roma and Sinti who survived and returned from the concentration camps, most of them as the sole survivors from their families, things were that much more difficult because most of their relatives were no more, such as Mrs. Růžena Danielová, whom I mentioned at the start. The Roma and Sinti went home to Bohemia and Moravia, where people did not exactly welcome them, and they had nothing with which to begin creating a new life. The state has yet to compensate them for the property taken from them during the Second World War. It is necessary to say that for the Roma and Sinti, the period of the war was all the more painful because this evil was done to them already in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia not by German people, but by Czech people serving as gendarmes in the concentration camps, and after the war, none of them were punished for all the evil they perpetrated against the Roma and Sinti prisoners irrespective of their ages.

Of the 6,500 indigenous Roma and Sinti in Bohemia and Moravia, fewer than 600 survived to return after the end of the war. Here we can speak of the genocide not just of a certain Romani sub-ethnicity, but also the genocide of citizens of Czechoslovakia for whom Bohemia and Moravia had always been their home. The Holocaust of the Roma and Sinti in Bohemia and Moravia was realized with the contribution of Act no. 117 of 1927, the so-called “Act on Wandering Gypsies”, which was signed by President Masaryk. That law not only turned Roma who were 14 years old or older into criminals, but also formed the basis for collecting data about Romani people that was ultimately used against them.

When I look at this from the perspective of today, one of the positive things this country has achieved is the buyout of the industrial pig farm at Lety u Písku that was built on the place where, as of August 1942, a concentration camp for Roma was in operation. The camp at Lety, together with the one in Hodonín u Kunštátu, were feeder camps for Auschwitz, from which most of the prisoners never returned. As I have already mentioned, roughly 600 people survived.

This year in Lety u Písku the Museum of Romani Culture will open a new memorial, in April at the latest. I am very glad we have all made it to this moment. I cannot imagine what it was like for the survivors and their descendants to experience the belittlement or denial of the Holocaust of the Roma and Sinti by the highest political representatives of this country. I would like to thank everybody who has contributed to removing the industrial pig farm, in particular the late Mr. Čeněk Růžička, the Museum of Romani Culture, which has been put in charge of administering the site, and all of the people who protested there and showed all of society that it was not right for the farm to be there.

I and the rest of my generation were still able to experience and hear these Holocaust survivors’ testimonies, or our grandparents born after the war were able to tell us about it. The question arising currently is how we will speak with future generations about this, how we will pass this knowledge down to them. That point is where I encounter the first problems. The Holocaust of the Roma was first forgotten for a long time, after which it was doubted everywhere possible, and in addition, antigypsyism today is as omnipresent – racism against Romani people, that is – as it was back then. The perception and position of the Roma and Sinti in this society today are the greatest testimony of that.

Irrespective of what kind of people we are, or what we have achieved, we Roma still face racism from the majority society, from ordinary people. If I am to be specific, our Romani children experience unpleasant encounters with this in nursery school and go home crying that they have been called “Gypsies”. Our Romani children have, for generations, been educated in the “special schools” and are currently educated in segregated schools or, at best, in “inclusive” schools with segregated classes where Romani children are instructed according to the curriculum for children with mild mental disability. The nice teachers tell the Romani families that they don’t have to learn hard stuff, they get to draw and sing more, but they do not tell them that they are creating yet another generation of Roma without any education whose members will be unable to apply themselves in society.

It is still the case here that the Romani men and women who hold college degrees today were in danger of being sent to “special schools” as children, and without their informed parents, neighbors and non-Romani friends, they would not be university graduates today. All that nice drawing and singing at school deprives Romani children of such a chance and prepares them, like the generations before them, for more poverty and the clutches of the traffickers in poverty in this country, whom it is not easy to evade.

Society is mainly robbing itself blind by doing this, because in an aging Europe, Romani people today are the youngest population. Annually we are losing the potential of Roma and Sinti in their thousands, youth who not just in this country, but in all the countries where the evil of segregated schooling is committed, would otherwise be contributing to society.

Those of us Roma who graduate and who do apply ourselves in society continue to face clashes on a daily basis just over being Romani. A close friend of mine who graduated from the Police Academy used to work as a cop in a particular town, but after some time he just couldn’t take it anymore, so he quit and changed his field. I will quote him here: “Every morning before my shift started at the police station, even though my co-workers all knew I was Romani, they exchanged disgusting remarks about Gypsies. When I addressed our superior about it, he replied that I should be more of a police officer than a Romani man.” That is just one example from everyday life.

Romani people today do not believe the cases of wrongdoing against them will be addressed by anybody here. The Antidiscrimination Act does not apply at all in this case. Racism against Romani people must be punished. Racism against Romani people should be perceived the way antisemitism is perceived. It will be only then that I will be able to tell myself that we have learned our lesson and that we can reliably hand down to our descendants what our grandfathers and grandmothers had to experience as a closed chapter of our history. That will be when racism against Romani people is taken seriously, when it will stop being part of political culture, when celebrities on television programs will stop ridiculing us, when Romani children will no longer learn at school that they are exotics with a different culture. In addition, the racially-motivated murders of Romani people will be recognized as such. I myself experienced something of the sort when, during my childhood, non-Roma killed the Romani youth Tibor Danihel in Písek, where our family lives, one day before his 18th birthday. Romani people were afraid to walk down the street in broad daylight and we had to defend ourselves. Since November 1989 there have been dozens of such murders in the Czech Republic in which Romani people died because of their origins while the state pretended nothing was happening. Those Romani people started emigrating in 1997 to the United Kingdom and to other countries further west, and they live there to this day.

In conclusion, I would like to appeal to lawmakers and politicians to officially adopt a definition of antigypsyism, in other words, racism against Roma and Sinti.

Allow me to finally read another quotation from the RomanoNet network of Romani-run nonprofit organizations: “The adoption of a clear definition of antigypsyism by the Czech Government is essential to supporting social cohesion and addressing the systemic discrimination against the Romani community. A precisely-defined concept will provide the basis for the recognition of anti-Romani prejudices and their elimination while ensuring legal clarity and support for inclusion. By officially recognizing antigypsyism, the Government can adopt proactive measures to cast doubt on such stereotypes, improve education, and undertake policies to support equal opportunities for all citizens, thereby contributing to a more tolerant and just society.”

Esteemed ladies and gentlemen, once antigypsyism, racism against Romani people, is taken as seriously as antisemitism is, I will be able to attend gatherings like this one today with the feeling that we have learned our lesson and politicians, when they lay wreaths with ribbons reading “Never Again” will actually mean those words seriously.

I would also like to call on you and on all of us to realize what was said here once before: This is our home, we are all one society. Nobody here is worth more than anybody else, and nobody is worth less.

Thank you very much.