Romani human rights defenders from the Americas present Romani Memory Map of the Americas in the Czech Republic

2 August has since been declared an international Roma Holocaust Memorial Day. “This is the first time ever that Romani people from all over the world are gathering together to help keep the memory of this history alive and discuss their problems as Roma together,” Nathan Mick, a Romani man from the United States of America, told news server Romea.cz.

The Romani human rights defenders from the Americas visited the Museum of Romani Culture in Brno and the Hodonín u Kunštatu Memorial to the Holocaust of the Roma and Sinti in Moravia before coming to Prague. There they visited the Gothic building of the New Town Hall on Karlovo náměstí (Charles Square) there for a guided tour of the “Heavy Lace” exhibition.

The exhibition was prepared by the Museum of Nordic Roma in collaboration with the Embassy of Finland, the municipal department of Prague 2, the New Town Hall and the Oulu2026 – European Capital of Culture project. It will be open until 1 September and presents historical lace and the Romani lace production tradition, which was the main livelihood of Romani families in Finland after the Second World War until the turn of the millenium.

The group of Romani human rights defenders from the Americas also presented their online Romani Memory Map of the Americas project, which is meant to commemorate and rediscover places connected with the lives of Romani people, their histories and their traditions. Ana Dalila Gomez Baos from Columbia presented the map’s entry on the town of Aracataca, the hometown of Gabriel García Márquez, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.

A gravestone has been created there for a fictional character, Melquiades, from One Hundred Years of Solitude, which is the best-known novel by Márquez. Melquiades is a travelling Rom who fascinates the novel’s protagonist with his knowledge and mysticism.

Baos’s ambition is to establish a Romani museum in Bogota, the capital of Colombia, to honor the anniversary of the Holocaust of the Roma on 2 August. Mick chose to present the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. on the map, which includes material on Romani victims.

Mick said the Romani aspect of that part of history is unfortunately still missing from regular instruction in American schools. His parents never mentioned this history to him as he was growing up, either.

“Conserving these memories will help us achieve a world where nothing like that ever happens again,” Mick said. The map was created last year and those involved hope to add more places in the Americas.

The locations on the map were proposed by people from local Romani communities in North America, Central America and South America. Their proposals were assessed by experts who researched whether they could be documented through historiography; locales where Romani community members currently live were not added to the map for ethical reasons.

The curator of the “Heavy Lace” exhibition is Katariina Lillquvist, a Finnish woman with Romani roots who has been studying puppetry in Prague, lives there part-time and speaks Czech fluently. She describes the life of Romani people in Finland today as “archaic”.

In Finland, Romani people still wear their traditional national dress, including at home. Women’s attire is especially elaborate, and examples decorated with beautiful lace can also be seen at the exhibition in the New Town Hall (Novoměstská radnice) in Prague.

Life in Finland has been transformed since the 1970s and Romani people moved at that time into apartment houses from the wooden constructions in the settlements where they used to live and, according to Katariina, suffered during the winters. Discrimination against Romani people persists, however, and is mainly perpetuated through hate speech on social media.

Finnish Ambassador Pasi Tuominenale told those assembled for the guided tour that the discrimination against the Roma in Finland is not as great as it is in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. “As far as the inclusion of Roma into society, equal opportunities for education, housing and work opportunities, we’re ahead. Everything started to change for the better thanks to the civil society groups which formed in the early 1960s,” Ambassador Tuominenale said.

According to Dafina Savic, a Romani activist living in Canada who is originally from Serbia, it is sad that Romani people frequently prefer to deny their Romani identity to make their lives easier. “Living with the fact that one is a Romani man or woman is full of difficulties and obstacles,” she said.

Mick, however, said that it is the resilience of Romani people and the fact that they are still here and still speaking Romanes despite facing the hate and prejudice of the outside world for centuries that makes him proud to be a Rom. “Education is necessary, though, showing the rest of the world that Romani people can succeed,” he says, describing his own successful career as an advisor to an American senator and an organizer in the presidential campaigns of the late John McCain and of George W. Bush.

The program for Roma from the Americas was organized by the United Nations Information Center in Prague, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and other partners and also included a visit to the Lety u Písku Memorial to the Holocaust of the Roma and Sinti in Bohemia. Mick said the event had changed his life and he will continue to fight even more for the rights of the Roma once he returns to the USA.

Mick also said he hopes such meetings will continue. He said it is beautiful to see that wherever Romani people live, they can connect as one big family.

“For the Roma, the only roof we have is the sky above us,” said Romani human rights defender Michel Luiz Kriston of Brazil.