Emil Szirmai has passed away. Many people knew him better than I did. His colleagues and friends of many years can write about what he worked on his whole life, what his interests were. For my part I can say that Emil was intensively involved, for more than 10 years, in questions of equality and justice for national minorities. In connection with Romani people he developed and worked on activities both in nonprofit organizations and in state institutions that were sometimes just amazing.
It has been approximately 15 years since we met, completely by accident, at the Sokolovna in the Dejvice quarter of Prague, which is to say, in an ordinary pub where he occasionally played chess. When I told him I was preparing a book about a small concentration camp for Romani families during the era of the Nazi Protectorate, he immediately showed great interest and wanted to know everything right then and there.
A year later he learned that a lawsuit was being prepared against the discrimination of Romani children in the Czech schools. He offered for free to let us take advantage of his relationships with journalists so that society would understand the meaning and scope of the entire scandal. What he unleashed in the media was such an unprecedentedly fact-filled campaign that even international newspapers like The New York Times had no choice but to have experts involve themselves with the topic.
In his own way, Emil contributed to Czech society beginning to take more of an interest in the rights of Romani people. That then inspired even the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, which for the first time in its own history ruled against a European Union Member State for systematic racial discrimination.
He often asked me whether all of our joint efforts might lead to improving the situation. When I sarcastically answered that under no circumstances would it improve anything, he just beamed at me beautifully and said "I believe so too."
His whole life he wanted to contribute to recognizing the truth and to a better tomorrow. Reality, nevertheless, often surprised him. He was never vindictive, but his negative moods, caused very often by this or that concern, expressed his particular relationship to people. He never played games.
For many long years he devotedly put up with all of the difficulties of his mother’s old age. It would never have occurred to him to get rid of her and put her in an old people’s home. I know it was very hard for him, but his words were always "I can’t permit myself to do that."
He was everywhere and nowhere, and always told interesting stories laced with values I will never forget.
He was a person of communication and contacts, pubs and cafés, conferences and the internet. He was involved like no one else in recent times in persistently doing his best to bring various people together who would never have managed to speak with one another otherwise, with the aim of overcoming barriers, helping people find employment, live dignified lives and giving children a chance to change things.
Emil, thank you for everything, and please forgive me that I sometimes didn’t have the understanding for you that you certainly deserved. I will miss you, and we will carry on.
The memorial service for Emil Szirmai will take place on Thursday, 7 November 2013 at 14:00 in the ceremonial hall of the forest cemetery in Motol, Prague 5.
