Czech Republic: Romani community lights candles to honor their Holocaust victims

A total of 30 Romani individuals and representatives of
Romani organizations met yesterday in the courtyard of Prague’s Lichtenstein
Palace to light candles in memory of their Holocaust victims. The commemoration
was attended by the Czech Foreign Minister and the Czech Government Human
Rights Commissioner on the occasion of International Romani Day, which falls on
8 April.

Romani people are Europe’s largest minority group.
Between 10 and 12 million Romani people are estimated to live in continental
Europe, around a quarter of a million of them in the Czech Republic. During the
most recent census in that country, only 13 150 people declared their
Romani nationality.

"My sister and I were supposed to be part of a
transport, but in the hamlet in the Slovácko district where we lived, no one ever gave us
up. The policeman always warned our mother when the Nazis were coming and she
took us away. Praise be to the tolerance of Czech society,” said Karel Holomek,
chair of the Roma Association of Moravia (Společenství Romů na Moravě).

Holomek said that he viewed Romani people as having been well-integrated
into Czechoslovak society during the interwar period. They worked in
agriculture, as blacksmiths, and as door-to-door salespeople. "That group
was well-accepted," Holomek said.

Holomek believes the integration process was “brought
to nothing by the genocide”. Of the several thousand Romani people indigenous to Bohemia and
Moravia, only about one-tenth survived the wartime persecution
and slaughter. The postwar socialist regime then relocated Romani people from settlements in East Slovakia to the industrial areas of the Czech part of
Czechoslovakia.

"The group of Bohemian and Moravian Roma, of whom only a
few dozen survived, was gradually replaced by this [incoming] group. That was the essential problem with the fruitfulness of integrating Romani people
into this society, and we are experiencing it even today,” Holomek said.

According to Czech Government Human Rights Commissioner Monika
Šimůnková, Romni people faced discrimination under all regimes and began to
newly emancipate themselves after the fall of communism, gaining seats in
Parliament and creating many Romani organizations. "In parallel with these
positive developments, the economic decline of a large proportion of Romani
people took off at that time,” Šimůnková said. In her view these problems are “a
consequence of the previous regime” and the Government is doing its best to
address them.

According to many activists, however, there have been too
few results. Romani boys and girls continue to end up enrolled into “practical
primary schools” for children with light mental disability, while Romani adults
find it difficult to get work and Romani families have a hard time finding
housing. The number of ghettos in the Czech Republic is increasing. Relations
between Romani people and the rest of the country are tense.

"Today, to be Romani means you are a member of the
least-liked minority,” said the head of the Romea association, Jarmila
Balážová. In her view, many politicians are contributing to this through their statements.

According to a survey published last year, the Romani
minority is indeed the least-liked national minority in the Czech Republic,
with only 7 % of respondents saying they like them and almost four-fifths of
Czechs (men and women) saying they dislike them. A similar survey in 2011 found
that three-fourths of respondents disliked Romani people and 12 % liked them.

For video of the commemorative
ceremony, please see http://www.romea.cz/cz/zpravodajstvi/domaci/romove-zapalili-svicky-na-pamatku-obeti-romskeho-holokaustu