Earlier this month a square in the Viennese quarter of Neubau was named after one of its celebrated, recently deceased residents, Ceija Stojka. A Romani woman, Ms Stojka survived three concentration camps, lived a travelling lifestyle for years after the war, and made her living as a carpet seller.
At the end of the 1980s she published her autobiography, called We Live in Seclusion – Memories of a Romni, which was published in Czech translation 20 years later by the Romano daniben association in collaboration with the Argo publishing house. In time she became a famous author and painter and was eventually granted an honorary professorship by a government minister.
As part of the "ordination" of the square, a celebration was held in front of the chruch where Ms Stojka had regularly attended mass. Her relatives read from her books and played Romani songs, while the children in attendance were able to make masks if they felt like it.
The honoring of Romani people outside the Czech Republic
In the Austrian capital the year 2001 saw the naming of Roma-Platz ("Romani Square"), Sintiweg ("Sinti Street") and Lovaraweg ("Lovara Street") on the banks of the Danube, where before the war the wagons of traveling horse traders had often parked. The local pub was famous for having been frequently reserved by Romani people for their celebrations and festivities.
In many French cities you will find a "Django Reinhardt Street" named after the celebrated Manouche Romani jazz guitarist. In Brest there is rue Matéo Maximoff, named after a boilermaker by trade who was also the first Kalderash Romani author.
In the Western Polish city of Poznań there is "Papuzsa Street", bearing the nickname of the legendary Romani author Bronisława Wajs, whose life story has been the subject of two Polish films. In Germany the names of some streets mostly recall the Romani victims of Nazism, such as Johann Trollmann Street in Hannover, named after the former boxing champion of Germany.
Trollman won the title by rights in 1934 only to see the Nazis strip him of it unjustifiably. After he returned from the front, injured after serving as a Wehrmacht soldier, he was thrown into a concentration camp and beaten to death by a guard.
Ordinary Roma remembered
Streets in Germany, however, do not only carry the names of Romani celebrities. The northern German town of Oldenburg has had a "Mechau Family Street" for more than 20 years in honor of a Romani family whose members were all but completely murdered in Auschwitz because the Nazi doctor Josef Mengele had taken an interest in their eyes.
In Cologne you will find "Laubinger Street", named after a completely unknown local Romani girl who was murdered by the Nazis during WWII. The southern German town of Ulm honors the memory of Willi Eckstein by naming a street after him.
Eckstein’s family made their living by playing music and lived a traveling lifestyle, and when their caravan was parked in Ulm, Willi was born in the local hospital. He died in Auschwitz at the age of 11.
In the small western German town of Greven, pupils at the local high school researched the fates of local victims of Nazism as part of a school project and proposed the town install a memorial plaque in the memory of the Sinti girl Margot Kraus and her mother. The town did not do so, but named two new streets after them instead.
In the spring, the eastern German town of Magdeburg named a street Ede und Unku Weg after the nicknames of the young German-Romani pair in a children’s book by Grete Weiskopf about the Romani victims of Nazism. The novel has also been translated into Czech and can be found in libraries and used bookstores under the title Eda a Unku (Ede and Unku).
What’s missing in the Czech Republic
In the 19th century – for example, in Teplice or in the Jewish Quarter of Prague – there still officially existed more than one "Cikánská ulice" (Gypsy Street). Many Czech streets 100 years ago were named after various nations.
The fact that no "Německá ulice" (German Street) has been among them since the Nazi era is understandable. The fact that the communists were not able to name even one street after a Romani person (when you can find a "Chodské" or "Bohemian Shepherd Street" almost everywhere) indicates that even the communists did not consider Romani people to be equal citizens deserving the same recognition as everyone else.
The question of whether any street in the Czech Republic has been named after a Romani person deserves particular research. For the time being, it seems that if such a street does exist, its occupants have no idea whom it is named after.
The closest anyone Romani got to having a street named after them in the Czech Republic was probably the former prisoner of the Lety concentration camp and "black partisan" Josef Serinek, who passed away in 1974. This year a two-volume biography of him by historian Jan Tesař will be published.
Who in the Czech Republic might see to honoring Romani people in this way? Anyone can propose naming a street after someone.
There were thousands of Romani victims of Nazism from the Czech lands alone, and their names are included in the published lists of prisoners from the camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Hodonín by Kunštát and Lety by Písk. Let’s try to do something with them.
