The European Roma: An Unsettled Right to Memory

Abstract

In the heartland of Europe there has been a critical amnesia: a ‘blind spot in the consciousness of Europe’ (Grass, 2011, p. 25). European politics of justice is unsettled by the disarticulated memory of slavery. This is not the memory of the transatlantic slave trade of African people, about which books have been written, films made, and exhibitions created. Neither is it the memory of the slavery of Jewish people during the genocide of the Nazi Holocaust, about which many films have been made, museums, and memorials created, and about which I, too, have written. Nor does this simply relate to the silencing of what has been termed the ‘slavery, occupation, subjugation and Stalinist terror’ felt by Eastern Europe at the end of World War II (Vike-Freiberga, 2005). I mean rrobia, the suppressed history and memories of hundreds of thousands of Roma and their enslavement in Europe predominantly by Romanian states, which continued until desrrobireja — the period of abolition in the middle of the nineteenth century. This has had a profound impact on European politics of justice in terms of the development of the public media, how European Roma were treated in the Nazi Holocaust and Cold War of the twentieth century, how Roma continue to be misrepresented in the media, and how they continue to experience some of the worst discrimination of any minority group within the European Union (EU). After 155 years, a campaign by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to have some public recognition of this landmark in Roma history will result in a monument created by Roma sculptor Marian Petre in Bucharest. This chapter considers this within the context of wider erasures and struggles for a Roma right to memory.