EDUCATION FOR REMEMBRANCE OF THE ROMA GENOCIDE

Roma Holocaust: The End of Silence 45
The postwar Roma often took a passive attitude and withdrew
from public activities. Some decided to assimilate with the hope
that this move would offer them more security. Some others – to
the contrary – formed close communities and refused to integrate,
separating from the dangerous world of non-Roma by the
boundaries of traditional law and ritual.
It does not mean that the Roma generally tried to forget their
experiences in the time of the genocide (although some indeed
repressed their memories because of the fears they caused). In
fact, many communities preserved living memories of persecution.
These, however, had their resonance limited within particular
families and clans. Family memories have not been supported by
institutional structures, education, established practices of commemoration,
and public recognition.
However, things have started to change. New systems of social
relations have developed, no doubt – in no small measure – thanks
to processes in which the Roma are acquiring agency and organizing
themselves in a conscious search for new formulas for living
in the contemporary world. As a result of this process, the Roma
have not only found new partners with whom to talk about the past,
but have also begun entering the precincts of the media, education,
and popular culture along with their own discourses and visions of
memory and commemorative practices. This has gradually led to
the rise of forms of memory where the Roma preserve their past
experience and make it relevant to their present and future.
Memory regained
Crucial factors in the growing interest in the historical approach
to Roma identity are the growth of Roma organizations and attempts
of at least some of them to devise the self-definition of the
Roma in nation-like categories (including, for example, a concept
of a “transnational nation”). In this approach, as well as in a modest
one, in which the Roma are presented as a conglomerate of various
groups, an important role is played by common memory that