Identity Building and the Holocaust: Roma Political Nationalism

Abstract

It is significant that, at a time in which violent nationalisms are re-entering the European political stage, one of the basic aims of Romani elites in the area of human rights is to be recognized as a nation, a fact marked symbolically by the attention being paid to national emblems. Of course, other issues (equal civil rights, minority rights, political representation or community development) are also among the objectives of Roma organizations (PER Report, 1992, p. 7). However, in the case of these latter issues, the question can be asked, to whom are these basic human rights to be granted? In other words, Romani elites seem to realize that the most important right for which they should strive is the right to have a commonly accepted and externally recognized self-definition as a group which should be granted consequent rights. In the present circumstances, especially in Eastern Europe, there is little doubt that the elected self-identification by the Romani people will be a national one, since this is perceived as stronger and more respectable than other identity-constructs such as ethnic minority.

Ethnic Mobilization without Prerequisites: The East European Gypsies

“…The strengthening of a Gypsy national identity necessarily involves the invention of tradition because the Roma-lacking their own written historical tradition-have little to draw on. 39 The tremendous diversity of Gypsy communities has made the unfolding of the Romani movement all the more difficult. Intracommunity cleavages further split an already small potential constituency, impede political organization, and suggest the unlikelihood of a single, united, Gypsy political party being established in any one country.…”

Ethnic mobilisation and the political conditionality of European Union accession: The case of the Roma in Slovakia

“…3 Hence the continuing debates on the meaning of Roma identity among both activists and scholars. The Roma have only weak symbols of national or ethnic unity and have often been regarded as a social group (Kapralski 1997). Nevertheless, Roma activists have been involved in promoting an overarching Roma ethnic identity in their search for a stronger collective position in society and politics.…”

The Meaning of Occupation

“…The post-Westphalian character of the latter would be able to accommodate the Roma excess of national memories, while connecting the geographically bounded frameworks in the process (Levy and Sznaider, 2006: 3;Hirsch, 2012: 20-22;Feindt et al, 2014). This conception of nation-building with mnemonic practices constituting a core dimension of identity reaches back to the early 1990s, when leading activists of Roma nation-building, such as Andrzej Mirga and Nicolae Gheorghe, embarked on marking out the place and status of the Roma Holocaust within a global remembrance culture and the symbolic universe of a de-territorialized Roma nation (Gheorghe, 1991;Gheorge and Mirga, 1997;Kapralski, 1997;Gheorghe and Rostas, 2015;van Baar, 2010;Reading, 2012).…”