The film opens with small portions of interviews,
including one woman who shows the tattooed number on her arm. She tells us: “‘Z’ for ‘Gypsy,’ 6399. I stood in front of
the crematorium twice myself. But the Zyklon-B they needed was empty.” And
we see a famous photograph of a girl on a train just before the door is shut,
and learn that she wasn’t Jewish but a Gypsy. When we think of the Holocaust we
tend to focus almost entirely on the atrocities committed against the Jewish
people. And sometimes we forget there were other groups the Nazis wanted to
wipe out.
We then are taken to a district in Kosice, Slovakia,
where Roma currently live, and it’s a horrible area, full of trash. Jaro
Kerner, the public relations officer of the city of Kosice, explains that the
people living in these buildings have water only twice a day for a total of
four hours. The problem is unemployment, and the discrimination the Roma people
face. And not just there, for we learn that the vice mayor of Milan declared
Milan a “Gypsy-free zone” in 2010, where many Roma were evicted from their
homes. (I would have liked a little more information on this.)
The film delves a bit into the popular images of the Roma
in films and music, where they are seen as musicians and dancers. (Singer
Shakira, in her song “Gypsy,” sings “I
might steal your clothes and wear them if they fit me.”) Bill Bila, a
Romani activist, explains that “gypsy” is a misnomer, derived from “Egyptian”
because Europeans believed the Roma had migrated from Egypt. The film is kind
enough to provide definitions of both “Roma” and “Sinti” as well. The Sinti are
the subgroup of Romani people living in Germany and surrounding areas (and were
people who were rounded up and removed from Berlin before the 1936 Olympics).
Regarding the dominant image of the Roma as nomadic, Bill
Bila points out: “In the Austrian part of
the empire, Roma were not allowed to own land, so they had to travel. They went
from town to town looking for work.” But not all Roma traveled. He says, “In Hungary, they were required to be settled.”
What strikes me is that in both cases they were told what to do by law, not by
their own choice.
As I mentioned, a good deal of this documentary focuses
on the destruction of the Romani people during the Holocaust. There are
interviews with several Holocaust survivors, and some of the details these
folks provide are shocking (yes, even now, even after hearing of Nazi crimes
for decades). The material on Doctor Mengele’s experiments on Roma children is
horrifying. One survivor describes his experience. (Though I really wish the
interviewer had pressed the issue a little more, and asked just exactly what
was done, and how he managed to survive.) Likewise, the stuff about Eva Justin
(and her studies on Romani children) is incredible. I knew nothing about that
before, and the fact that she continued working until her death in 1966 is
appalling.
The film really focuses on genocide (the term “genocide”
was coined by a Polish lawyer in 1944 to describe the Holocaust). This is, for
me, when the film becomes really fascinating, when it points out the signs that
lead to attempts at genocide, and ties in what happened during the Holocaust
with what is happening in Hungary and other places today. There is a political
campaign ad from 2010 in which someone asks, “Are Gypsy criminals allowed to do whatever they want?” More
disturbing is footage of a political speech in which is said people “should not endure the Gypsy terror.”
The film focuses on the persecution of the Roma, but does
not provide much in the way of details on their beliefs or practices as a
culture. Though that information seems outside the intended focus of the film,
I think a little more would have helped my understanding of the Roma, and
certainly would have been appreciated.
A People Uncounted
was directed by Aaron Yeger. It opens in New York City on May 16, 2014.
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