Tracing the Legacies of the Roma Genocide. Families as Transmitters of Experience and Memory

Tracing the Legacies of the Roma Genocide. Families as Transmitters of Experience and Memory

Veranstalter
AHRC research network on ‘Legacies of the Roma Genocide in Europe since 1945’ / The Prague Forum for Romani Histories based on the Institute of Contemporary History, Czech Academy of Sciences / in partnership with Alternatives Jugendzentrum e.V. in Dessau, CEFRES and New York University in Prague
Veranstaltungsort
Villa Lanna and Václav Havel Library
Ort
Prague
Land
Czech Republic
Vom - Bis
20.09.2017 - 21.09.2017
Deadline
31.08.2017
Von
Katerina Capkova

The conference is a joint event bringing together two recent academic initiatives focusing on the research on the history of the Roma and supporting new approaches in the field: the Prague Forum for Romani Histories and the Research network on ‘Legacies of the Roma Genocide in Europe since 1945’, which is funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC, United Kingdom). Both initiatives aim at fostering a debate on the history of Roma as part of European history and contemporary European society.

Understanding the genocide of the Roma during World War II seems crucial for understanding the post-war history of Romani families and communities across Europe. At least 130,000 Roma were killed as a direct result of racial policies pursued by the German state, its allies, and other European states between 1933 and 1945. Some activists and scholars claim that as many as half a million Roma were killed. Yet although the mechanisms and scope of the Roma Holocaust are now partly understood, the legacies of mass killing, ghettoization, sterilization, and slave labour for first-, second- and third-generation survivors are still unknown. It appears likely, however, that understanding the trauma of the mid-twentieth-century genocide, as well as its contested recognition by majority societies, is of paramount importance for understanding the persistent discrimination against European Roma today.

The purpose of the conference is accordingly to map current research and guide a developing research agenda, investigating the ways in which past experiences and memories of persecution and violence have influenced family histories, political and social identities, and state-society relations amongst the Roma in different parts of Europe since 1945. Such investigations necessarily have a broad geographical focus, going beyond the more familiar sites of memory like the Auschwitz Gypsy camp to consider topics such as the legacies of the wartime deportation of Romanian Roma to Transnistria. We also welcome critical longer-term approaches to periodization, which might shed light on the specificity (or otherwise) of the events that took place between the mid-1930s and 1945. Our hope is thus to promote much-needed comparative and transnational perspectives on the history of Roma in post-war Europe, and also to connect scholarship in the field of Romani Studies to broader debates about the legacies of genocide in contemporary European history.

Programm

If you want to take part at the conference, please REGISTER at helena.sadilkova@ff.cuni.cz by 31 AUGUST 2017.

20 SEPTEMBER 2017

13:30
Opening of the conference
Celia DONERT and Eve ROSENHAFT

13:45-15:45
Panel I: Families as Transmitters of Experience and Memory
Chair: Kateřina ČAPKOVÁ
Volha BARTASH (Hugo Valentin Centre, University of Uppsala): The Holocaust in Three Generations? Transmitting Memories and Communicating Trauma in Romani Families in Belarus and Lithuania
Hanna ABAKUNOVA (University of Sheffield): Memories of Persecution of Roma in Ukraine during the Second World War: Roma vs. non-Roma Perspectives.
Lada VIKOVÁ (Faculty of Humanities, Charles University): ‘Not being others’ and ‘Forgetting the Auschwitz Trauma’ as two chosen strategies in the postwar history of a Czech-Moravian Roma family.
Slawomir KAPRALSKI (Pedagogical University of Cracow): Roma Family as an Ambiguous Frame of Memory

15:45-16:15 coffee break

16:30 transfer to Václav Havel Library
17:30-18:00
Exhibition opening
Eve ROSENHAFT (Liverpool University), Jana MÜLLER (Alternative Jugendzentrum e.V. Dessau)
Exhibition title: “…don’t forget the photos, that is very important…” The Fate of Sinti and Roma Families during the Nazi-Period in Central Germany

18:00-19:00
Discussion with Members of German and Czech Holocaust Survivor Families
Chair: Jana HORVÁTOVÁ (Museum of Romani Culture)

21 SEPTEMBER 2017
9:00-10:45
Panel II: Memory, Family Histories, and the State
Chair: Yasar ABU GOSH (Faculty of Humanities, Charles University)
Ari JOSKOWICZ (Vanderbilt University): Judicial Testimony and Communal Memory: Pretrial Interviews with Romani Survivors in the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials
Petre MATEI (Elie Wiesel National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania, Bucharest): Roma in Romania and their Memories of the Holocaust – a Complicated Interplay between Survivors, Families, Activists and State
Eszter VARSA (Leibniz-Institute for East and Southeast European Studies, University in Regensburg): Child protection authorities’ perception of Romani and non-Romani families in early state socialist Hungary

10:45-11:15 coffee break

11:15-13:00
Panel III: The Destruction and Reconstruction of Community: Family Narratives
Chair: Ilsen ABOUT (EHESS, Paris)
Viorel ACHIM (Nicolae Iorga Institute of History, Romanian Academy of Sciences, Bucharest): Roma deported to Transnistria speaking about their suffering in several petitions from 1943-44
Grégoire COUSIN (University of Manchester): Creating a community, sharing a history: Family narratives of Bessarabian Roma in France and Romania.
Helena SADÍLKOVÁ / Milada ZÁVODSKÁ (Museum of Roma Culture, Brno): “After the liberation from the camp I returned to my country” (Leon Růžička). Two written testimonies (1958, 1980) by Romani Holocaust Survivors in Communist Czechoslovakia: Asserting a presence outside the private sphere.

13:00-14:00 Lunch break

14:00-15:45
Panel IV: Private Memories and Commemorative Cultures
Chair: Krista HEGBURG (USHMM, Washington)
Dušan SLAČKA (Museum of Roma Culture, Brno): Circumstances of Creation of Miroslav Bárta’s Short Documentary Motion Picture Nezapomeňte na tohle děvčátko (Don’t forget this little girl).
Jana HORVÁTOVÁ (Museum of Roma Culture, Brno): Genesis of Research, Documentation and Commemoration of the Roma Holocaust before and after the Establishment of the Museum of Romani Culture
Anne KLEIN (University of Cologne)/ Thorsten FEHLBERG (Bundesverband Information & Beratung für NS-Verfolgte e. V.): Who speaks? Tracing the transmittance of the Roma Genocide in private memory and commemorative culture

15:45-16:30 Coffee break

16:30-18:00
Roundtable discussion
Chair: Celia DONERT
Participants:
Tara ZAHRA (University of Chicago)
Angela KOCZE (CEU, Budapest)
Ari JOSKOWICZ (Vanderblit University)
Jan GRILL (Universidad del Valle, Cali)

Organizers:
Celia Donert (University of Liverpool)
Eve Rosenhaft (University of Liverpool)
Helena Sadílková (Charles University, Prague)
Kateřina Čapková (Institute of Contemporary History, Prague)

Kontakt

Kateřina Čapková

Institute of Contemporary History
Vlašská 9, Prague 1, 110 00

capkova@usd.cas.cz

http://www.romanihistories.usd.cas.cz/conferences/tracing-the-legacies-of-the-roma-genocide/
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