Gypsies

Jüden Wien

Am Montag, I spent the afternoon on a walking tour of Jewish Vienna. We began at Schwedenplatz discussing the difference between a ghetto and an "Eruz" wall. I've found that in Austria or at least in Vienna and in Eisenstadt there never was a "ghetto," or a forced and contained living area assigned to the Jews. It was a choice as a Jewish community to live where they did and they built their own wall, or "Eruz" as a loophole for the Orthodox rule for Sabbath. Work was not allowed on Sabbath unless it was within your home (and then only some work), but the Jewish community expanded their home to include their entire community by building an Eruz, a wall around their community so 'work' could be done in their home on Sabbath.

Some 'misinformed' people (myself included) call these walled communities ghettos (including signs and guidebooks labeling areas in both cities) when in fact the Jews chose to live separate from the goyim for their own reasons. The first ghetto, according to the Jewish Museum in Vienna, was in Venice, Italy. But even that fact I wonder if they mean a "forced living quarter" or a "chosen community" when they either correctly or incorrectly use the word 'ghetto.' This distinction needs to be made in an area where Jews were shipped without consent on cattle cars to barbed-wire-enclosed cities guarded with armed police such as Warsaw and Thereisenstadt. However I must ask, if they were not forced to live there, where else were they allowed to live?

I had planned to talk more about my tour of Jewish Vienna, because I spent 12 Euros to walk around the city for 1.5 hours and I figured I had got to get my money’s worth out of a week’s worth of my grocery budget until I arrived home to a blog-post on Facebook by Transparent Language that caught my attention. I saw immigration and gypsies and I could not help but become distracted for two reasons: I have spent time in Romania with Gypsies and I am interested in the Nazi’s persecution of them as well. So I had to read and research this, and it happens to coincide with my day in Jüden Wien.

I wonder about the idea of freedom of choice, because as an American freedom is the weight which measures all things. The gypsy camp that I was involved with in Târgu Mure§, did not exist on a map of the city but was there and the people that were there did not exist on paper in terms of a birth certificate. There was a large community of gypsies inhabiting an area around the city that did exist. Whose choice was it for them to be there? Did they live there because they wanted to? Maybe, but who would choose to live in mud huts especially when it rains and snows. Did the city authorities tell them where they should stay? Probably not considering the maps, taxi drivers and authorities tried to ignore their existence. So they must choose to live in their own communities.

Their communities in France are now being deported, back to their ‘home’ in Romania (and the German Gypsies are also being deported, according to the blog). However, Romania does not welcome this nomadic people group either. I wonder what is in store for this immigration problem known as the gypsies. Many remember the ‘black triangle’ prisoners of WWII, the gypsies, and fear another Holocaust and one targeting the Roma rather than the Jews.

Rather than basing my information solely on a blog-post I scoured the news for recent stories about the Roma situation in France. From the sources I found, France does not seem to have a solution to the gypsy problem, just the idea of dismantling the illegal camps and deportation. I wonder where they will go and what will become of this people without a space.

recent:
http://www.transparent.com/german/711/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-10892669
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,5848059,00.html
http://www.expatica.com/de/news/german-news/roma-condemn-intolerance-in-europe-at-auschwitz_87416.html

older
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,628530,00.html



-slm