Travelling exhibition
“A VANISHED WORLD”
visiting socially excluded localities
throughout the Czech Republic
The exhibition “A
Vanished World”
aims to familiarize inhabitants of socially excluded localities
(ghettoes) with a lesser-known chapter of their history, the Romani
Holocaust. The tour attempts to correct this fatal lack of knowledged
about the history of their own people during the Nazi era. As we know,
ignorance of one’s own history usually leads to problems in
the present.
The travelling exhibition, A Vanished World, is
being shown in ghettos around the Czech Republic, teaching people not
only what constitutes an acceptable model of social behavior, but also
how to prevent conflicts and the importance of self-sacrifice.
Ultimately, this teaching is of benefit to the majority society as well.
Due to a lack of external stimulation, we can see that most citizens
residing in the ghettos today are suffering from being closed up in
their own group, from a kind of lethargy, a lack of imagination, a
learned helplessness and low self-esteem. There is lack of a vision of
the future there and a lack of will to plan. This travelling exhibition
project will help us better get to know ghetto residents, to follow
their energy levels, to identify leaders among them, to motivate them
appropriately to bring others out of their lethargy, to be able to
recognize impending dangers, and to become experts about their own
lives.
We will familiarize them with that time period
by
exhibiting copies of historical materials from the Nazi
“gypsy
camp” at Lety u Písku and the Auschwitz
extermination
camp. Visitors will be able to see the life stories of traditional
Czech Roma and Sinti people. An integral component of the exhibition is
documents about the prisoners in the Nazi concentration camps. Together
with an exposition about the tragic fate of the Slovak Roma
participating in the resistance to Nazism and in Partisan divisions in
Slovakia we will also map the participation of the Czech Roma named
Murky and Serynka in the Partisan struggle.
Knowledge of our own history is a way for us
to
become aware of our identity, of our cultural values (some Romani
people have lost the cultural values that even the majority society
once admired us for), and as a final result, for us to become proud of
our origins.
Contemporary official estimates say there are
between 250.000 – 300.000 Roma living in the Czech Republic,
of
whom as many as 90 % come from Slovakia. A significant segment of
Romani people have been educated in “special
schools” where
they have not learned anything about the history of the Slovak State,
their own history, or the fate of the Bohemian and Moravian
Roma.
In 1940, Slovakia became an official ally of Nazi Germany. That chapter
of history is one that the Slovaks were not proud of after the war.
Romani parents also have not discussed their experiences from that time
with their children. They have been afraid that their children might
have problems in society with that information. Traditional Czech Roma
and Sinti have had similar experiences. In the Czech schools, today
pupils and students also learn almost nothing about the tragic fate of
the Roma and Sinti.
The project of the traveling exhibition “A Vanished
World”,
which we have designed, corrects this lack to a significant degree. The
exhibition raises awareness about the National Socialist genocide of
the Roma and Sinti. A minimum of half a million members of this
minority fell victim to that genocide during the Second World War. The
exhibition also documents the fact that the Roma and Sinti have been
living in the Czech lands for 600 years. They represent, therefore, an
organic component of Czech history. The assorted relationships that
once existed between the majority society and this minority, which had
been shaped by history, were systematically destroyed by the Nazis and
the governments that collaborated with them. The interwar biographies
of the traditional Czech Roma and Sinti, in confrontation with copies
of historical materials from the “gypsy” camps and
concentration camps, as displayed in the exhibition, are based on the
instructional materials from the archives of the project organizer (VPORH)
designed for the broader public.
During 2015 and 2016 the exhibition “A Vanished
World” was presented in selected
locations. VPORH
chair Čeněk Růžička
guided visitors through and moderated discussions about those
presentations.
Another participant has been Jan Hauer, a Rom Sinto who lost most of
his fmaily in the concentration camps. The traditional Roma and Sinti
consider him an exceptional figure, a walking encyclopedia of knowledge
about Romani culture and history, including their tragic fate during
Nazism. Another assistant and moderator was the chair of Forum.cz,
Miroslav Kováč, who is also an expert on Romani history and
origins who. These moderators are all familiar with both the failings
and the unmet needs of many ghetto residents, and are therefore
well-placed to communicate the this information to them.
The organization of this traveling exhibition
involves cooperating with cities and municipalities, with local
volunteers, and with both pro-Romani and Romani civic associations and
NGOs.
We invite principals of schools in the catchment areas of socially
excluded localities to attend the exhibition with upper primary pupils
or secondary school students in 2017. For the purpose of keeping costs
down, the organizers are using a recreational vehicle to transport the
exhibition from place to place.
Both non-Romani people and Roma are living in the ghettoes today. This
exhibition plans to serve both groups and is in accordance with the
principles of the Czech Government Romani Integration Strategy to 2020.
The exhibition is under the auspices of Czech Culture Minister Daniel
Herman. It will include English and Romanes translations of the
material.
(Information
about more projects below.).
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