Re-thinking Roma Resistance throughout History: Recounting Stories of Strength and Bravery is a book that presents unique stories that engage in a re-examination of recent history from a Romani perspective. With an emphasis on Romani proactivity, the book presents the various forms of resistance and survival strategies that the Roma have developed. Through more than forty short stories about Romani women and men from all over Europe, we witness both collective and individual resistance, courage and defiance, acts of love and humanity in the midst of wars and persecution.
These are stories that have never been told and united in this way before, because Romani resistance is rarely, slightly and deficiently recorded by official European historiography. The book was published by the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture (ERIAC), which “aimed to put Romani resistance heroes under the spotlight, in order to inspire real stories of heroism and courage”. Most of the stories in the book cover the period of World War II in various European countries, but a few relate to earlier persecutions of the Roma in Spain, as well as to the long period of slavery in Romania.
There are several stories about the Roma from Croatia, and one of them is Franjo Stevanović Ćevo.
Ćevo was born in the hamlet of Kapetanovo Selo (Bjeljevina), in the municipality of Suhopolje in 1916. He has been working as a day laborer for Andrija Medvečki since childhood. After completing his military service, Ćevo got a job at the Theodor Fuchs mill, where he worked for 28 years. Approximately one hundred members of the Stevanović family, a total of 17 families, were taken to concentration camps in the early summer of 1941, where they were killed. According to the events’ other witnesses, the Ustasha deportation of the Roma from Kapetanovo Selo continued in September 1942. The employer Teodor Fuchs and the bosses Hainrih and Medvečki saved Ćevo from being deported to the camp.
During World War II, Ćevo joined the partisan unit of the Eighteenth Youth Brigade (Virovitica Strike Brigade) in 1943, and later fought as part of the Sixteenth Youth Brigade ‘Joža Vlahović’ (Virovitica Strike). He was demobilized in late 1945. After the war, he built a house on land obtained from the state. He had a wife, Ljuba, and a son and a daughter. In Suhopolje, a monument dedicated to fallen fighters and victims of fascist terror reads: 93 members of the Stevanović family killed.
Josip Joka Nikolić was from the area around Čazma. Joka was born in 1915 in a family of eight, and his father was a horse trader. Until his deportation to a concentration camp in 1942, he spent his entire life in his home village. He was illiterate, and life was hard. In a 1976 interview he admits: Misery and poverty were a normal thing for me, I didn’t know of a better life and pleasures. He ended up in the concentration camp in 1942, and from there, together with other Roma men, he decided on a risky act of escape. During his escape, he saw the bodies of many detainees and witnessed several mass executions. After a few days, Nikolić managed to reach his village of Predavec, where he then joined the partisans.
Most of his family did not survive the war, including his wife and one of the children. On March 3rd , 1952, he testified in the Zagreb District Court in a criminal case against Andrija Artuković, the Minister of the Interior and Minister of Justice in the Ustasha government of the Independent States of Croatia, for war crimes. Describing his life, he said: I have no house or home. I don’t have an address. My place is where I find work. My violin and music are my job.
While Joka Nikolić and Stevanović Ćevo were deported to concentration camps, a similar fate was experienced in the south of Poland, by the Rose family. The Rose film family, who were Sinti, experienced discrimination on the eve of World War II. As early as in 1934, Anton Rose was expelled from the professional association Reichsfilmkammer, and in 1937 the Nazis shut down the family-run cinema, leaving them without a livelihood. To avoid an impending arrest, the family decided to flee. Over the next few years, they resided in various places, including Czechoslovakia. Yet, most family members were captured, arrested and deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in 1943. However, one of them, Oskar Rose, managed to avoid arrest, hiding from the authorities with forged papers.
Seeking help from an underground network, Rose challenged the persecution of the Sinti and Roma by the Nazis. He warned that the Church had failed to defend the Sinti and Roma, even though many were Catholics. Once again, resisting the Nazi regime, Rose was put in danger when he – with the help of a truck driver whom he had bribed – managed to free his brother from the concentration camp. With forged documents, the brothers fled through Mannheim and Münich to the village of Gangkofen, where they witnessed the release of American troops. Thirteen members of the Rose family, including Oskar’s parents, were killed by the Nazis. The constant discrimination against the Sinti and Roma that continued even after 1945, led to the founding of a Union of Racially Persecuted Non-Jewish People in 1956, accordingly titled the Rose Brothers after its founders. They thereby laid the foundations of the German civil rights movement of the Sinti and Roma.
In Hungary, the experienced persecution was described by Zsuzsanne Horváth, whose family had lived in Ondód for generations. Her father was a musician who played in Szombathely, and Horváth attended a local mixed primary school. In the 1940s, a separate school for “gypsies” was established. Gypsy children constantly threatened the moral development, hygiene and health of Hungarian rural children, the village judge wrote in a letter to the ministry. Horváth later recalled that the judge was among those who signed the order to deport her family. When they were abruptly evicted from the house, Horváths were told that they would be taken to a sugar factory for work. Instead, they ended up locked in a school building in a nearby town.
There they had a chance to escape, but only one of them could be saved by their uncle Pista. In the book, Horváth recalls her response to Pista: Well, I said, then take my father because I have four younger siblings at home. That seemingly small gesture of sacrifice toward her siblings defined the rest of her life. The selfless act of freeing her father was an act motivated by love, empathy, and compassion. Just before she made this decision, Horváth heard from the guards – in disbelief – that they were to be led into a gas chamber. Horváth was then placed in a wagon and taken to the infamous Komárom camp. It took them three days to arrive, she recalled, and along the way they unsuccessfully “shouted for water, for food”. Her story of the concentration camp tells of the experience of most Roma detainees: lice, hunger, thirst, dirt, piles of dead bodies, crying children, a completely inhumane treatment. The book recounts her retelling of painful encounters with other Romani women in the camps, to whom she sought to provide tenderness and support. She remembered the women who made diapers for babies from pieces of clothing that other women took off, and how much it meant to them, even though the babies eventually died in the camp.
Ilona Raffael, who went through several concentration camps, also showed resistance while in the Hungarian ones. In one of them she went to the kitchen to steal food: I was already in the kitchen at four [in the morning]… Once the Germans broke my teeth. We stole meat, and they caught us and pulled out my good teeth. The Nazis used food as a weapon of control, but even in the absence of food, the mere memory of food helped keep some prisoners alive and resisting. The book mentions another act of disobedience, which Raffael clearly remembered: One day a famous Romani woman told me, ‘Take the label off your clothes, don’t work today!’ There were six of us who took it off… It was a sticky little sticker with my name on it. We did not notice that the guards were watching us from above.
They were punished for their act by being moved to a building where the dead bodies were piled on top of each other, like firewood. Towards the end of the war, Raffael was rescued by another Romani woman, who warned her to eat slowly and only boiled potatoes, as many people died from over-feeding after leaving the camp. Their bodies were in shock after months of malnutrition. Thus, in 1945, Raffael was reunited with her mother and siblings. Their father never returned, he died in one of the camps.
Sofija Beresnevičiūtė-Sinkevičienė, a young Romani woman from Lithuania, whose entire family ended up in the Pravieniškės camp in 1943, also escaped. Although she was shot in the leg, Sofia covered 120 kilometers on foot and returned to her family home in Panevėžys. Shortly afterwards, however, she was arrested and tortured again to renounce those who helped her along the way and state their names. She refused to do so and was sent back to the Pravieniškės camp. There she found out about the impending massacre and received instructions from an acquaintance on how to survive the mass shooting.
Sofija then ended up in several other camps, from which she also escaped several times, including once when she escaped only to look for food and bring some bread to the prisoners. She also sabotaged Nazi administrative activities, destroying documents in the office she was ordered to clean up. Her story is a rare example of the documented resistance of the Roma from Lithuania. Her continued efforts not only to survive, but also to actively resist persecution, interrupting Nazi criminal and administrative activities, helping fellow prisoners, fleeing camps and physically retaliating against the persecutor, show incredible courage and strength of will, but also the Roma’s cooperation and connection in resistance.
Veronika Goga, a Romani woman from the Carpathians, also took on a lot on her back during World War II. During the latter, she cared for thirteen Romani orphans whose parents were killed by the Nazis. Goga miraculously survived because the Nazis did not notice her among a group of children. The only remaining adult, she was left with her four children, along with thirteen children of her relatives. Despite the war and the constant danger she experienced as a lone Romani woman, she took on the nutrition, care and upbringing of seventeen children and ensured their survival.
The book cites the testimony of her granddaughter, who said the following about Goga: The hard times in which they had to live were associated with a daily struggle – survival, food, clothing, firewood and medicine. Despite the harsh reality of World War II, my grandmother and her children were able to survive. Grandma provided love, care and upbringing to all the children sent to her by fate. Throughout their lives, the rescued children showed her gratitude and respect and visited her, returning to the place where their suffering began. Grandma gave them unlimited protection and love.
The struggle of the Roma for liberation from slavery in Romania is presented in the book by the case of Ioana Rudareasa. Rudareasa was a Romani slave from the Wallachian area. After the abolition of slavery in 1843, she demanded her freedom from the state. Her request was denied and she was forced to go to court. The trial lasted more than ten years, and finally the Supreme Court of Wallachia declared her and her children free from slavery. The trial began in 1843, with the first court verdict declaring Rudareasa free from slavery. However, the verdict was subsequently overturned, and the slave owners claimed that Rudareasa and her family fell under their property rights. Rudareasa appealed to the higher court of justice after that verdict. At the new trial, Rudareasa and her children were declared slaves of the Brailoiu family. Following this decision, Rudareasa appealed once more, this time to the highest court in the country. Only after that was she finally declared free from slavery.
Her efforts to fight for freedom are very important for the history of the Romanian Roma. The documents left behind reveal a devoted and rebellious person who fought for liberation from slavery for more than a decade. At the same time, her case shows that the Roma fought for their freedom using all available legal means. Finally, this case also illustrates how zealous the former slave owners were in their desire to remain slave owners.
The life story of the Spanish Romani woman Soledad Casilde Hernáez Vargas, called ‘La Miliciana’, is also very interesting. Vargas was a militant anarcho-feminist and anti-fascist fighter. Soledad did not like the moniker they gave her. She preferred to be considered a fighter, or a revolutionary. She was an advocate of union organizing, a pioneer of feminism, and an advocate of living in harmony with nature. As stated in the book, the two great struggles of her life were the establishment and defense of equal rights for men and women and the social values she believed in. Vargas took on an active part in the revolutionary general strike of 1934 during the Second Spanish Republic. She was taken to court for her actions, sentenced to nine years in prison for distributing leaflets, and another 20 years for carrying explosives in a basket.
She was pardoned in 1936 and returned to San Sebastián. There she took an active part in defending her city during the Spanish Civil War: fascist soldiers reached 43 Urbieta Street, but could not advance further because Vargas and her husband threw grenades from the rooftops, forcing them to retreat. After the fall of Irún, Vargas moved to Henday (France), and from there she went to Catalonia, and later to the Aragonese front, where she acquired the rank of lieutenant. Towards the end of the civil war, she crossed the border through France again and was detained in the Gurs concentration camp. She later settled in Biarritz, and her home became the headquarters for anti-German and anti-French operations.
Two centuries prior to Vargas, a Romani woman Rosa Cortes excelled in organizing resistance to the persecution of the Roma in Spain. As a result of persecution in 1749, Cortés was captured along with her wife Ginés Fernández, and moved from her hometown of Vélez Rubio to the masonry fortress of Alcazaba in Almeria. All Romani women from Almeria were imprisoned there, together with their children under the age of seven. They were later sent to the Alhambra in Granada, and afterwards to the Barrio del Perchel in Malaga. In September 1752, Cortés ended up imprisoned with more than 600 other Romani women from Andalusia, in the House of Mercy (note the irony) in Zaragoza. In January 1753, she led the escape of 53 Romani women from the House of Mercy, after making a hole in the wall with nails torn from wooden beams, which she had been collecting for a long time. We know she was caught and punished. Despite being subjected to torture, she did not give up her friends. Nothing else about her life was recorded.
The book Re-thinking Roma Resistance throughout History: Recounting Stories of Strength and Bravery mentions numerous other fighters, including the boxer Rukeli and Ceija Stojka, both of whom we have already written about on Phralipen. The publication of this book, but also the expansion of the material and further research of the Roma resistance, is extremely important for our understanding of history, but also for working on a different future. We can all learn a lot from the resistance of Romani men and women.
Perhaps it is therefore best to end this piece with a quote from Marin Mandache, a lawyer and one of the pioneers of the Romani movement in Romania, president of the Romani CRISS association. In the speech titled Roma Resistance: Appropriation of our story Mandache says:
The Roma did not surrender. We have faced inhumane treatment, but we survive as people with an elastic heritage and identity. Our sense of greatness and belonging is not based on ‘heroic facts’ like war and plunder, which form the foundation of many nations. Our ancestors did not build our identity to the detriment of others.
