This article analyzes the Polish police narrative on Roma during the interwar time, unveiling attitudes and potential practices. According to the police journals and handbooks, Roma were mobile and disposed to theft and deceit. Their traditional crafts were merely a smoke screen for illicit activities. As countermeasures, searches of caravans, meticulous checks of identity documents, indiscriminate fingerprinting of Roma suspects, among several measures, were recommended. This narrative constituted part of a larger police professional discourse and is likely to be an indicator of practices on Roma. Polish police followed the contemporary European expertise on Roma produced by the fields of criminalistics and criminology. As there were no discriminatory laws targeting Roma in Poland, it appears that police used legislation against begging and vagrancy, among other tactics.
By
Piotr Wawrzeniuk
April 23, 2024
Analize – Journal of Gender and Feminist Studies, New Series, Issue no. 7, 2016, The Romanian Society for Feminist Analyses AnA, 2016, 101 pages.
By
Madina Tlostanova
November 9, 2017
This paper deals with the dilemmas scholars can run into when they encounter the conflict between political activists and what can be proven by evidence. The dispute with historians revolves around what the anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillot terms “Silencing the past”. This is certainly true in the case of the Roma and genocide. What complicates the case is that a long-standing memory is part of a still ongoing political activist campaign to build a recognized memory for all of Europe’s Roma.
By
David Gaunt
October 25, 2016
The panel debate “Mendicancy, poverty and Swedish society” was organized the 20th of May at Södertörn University, with the intention to flesh out an emotionally loaded political topic with professional background knowledge.
By
Ann-Judith Rabenschlag
June 9, 2015
At a symposium in March 2015, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Andrej Kotljarchuk presented the results of an ongoing research project “The Roma Genocide in Ukraine 1941-1944: History, memories and representations”.
By
Andrej Kotljarchuk
May 28, 2015
While the film Papusza certainly represents part of a growing interest in and awareness of Romani matters among the Polish and international public, one should not overestimate its value as an eye-opener to Romani history. Rather, it constitutes a fascinating and beautiful story of a lifetime on the margins.
By
Piotr Wawrzeniuk
May 12, 2015
Dehumanization of groups of people is a prerequisite for human trafficking. The very same factor that make vulnerable groups target of discrimination also make people vulnerable to human trafficking. The link between discrimination and human trafficking was the theme on OSCE:s 12th "Alliance against Trafficking in Persons" Conference.
By
Ninna Mörner
October 30, 2012