Petra Gelbart

PETRA GELBART: I try to take what people think they know about so-called "gypsies," and replace it with something that's much more based in reality. 

ALEISA FISHMAN: Born in Czechoslovakia, Petra Gelbart is a granddaughter of Romani Holocaust survivors. An ethnomusicologist, musician, and singer, Gelbart uses both her research and her voice to educate and advocate for Holocaust remembrance of Romani victims.

Welcome to Voices on Antisemitism, a podcast series from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum made possible by generous support from the Elizabeth and Oliver Stanton Foundation. I'm Aleisa Fishman. Every month, we invite a guest to reflect about the many ways that antisemitism and hatred influence our world today. From her home in New York City, here's Petra Gelbart.

PETRA GELBART: What defines a person as Romani, it's very simple. The person has ancestors who came from India roughly a thousand years ago, and there are many different subgroups of Roma and Sinti; they are as diverse as the subgroups of Jews. But they either speak Romani— so I speak Romani, or they have ancestors who spoke Romani. 

So the main stereotypes about Roma and Sinti—or you know what most people say, gypsies—are that we are nomadic, even though for most of history, for most of the past several hundred years the majority of Roma has been settled. So actually, my mother spent the first three years of her life living in a wagon, but that was very unusual at that point. It was very rare. So that's the biggest stereotype. 

And then obviously there are stereotypes about us not wanting to work, and being criminals. When you have a group, the majority of which lives in poverty, you're going to have issues with unemployment, low education, and you're going to have issue with petty crime. But in Europe it's very, very hard for them to get a regular job because the employment discrimination is just massive. So, the thing that people should really be worried about is not are we a criminal or "work-shy" people, but rather what is the access to jobs that we have or don't have.

In terms of, you know, being wild and passionate and all those ridiculous things, well that comes from popular culture; it comes from books and movies. Nobody wants to read about the normal Romani people—you know, the ones who are boring and like everybody else. And I actually think we need a lot more of that in the popular media and in the scholarly books, to say: a lot of what you've assumed about the Romani people does not reflect a lot of the reality that's there. So, what I try to do in my work as both an academic and a musician is to debunk the stereotypes. 

And there's a song about brotherhood, and I like it because instead of talking about individual groups of Roma, it talks about all these different disparate groups of Roma just respecting each other. And it goes like this:

[Song: Dobre dien Romale] 

Dobre dien Romale

Dobre dien Romale, spozeranku Izvinite man pal so bagav Nie podumayte so pal tumende Pal sare romende rakirav

Tu sal zabaikalsko Rom sibirsko Al'e rosissko romano chavo Rikir pes pri obshestvye dostoyno Na mangav me bolshe ničevo...

Good Day, Roma

Good day, Roma, so early in the morning Pardon me that I'm playing  Don't think that it's about you Or that I'm talking about all Roma

Whether you're a Transbaikal or Siberian Rom Or a Russian Romani boy Behave yourself in society with dignity I don't ask anything more...

My mother's family was living in what is now the Czech Republic. And that was one of the countries, and there were several countries, in which a good ninety percent of the Romani population was exterminated. And so my mom was born a few years after the war into a completely decimated family. Basically a similar proportion of Romani people in Europe were exterminated in relation to the proportion of Jews, which is something that most people don't realize. The absolute numbers were lower, because there were a lot fewer Romani people to begin with in Europe than there were Jews. But when you look at the countries where you had about ten percent of the Romani population left after the war because the rest were exterminated, that's basically complete genocide.

There was a song about the Holocaust composed by an unknown Romani person in Auschwitz. In my family, it was brought back, as far as I know, by my mother's great aunt. And it's called Aušvicate.

[Song: Aušvicate]

Aušvicate

Aušvicate hi kher báro De odoj bešel mro piráno De bešel, bešel, gondolinel E pre mande pobisterel

Kata Ruska balval phurdel De mro piráno už man mukhel De mukhel, mukhel pháripnaha Ani penďas: Áčh devleha

In Auschwitz

In Auschwitz there's a large prison My man is imprisoned there He sits, sits, and thinks Oh he is forgetting me  

A wind is blowing from Russia My man has already left me He has left, left with great difficulty He couldn't even say: Adieu

Under Communism, it wasn't acknowledged that there was such a thing as an ethnic group called "Roma." And as many people know, they built a pig farm on top of one of the concentration camps that held Roma in the Czech Republic. So instead of building a memorial, they built a pig farm, which is still there. So these songs for most of the decades following the war were transmitted privately. You weren't allowed to have a public commemoration, because we weren't really allowed to exist. To me, it was just part of, when I got to a certain age and I was deemed old enough to be told—because I didn't know growing up; I didn't know any of this—the older people decided it was time to tell me, then they also shared these songs. 

Things are changing. People do have public commemorations and they do bring in people who can sing these songs. The private kinds of commemoration are turning more public. But if we can be included in Holocaust education, which of course we rightfully should be included, then we have a very good chance of reaching all those people to learn about Roma. And I think that really is an idea that has to get through. 

ALEISA FISHMAN: Voices on Antisemitism is a podcast series of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Join us every month to hear a new perspective on the continuing threat of antisemitism in our world today. We would appreciate your feedback on this series. Please visit our Web site, www.ushmm.org.