People throughout history have always been on the move. But what happens to a persons identity and treatment by others when this movement is their way of life? Nomads, a person without a set piece of land or country to call home, a person from nowhere but equally a person from everywhere does not and I believe should not be grouped as a migrant. But then how do we and how do they define themselves? How do a people who don’t associate themselves with any set nation state or nationality identify themselves? And does this definition which we come up with effect how we view and treat these outliers? In this research project I argue that it is the gypsies way of life that places them at the margins of society and in doing so causes them to be treated poorly by people of a set nation. It is through the history of World War II that I propose to understand this treatment of these people.
It is hard not to know about the cruelty dealt to the Jewish people during World War II between the end of the 1930s and the middle of the 1940s but what many people are not aware of is that this horrendous injustice towards a people was not simply limited to the Jewish community. Nearly one million Gypsies would be placed into concentration camps, marked as unworthy of society, and viewed by the Nazi regime as just as unworthy a people as the Jews. What is however left out, if intentional or not, of the vasty majority of histories covering the treatment of the Gypsies during World War II is not just their mis-treatment during the war but also before and after. Even more than this many historians leave out how these people were treated by other nationalities besides the Germans. The crude treatment of the gypsies often physical as well as verbal was not just inflicted upon them during the war but also long before and long after it had ended. This treatment of these people I believe came from the lack of understanding and acceptance of countryman who saw the Romani as ‘others’, a people who choice to be part of the margins of society which frightened and angered nation-state citizens.
This research project proposes to focus on the movement – both forced and voluntary – of the Gypsies, before, during, and after the Second World War. I will focus on there lifestyle as nomads through movement in connection to their identity as viewed by themselves and nation-state countrymen to show how their marginalization in society ultimately leads to their mistreatment and displacement during before, during, and after the War. The desire of this project is to both understand how war, which already causes people to move, might effect those people whose lives are shaped by migration and also to look at how the treatment of these people, who most likely do not identify with any nation state, might be caused by their way of life. Though I am aware that many sources will be unavailable to myself as I only speak English and French the mass amount of resources in these languages and media format will allow I believe enough information to provide a solid bases for such a study. Through looking at an abundance of sources both secondary and primary not just historical writings but also in sociology, anthropology, archeology, art, literature, photography and film the hope is to trace the transnational history of the Romani in Central Europe specifically Germany, France and Italy to better understand a people’s history with no borders.