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27 unusual facts about Romani people


Béla Babai

Babai grew up in a Romani area near his birthplace and he learned to play the violin at a young age.

Calé

Calé refers to the Iberian Kale, or Romani people from the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) and its diaspora elsewhere in the world.

Callum Macrae

Apart from war documentaries, he has directed documentaries on other subjects such as on sex workers and child wedding practice among Romani people in Romania.

Captain Paul Montford

When Jenny Williams and Bela the gypsy were found dead in the woods, with Talbot's silver-headed cane nearby, Montford came to suspect his old friend, not believing his wild story about a wolf biting him.

Criminal stereotype of African Americans

His concern specifically was with southern Italians and gypsies than with peoples in other countries, as he believed the southern Italians had mixed ancestries over the years with Arabs and people from North Africa.

Czarna dziewczyna

Lead singer Ivan Komarenko sings of his love for a black-haired girl, implied to have gypsy ancestry, and calls for his horses to unite them rapidly.

Czech Republic in the Eurovision Song Contest

The broadcaster chose Romani band Gipsy.cz in January 2009 to compete in Moscow – the band had previously competed in the two previous national finals, coming both times in the top three.

Devla

Devla (also called Devel, Dol and Del) is the name of God in the Romani religion.

Dietwil

In 1863 a decision of the Cantonal Council of Aargau naturalized all the gypsies who had settled in Dietwil after fleeing Napoleon's armies in Belarus.

Emigration from Kosovo

As the population of Kosovo mainly consisted of Kosovar Albanians, emigrant population was of a corresponding composition, with about 90% Albanians besides smaller numbers of Kosovo Serbs, Bosniaks, Roma, Ashkali, Egyptians, Turks etc.

Gypsy Girl

It centred around a gypsy girl (Freya Boswell) and her family, who lived in a typical gypsy caravan on the corner of a typical suburban street.

Hartlake disaster

The victims were casual workers and either Irish or Romani people.

Jordan Burn

Since the leaders of Britain's gypsy communities often styled themselves Kings of 'Little Egypt', it has been surmised that the name indicates a gypsy presence on the muir in the 16th century when "Egyptianis" are mentioned in several official documents from the reign of James V.

Koschei

In The Sandman: Fables and Reflections, Koschei's emerald heart (or, more likely a piece of green glass being passed off as such) passes into the possession of a Romani trader, then a werewolf, and finally Baba Yaga.

Marzahn

Marzahn was the site of a labour camp (today a water treatment plant), where Romani were interned from July 16, 1936 on, two weeks prior to the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, away from visitor's eyes.

Narikurava

As per a theory propounded by Werth in 1966 and Fraser, authorities on the gypsies of Europe, believes that the Domar are the ancestors of the Romani people and therefore, the Narikuravas are related to the Romani.

Nonperson

This was the situation in the Nazi state with regard to Jews, and in most societies with regard to gypsies, and it is often applied in times of war to the entire enemy nation; its people are stripped of their "person status" and demonized, making them appear to be monsters (not humans), and thus indirectly rationalizing any excess or abuse committed against them.

Peddler

In many economies this work was often left to nomadic minorities, such as Gypsies, travellers, or Yeniche, offering a varied assortment of goods and services, both evergreens and (notoriously suspicious) novelties.

Rab Howell

Howell was born, and lived as a child, in a Romani caravan in Sheffield where his father was a horse dealer and sold pots and pans.

Romani people in Croatia

There have been Romani people in Croatia for more than 600 years and they are concentrated mostly in the northern regions of the country.

Romanian diaspora

It is also unclear if Băsescu counted religious minorities such as Jews ethnic Romanis, ethnic Hungarians who are native to Northern Romania, also known as Csángó or Szeklers and Transylvanian Saxons of ethnic German origins as Romanians when he made his estimate, as well as third-generation individuals in the United States and Canada.

Sistrum

The rhythmical shaking of the sistrum, like the tambourine, is associated with religious or ecstatic events, whether shaken as a sacred rattle in the worship of Hathor of ancient Egypt, or, in the strident jangling of the tambourine in modern-day Evangelism, in Gypsy song and dance, on stage at a rock concert, or to heighten a large-scale orchestral tutti.

Széchenyi István College for Advanced Studies

The college initiated its own project to help young Roma people in the village and hosted groups of children in Budapest.

The Big Issue

By 2011, around half of Big Issue sellers in the north of England were of Romani origin, many of whom having migrated from Romania and Bulgaria.

Ustaše Militia

The Defence Brigades engaged in operations against both the Chetniks and Partisans, engaged in mass terror against the Serbian, Jewish and Romani segments of the NDH population, and administered the Ustaša concentration camps, including Jasenovac.

Vardo

Vardo (gypsy wagon), the traditional horse-drawn wagon used by the English Romani Gypsies

Varvara Panina

Varvara Vasilyevna Panina (Варва′ра Васи′льевна Па′нина; 1872, Moscow, Russian Empire, - May 28, 1911, Moscow, Russian Empire) was a Russian singer of Romani origins, famous for her deep contralto, one of the Russian popular music stars of the early 20th century.


Black people in Nazi Germany

While black people in Nazi Germany were never subject to mass extermination as in case of Jews, they were still considered an inferior race on a similar basis as ethnic Poles or Gypsies, and were likewise described as untermenschen.

Boban Marković

Boban Marković (Serbian Cyrillic: Бобан Марковић) is a Serbian Romani trumpet player and brass ensemble leader from Vladičin Han, frequently recognized as the greatest trumpet player to emerge from the Balkans.

Campana, Buenos Aires Province

Most of the city's population consists almost entirely by descendants of Italian and Spanish (mostly Galicians) immigrants, although there are other minorities such as Germans, British, French and Roms.

East Frisians

In the narrower sense the East Frisians are the eastern branch of the Frisians, a Germanic people and belong, together with the Danes, Sorbs, Sinti and Romanies to the recognised minorities in Germany.

Edward Henry Palmer

He was educated at The Perse School, and as a schoolboy showed the characteristic bent of his mind by picking up the Romany tongue and a great familiarity with the life of the Gypsies.

Fanfare Ciocărlia

Fanfare Ciocărlia is a popular twelve-piece Balkan Brass Band/Romani brass band (not to be confused with Romanian) from the northeastern Romanian village of Zece Prăjini.

Francisca Cortés Picazo

Francisca Cortés Picazo (born 20 May 1955), more commonly known as "La Paca", is a Spanish drug lord, and matriarch of the Romani drug clan known as "La Paca" clan.

Fuhlsbüttel

Most of the inmates were Communists, Social Democrats and other political opponents of Nazism, Jews, Jehovah's Witnesses, Romani, homosexual men and others whom the regime wanted to lock up.

Germán Castro Caycedo

On the one hand the story of a gypsy witch, and on the other the life of a poor-well-known Colombian drug lord, Castro Caycedo uses their stories as a base to conduct the reader on a trip showing how the cocaine traffic affected the society and economy of a small town (Fredonia), the Mexican Secret Police's brutality and corruption, and the United States' active role in the birth and expansion of drug production in Colombia.

Hohenasperg

In May 1940, the prison was used as a way station for families during the first centrally planned deportation of Sinti and Roma out of southwest Germany, west of the Rhine River (Mainz, Ingelheim, Worms).

Jena West station

The deportation of Jews, Sinti and Romani during the Second World War is commemorated by a flower-decked plaque at the track-side entrance of the entrance building.

John Dyneley Prince

Prince had a strong interest in foreign languages as a child, acquiring basic skills in speaking the Romani and Shelta languages by the age of 12, after reading Charles Godfrey Leland's ethnographic accounts of the Gypsies.

Katarina Taikon

Katarina Taikon-Langhammer (29 July 1932 at Almby, Örebro - 30 December 1995 at Ytterhogdal, Hälsingland; Sweden) was a Swedish Romany writer and actor, from the Kalderash caste.

KZ Manager

KZ Manager is a name shared by many similar resource management computer games putting the player in the role of a Nazi concentration camp "manager", where the "resources" to be managed include, depending on the version of the game, prisoners (either Jews, Turks or Gypsies), poison gas supplies, "normal" money and various equipment, as well as "public opinion" on the "productivity" of the camp.

Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic

Immediately after the installment of Nazi German authority, a process of eliminating the Jewish and Gypsy population began, with many killings taking place in Rumbula.

Lewes Bonfire

In 2001 an effigy of Osama bin Laden ensured that the annual event received more press attention than usual (it featured on the front page of some national newspapers) as did the Firle Bonfire Society’s 2003 choice of a gypsy caravan.

Lóránt Fráter

His most common styles were Nóta and "Magyar songs," which were typically performed by Gypsy orchestras.

Lucien Clergue

Clergue has taken many photographs of the gypsies of southern France, and he was instrumental in propelling the guitarist Manitas de Plata to fame.

Lycopus

The plant's juice yields black dye, supposedly used by the Roma to tan their skin to mimic Egyptians in Europe, and hence the common name of Gypsywort for Lycopus europaeus.

Mieres del Camino

On market days, the city market, the Mercado de Mieres and nearby streets are filled with vendors and Gypsies (Gitanos) selling a wide variety of products, most especially food and textiles.

Music of Transylvania

Inhabited by Romanians, Székely and other Hungarians, Germans, Serbs, Slovaks, Gypsies and others, Transylvania has long been a center for folk music from all of these different cultures.

Occupation of the Baltic states by Nazi Germany

Immediately after the installation of German authority (the beginning of July 1941) a process of eliminating the Jewish and Gypsy population began, with many killings taking place in Rumbula.

Oleg Timofeyev

Since earning his doctorate he has worked for the revival of Russian music played with authentic technique on the seven-string guitar, often in collaboration with other artists, including the Russian Roma guitarist Sasha Kolpakov, the Kolpakov Trio (Timofeyev, Kolpakov Trio and Talisman 2005), and the American guitarist John Schneidermann (Timofeyev and Schneidermann 2006).

Ravensthorpe, West Yorkshire

More recently, there has been a large immigration of Iraqi-Kurds, Hungarians and Romas (Gypsies) into the area.

Romani people in Slovakia

According to the last census from 2011, there were 105,738 persons counted as Romani people in Slovakia, or 2.0% of the population.

Svetla Vassileva

Co-author of "Concept for the development of public preschool education in Bulgaria", "Concept for the socialization of socially disadvantaged Romani children” (under the auspices of UNICEF), "White Paper on Pravets" (2010) and the book "Pravets.

Szczurowa massacre

The massacre in Szczurowa was the murder of 93 Romani people (also known as Gypsies), including children, women and the elderly, by German Nazi occupiers in the Polish village of Szczurowa on August 3, 1943.

Szebnie

Thousands of prisoners perished there over the course of the camp's operation, including Russian prisoners of war, Polish Jews and non-Jewish Poles as well as Ukrainians and Romani people.

The Crown of the Russian Empire, or Once Again the Elusive Avengers

The Elusive Avengers, a posse of young Red Partisans, including Valerka, a former schoolboy, Yashka, a devil-may-care gypsy, and two orphan siblings, Danka and his sister Ksanka, become Cheka agents after successfully stealing the map in The New Adventures of the Elusive Avengers.