On the way to visibility: the process of creating a cultural memory of the genocide of the Lithuanian Roma

ABSTRACT

In this article, we investigate the process of transformation of the Lithuanian Roma genocide in the cultural memory over more than twenty years since the restoration of independence. For many years, the Roma genocide has been ‘an invisible’ part of Lithuanian history, contributing to social, cultural, and historical marginalization of the Roma. We trace how the memory of the genocide is being gradually included into the public discourse, and how it is commemorated in the public spaces. We divide transformation of communicative memory into cultural memory into two periods: the ‘initial period’ (1998–2014); and the ‘period of intensification’ (2015–present) that could be characterized by the type and intensity of undertaken activities, visibility of the commemoration efforts, engagement and type of agents involved, and general socio-political context.

KEYWORDS:

• Roma genocide
• Lithuania
• cultural memory
• public memory
• commemoration practices

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. The exact numbers of the interwar Roma population in the Baltics remain in dispute, as there are no reliable statistics or other documentation from this period.

2. Conclusions of International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania ‘Lithuanian Roma in the Years of Nazi Occupation.’ Approved on 19 June 2002. Source: https://www.komisija.lt/research/ [Accessed on 12 December 2021].

3. Recent oral histories by Lithuanian Roma Holocaust survivors and their relatives have been collected in the Lithuanian Roma Oral History Archive: https://soundcloud.com/romu-archyvas

4. It is important to note that the terms Porajmos and Samudaripen, used by the authors of this article to denote the Roma Holocaust, are not commonly used by the Lithuanian Roma themselves. These are relatively new terms, popularized by the international Roma movement, and are used in Lithuania by scholars or activists as a form of top-down terminology. When talking about World War II, Lithuanian Roma themselves refer to mariben, meaning ‘war’ in Romanes.

5. We write more about the diversity of agents of Romani remembrance in Lithuania in a separate article: (Avin and Pilarczyk-Palaitis 2020).

6. See open access publications on the website of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance: https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/resources/publications/genocide-and-persecution-roma-and-sinti-bibliography-and-historiographical

7. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, https://collections.ushmm.org/search/?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=Saulius+Berzinis+Roma&search_field=all_fields

8. Authors’ interview with Svetlana Novopolskaja, Vilnius, 29 April 2021.

9. Authors’ interview with Vaiva Poškaitė, Vilnius, 18 December 2019.

10. We would include independent and professional scholars in this group of interest, as most scholars who investigate the genocide of the Lithuanian Roma also are active Roma rights supporters and Roma allies.

11. By ‘historiographic colonialism’ we mean the longstanding subordination of the history of the Roma to the historiographical discourses of other, dominant groups in society.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Agnieška Avin

Agnieška Avin holds an MA in Social Anthropology from Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas. She is an engaged anthropologist who has been working with the Roma community in Lithuania for over six years, being involved in community work, advocacy, and education. Her main research interests are racialization processes, community engagement, and identity transformations.

Anna Pilarczyk-Palaitis

Anna Pilarczyk-Palaitis is a PhD student at the Faculty of Sociology and Anthropology at Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas. Her main research interests are processes related to the issue of collective identity. In collaboration with Agnieška Avin, she has published research articles in journals such as Dialog – Pheniben and Studia Romologica.