The institutional concealment of the Romanies’ culture: the ongoing legacy of Fascist Italy

ABSTRACT

This paper presents the case of the Romanies in Italy and the ‘forgotten’ nature of their genocide. The crimes committed by the Fascist regime towards these peoples during the Second World War were not disclosed until recently. In past decades it was commonly believed that Fascism had targeted Romanies merely as a problem of ‘public order’, rather than as a racial issue. This study argues that a lack of official acknowledgement, together with recent authoritarian approaches towards them (such as the introduction of 2008 ‘Nomad Emergency’ and the ongoing adoption of the highly criticized ‘camps policy’), could all be interpreted as an indirect consequence of the government's incapacity to deal with a shameful past and its unbroken ties. The existence of ‘gaps’ in Italian collective memory is now harming the health of Italy's democratic polity, allowing racism to re-emerge, while resuscitating a deep-seated belief in the ‘legendary generosity’ of Italians.

KEYWORDS:

• Romani peoples
• Italy
• Porrajmos
• non-recognition
• ‘cultural genocide’

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. It is debated whether the origins of the first camps were the ‘campos de concentraciones’ created by the Spanish colonizer during the insurrection in Cuba in 1896, or rather the British ‘concentration camps’ for Afrikaner prisoners in the Boer War (Agamben, 1998).

2. These are the three major groups of Romanies living in Italy. They can be further divided into several sub-groups according to profession, region of origin or residence, or religion (Marzoli, 2012).

3. Founded in 1965 within the University of Padua, the centre was moved to Rome in 1970 becoming an autonomous entity. These were the major aims of the centre: the promotion and conduction of research on Romani-related issues; the publication of the journal ‘Lacio Drom’ (literally ‘good journey’ in Romani language) which stopped working in 1999; the collaboration with institutes and organizations dealing with the safeguard and promotion of the Romani culture (Marta 2005).