The social housing buildings in Zaharna Fabrika, Sofia, are protected as cultural heritage. They were originally built as residential buildings for factory workers and the entire area has a distinct architectural vibe. On the outside, these houses are beautiful. Many movies have been filmed here: in fact, quite a few times we discovered, when watching a random movie, that the background is in fact Zaharna Fabrika - the place the two of us met and fell in love, the place that has housed so much joy and tragedy for Pepi’s tribe.

While the houses are stunning on the outside, the inside story is very different. Holes in the walls and roofs, frequent power cuts, no place to shower, frequent interruptions in the water supply, mold-infested rooms. After the demolition of dozens of Romani homes in 2017, the families were placed in these houses and …

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On April 15, 2025, five days before Easter, the third and final demolition wave descended upon our Romani quarter. The protocol was the same as the demolitions before: at 5:00 am the mayor arrived with gendarmerie, a bulldozer, and despite the please of the families, razed their homes to the ground.

More than two weeks later, this situation is still brewing. The majority of the 180+ people are left homeless, some sleeping with relatives, others among the ruins of their houses. In future articles, we will tell you about this more. The violation of the European Court for Human Rights’ order to postpone the demolition until housing is found. The refusal of the municipality to give the families tents donated by the Red Cross, resulting in people sleeping under the open sky through heavy rain. The massive division in our society, some standing up to defend and support…

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We don’t know when our Romani quarter was born. There’s no paperwork for it - which is part of the reason why everyone around feels it has no right to exist.

But if you ask the Roma, they’ll say the quarter - also called mahala - has existed for “90 years” or “a century.”

And they’ll add, “My mother was born here and died here. My grandmother and grandfather - they were born here. And died here.”

They don’t mean this symbolically. Up until very recently, women in the mahala gave birth there, in the barracks, or under the open sky, with fe…

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“The wolf has to eat,” is a common saying at Pepi’s job, at least among the Roma street cleaners. It means, put very simply, that money never flows down to the workers. Instead, it stays with the owner, Rumen Gaytanski.

Garbage disposal and street cleaning of our city Sofia (the capital of Bulgaria) used to be monopolized by Gaytanski in the 1990s into the early 2000s. Every article about him says his nickname is “The Wolf” because one of his two companies was named “Wolf 96.” But the nickname is more than earned.

“He used to be very cruel then,” Pepi said. Martina wondered how much crueler he could have been compared to now. “I didn’t work for him then. But some coworkers still talk about how awful he was. He has mellowed down now.”

In 2005-2007, Boyko Borisov - who would later become the longest-reigning prime minister of our country until he was pushed out by anti-corruption protests - used the Wolf as on…

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Over a thousand years ago, scores of people left Ancient India and haven’t felt at home since.

They traveled through Asia, the Middle East, Byzantium, the Balkans, and Europe. As George Borrow wrote in his 1841 book The Zincali: An Account of the Gypsies of Spain,

“There is scarcely a place of the habitable world where they are not to be found; their tents are alike pitched on the heaths of Brazil and the ridges of the Himalayan hills, and their language is heard at Moscow and Madrid, in the streets of London and Stamboul.”

And everywhere, they became scapegoats.

The reviled Gypsies

The Romani people — also known as Gypsies in the Western world — have not been able to fit in for over a millennium.

The earliest historical accounts of their arrival in Europe sound a lot like the modern-day stereotypes against them: Thieves. Liars. Given every opportunity to participate in society and they reject it.

For centuries, the Roman…

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In early December 2022, our daughter had just turned two months old. She was becoming more alert and playful. Every time she saw our faces, she melted into a huge, happy smile.

It was surreal for us, having a newborn, to watch the scandal that hit national news in December 2022.

The swapped babies

A woman, who we know little about except that she’s white and middle-class, gave birth with a C-section on September 13th, 2022 in one of Bulgaria’s most popular maternity hospitals Sheynovo. Several days later, she returned home with a daughter.

As the weeks flew by, she noticed that her baby didn’t look like her older child or anyone else in the family - she had darker skin. And then one day, as she was sorting through hospital documents, she checked the two bracelets.

Immediately after birth, two conjoined plastic bracelets with identical numbers are broken apart …

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When Natasa Botosova was giving birth, they handed her “a blank paper to sign.”

“I was in a lot of pain so I did what they asked. After that I was anaesthetised and then they sterilised me. I only found out what had happened because afterwards there was a scar on my abdomen.”

Jirina Dzurkova had an ectopic pregnancy. At the hospital, she was told that she has to undergo urgent surgery. Sometime later, at a regular checkup with her doctor, he took a look at her medical file and said,

“I see you have been sterilized.”

Elena Gorolová was 21 when she was giving birth to her second son.

“My first child was delivered by C-section and the doctor told me I would need another one. Nobody said anything about sterilization.”

And yet, after she woke up from the C-section she was told by the doctor that she had also been sterilized.

All these cases, and many more like them, took place a few decades ago in the Czech Republic.

The question is not whether it happened. We know it did. The question is, does it continue to happen?

To answer this, first let’s look at what do these women — who were all sterilized against their will — have in common.

Hello there, racism. So we meet again.

Forced sterilization started taking place in the 1970s, back in what used to be Czechoslovakia. Communism fell, the country split in two, but the sterilizations continued to happen.

Why?

Because the true reason they happened — namely, gnawing hatred — doesn’t live and die by political regimes. Instead, it underpins and outlives them.

In the 1970s, Czechoslovakia embraced eugenics just like neighboring Germany had 40 years earlier. The country believed that its bright future can only be guaranteed by the beautiful, white, ethnical Czechoslovakians — and anyone else was an impediment and a parasite.

So, the government launched a program targeting the largest minority in the country — the Roma population.

Romani women were approached by social workers and offered money in exchange for undergoing sterilization. They were told the procedure only lasts “for five years” and that all the other women in the community have done it. The ones who declined were threatened that their children would be taken away. Or that their husbands would lose their jobs.

Roma women were most frequently targeted in the vulnerable moment just before or during birth. While in a state of pain or confusion, under influence of medication, or under threat of health complications, they were forced to sign papers — consenting, without their knowledge, to be sterilized. Doctors and nurses didn’t even bother doing that much with many women but simply went ahead with the procedure and afterward either informed the mother or left her to find out on her own.

This campaign was just one piece of a larger anti-Roma puzzle. There was “a wider social narrative to “discriminate, seclude and eradicate” the Roma population” in Czechoslovakia that also poisoned education, the job market, and housing for the Romani.

But Czechoslovakia was not unique in this endeavor.

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A picture speaks a thousand words. And a movie, even more.

In September, 2022, Pepi co-created an 11-minute short movie about the history of his Roma quarter (mahala) and the demolition of its houses.

This was done with the invaluable initiative and skills of our friends from ATD Fourth World: an international non-profit that does amazing work with communities living in poverty.

In 2020, Martina joined an ATD group of volunteers organizing games and activities for children. This is how she met our tribe and, soon after, Pepi.

Walking into a Romani mahala is a complicated thing. Not because someone will rob you or attack you (as the stereotype goes,) but because the Romani are mistrustful of outsiders. They will welcome you, most likely offer you a coffee, chat with you, but if you had any agenda, best forget it. For a group of people to walk into a Roma mahala and shoot a movie, especially where someone is sharing history, is an extremely rare thing.

This movie was only possible because of the years of friendship between the ATD team and the Roma tribe, and Pepi’s willingness to talk to “outsiders” and share the story of the mahala, how it was the “center of everything” where Romani and Bulgarians alike gathered to play sports and cards before our government forced further segregation, what did the demolition of houses look and feel like, and some of Pepi’s personal story, too.

A special shout-out to two dear friends:

Simeon Brand, a life-long activist, who is conducting the interview of Pepi in the movie.

Maria Dacheva, a super talented film-maker, educator, and activist, who is behind the camera.

We are sharing the full 11-minute movie with our paid subscribers but are also publishing several short snippets from it on our Instagram Page.

We hope you enjoy meeting Pepi and having him take you on a short walk full of stories.

When the wandering Romani entered the Kingdom of Bohemia in the 15th century, they weren’t chased away like most everywhere else. They were given a letter of protection, issued directly by the Holy Roman Emperor and Czech King, Zikmund.

The Romani kept this letter as they continued to travel into France, which is how and where they started being called “Bohemian.”

It’s as simple as that. At least the beginning of the story is.

What does boho mean?

The Kingdom of Bohemia had its own rich culture, which is still alive to this day within the Czech Republic. However, when we say “Bohemian” or “Boho” we don’t think of the historic Bohemian or Czech style.

The “Bohemian” label has stuck since the 15th century as a descriptor for some of the most prominent qualities of Roma culture: free-spiritedness, nomadism, artistic talent, music, rich colors. When the Romani entered France, they were met with the same hostility and racism as everywhere else in Europe. For several hundred years, they were pe…

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In September 1993, something very ordinary happened in the rural Transylvanian village of Haderani. A fight erupted between two “Gypsy brothers” and a young “local man” and his father. The young local man was stabbed and died.

So far, this is a story of tragedy and violence. What happened afterward — that is the ordinary part.

“In retaliation, other Romanians clubbed the Gypsy boys to death with pitchforks and shovels. A third Gypsy was “carbonized at home” (as the English-language Romanian reports described it).

“A group of villagers then went on to torch fourteen Gypsy houses and to damage thirteen others, and that night the total of some 175 Gypsies, whose families had lived there for seventy years, were hounded out of town.”

In her book Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey, Isabel Fonseca goes on to describe her visit to Haderani one year after these events. Had any justice been carried out in the past months?

If you ask the locals — whic…

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Why are the Roma so hated across countries and continents? Why, for an entire millennium, has the “civilized world” had such deep and visceral disdain for them?

Is it their darker skin? Yes, racism plays a role, but this is not the whole story. Is it because a vast majority live in poverty and mainstream culture hates poor people? Yes, but not only. Is it because they - let’s insert a few common stereotypes - are “thieves,” “tricksters,” “liars,” “lazy”? Yes, people believe all this about them even when faced with evidence against it. But this is not the real reason for the hatred. These are excuses, ready-to-go shallow statements that vocalize the feeling but not what truly evokes it.

No, the real reason is deeper.

The Roma arrived in the Balkans and Europe at a time in history when the entire continent had calcified around Christianity and its dogmas.

Medieval Europe was a brutal place. The connection with nature was sapped. The connection with divinity was sapped. The connection to one’s instincts - sapped. In its place came stern men who spoke on behalf of a stern God. Everything that deviated was punished. Everyone had to know their place.

If the Roma had landed on one of Saturn’s Moons, they would have found a friendlier environment.

What makes the Roma so radically different?

Since the Middle Ages, to this day, the Roma have been called “freedom-loving” by outsiders. The “love for freedom” that outsiders see can be taken as a good thing. “I have a Gypsy soul” or “I have a Gypsy heart” is meant to proclaim travel lust, intensity of feeling, and authenticity. But mostly, the Roma are despised for their “love for freedom.” They’re described as unreliable, lazy, workshy, living day-to-day with no thought of tomorrow, as parasites on society… the list is endless.

The thing is, those who describe the Roma as “freedom-loving” are betraying a truth about themselves. The lack of freedom in their lives, bodies, and souls. And it all can be traced back to the Middle Ages.

The Roma arrived in Europe with their own faith. Had it been any type of worship of a single male God, they would have still faced racism and discrimination but not the stubborn, centuries-long, visceral hatred that has not lost its intensity to this day.

But they worshipped a Goddess.

The Roma have never believed in a punishing, angry God who tells you who is superior to whom and to blindly follow authority. Their faith, similar to many pagan traditions and ancient faiths where the Goddesses had a place in people’s consciousness, the Roma believe in their own agency, intuitions, and wisdom. Their connection to the divine is direct, without intermediaries who claim to speak on behalf of God.

In Medieval Europe, all of this was labeled with the simple “Devil worship.” In his article, historian Jhanvi Pinara describes a small bit of what the Europeans did: “There was so much enmity against the Romas that strict laws were passed that they’d have to eat in the open as they were accused of killing children and eating them. Some people would come and throw over the stove and the food which they cooked because they thought the Romas eat their children.” This was only the tip of the iceberg and the hatred only grew stronger and stronger. Laws were passed that encouraged people to kill Romani, to take their children, and to tear up families and communities. In 16th century Scotland, it was legal to hang, brand, drown, cut off the ears of Romani simply for the reason that they were Romani. In the 18th century, Holy Emperor Joseph I issued an edict that called for all adult male Romani to be hanged without trial, and for Romani women and young males to be flogged and banished. The women and younger boys had their right ears sliced off in the Kingdom of Bohemia and were then dragged to Moravia for the removal of their left ears.

To a mind split in half between “this is good” and “this is evil”, people either act the way they “should” or they’re following Satan. And once they follow Satan, there’s never enough punishment.

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The Hindu Goddess in a Christian temple

There are many Black Madonnas (statues of women with dark skin) in Christian churches, temples, and cathedrals across Europe. While the Church doesn’t like talking about them much, their origin and symbolism have fascinated curios minds and attracted believers from all over the world.

You can read more about this phenomenon and its symbolism in Martina Petkova’s piece “The Mystery of the Black Madonna.”

Read here

One of these Black Madonna’s is Saint Kali, or Kali Sara / Sara-el-Kali/ Sara la Kali, which translates to “Sara the Black One” from Romanes. The statue is one among three reputed statues in an ancient temple in the Southern French village Les Saintes Maries de la Mer. Sara Kali is the only “dark” statue. She’s also the only one who is not officially a saint. The “Saint Sara” title has been granted by the people and pilgrims, not by the Church. The other two (white) statues represent Mary Jacobé and Mary Salomé. According to legend, the two Maries arrived in the town together with a third Mary: the notorious Mary Magdalene. They all left Palestine after the death of Jesus and sailed to the southern shores of France. The name of the village - Mary Jacobé, Mary Salomé - comes from their names. In time, Mary Magdalene was erased from the lore and now the legends and statues talk only about the two Maries. However, there is a fourth figure in this story: Sara.

Who was she? Some theories say she was an Egyptian servant who traveled with the Maries from Palestine. The Roma were mistaken for Egyptians in the early times of their arrival (which originated the exonym “Gypsy”) so there is a tangenial link there even though the Romani as a group left India centuries after the Maries sailed to France.

According to one legend, Sara supported the Maries through begging while they were busy teaching Christianity to the local population. Another legend says Sara saved the Maries by spreading her cloak while they were caught in a storm in the sea while they were still traveling.

And yet another legend says Sara was not a servant but a Roma Queen who was already living in Southern France and welcomed the Maries (and Christianity) upon their arrival.

Regardless of what the legends say, Kali Sara is a Romani saint. A Romani Queen. For centuries, and to this day, Romani pilgrims from all over the world have been traveling every year to honor the temple and the statue as their Queen, Saint, and Protectress.

But she was never a saint or a queen.

She is a Goddess, hiding in plain sight.

When the Roma arrived in Europe, the statue of Sara was already in the French temple. They didn’t create it.

They were being persecuted, brutalized, and murdered for their “devil worship” and then they saw the “Devil” herself, diguised as a humble Christian saint. So they claimed her.

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The trickery of the Goddess and the Roma

It might sound simplistic to say that the big difference and reason for centuries of hatred boil down to a God-versus-Goddess faith system.

Until you think about what each faith system brings into consciousness. What cultures it creates.

In the cultures built around a one-dimensional God, we have ambitious civilizations, phallic skyscrapers, and a pathological need to beat your own chest like King Kong. “I’m the best,” “My race is superior,” “My country and traditions are better.” And all this leads to the inevitable “Therefore, I’m entitled to more.” There’s scarcity in this culture. The constant anxiety that you need to take more and push more or you’ll die.

Colonialism exists in the name of this God. Class divides, serfdom, slavery exist in the name of this God.

Cultures built around a Goddess, even a sometimes-angry Goddess like Kali, are not interested in hierarchies, authorities, taking other people’s territories. And they do not care about prestige and beating your own chest.

The Romani Goddess doesn’t mind hiding under the shrouds of a humble servant to two Christian saints. She knows she’s still a Goddess. And the Roma know she’s still a Goddess.

Romani culture is all about the internal experience. The Roma don’t toot their own horn, don’t brag about their ancient history, or their clan, or their traditions.

In fact, the Roma often deliberately downplay their intellect and their skills. When dealing with outsiders, reporters, institutions, police, and anyone they consider hostile, they often act confused, like they don’t understand, they deliberately give vague answers, and they sometimes even play up their accent when talking in the native language of the country. All of this is a clever survival tactic that, to the Roma, is like theatre play on the surface. And underneath is their unshakable dignity: something that, for a thousand years, outsiders have tried and failed to take away.

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Who do the Roma honor today?

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In the 1970s, the Roma adopted an official flag, representing the heavens, the earth, and a 16-spoked mandala. They don’t believe God belongs to them or that the land belongs to them. However, they do feel that they belong to the Sky and the Earth, as equals to any other living being.

The Sky and the earth and us

Flags are not just a symbol of national identity. Throughout history, they have been used to mark territory. You set foot on a piece of land, you pitch a flag, and now this piece of land is yours. The next person who sets foot there is now an invader.

When the Roma traveled as Nomads throughout West Asia, the Balkans, and Europe, the lands were already carved out and claimed. The Roma would often set up temporary camps, which usually meant hostile visits by the local police, before they set out on the road again; either by force or by their own free will. The Roma were usually seen as foreign, “exotic,” unpredictable, loud, and dangerous by the settled communities they brushed against.

But were they invaders?

They never tried to claim any land as their own. They never attempted to carve out their own territory. They never, ever attempted to chase anyone out of their home. They did sometimes steal, but only in extreme situations and only when they believed they didn’t cause permanent harm. They would steal a couple of chickens from farms that had many chickens, where the theft would be seen as a great annoyance but not as a verdict of starvation. They would let their horses graze on other people’s land; knowing that it is the earth itself that would take care of the grass growing again. They would take things that are easily restored, like picking a few apples from a tree. But they would never cut the tree.

British Roma Patrick Jasper Lee wrote a book about Romani culture and titled it: “We Borrow the Earth: An Intimate Portrait of the Gypsy Folk Tradition and Culture.” What better way to describe our relationship with Mother Earth? We borrow. We do not own.

A saying, often attributed as a Native American proverb, goes: “We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.”

It is easy to imagine that it is a profound drive in human nature to claim things as “my own” and try to possess them. The history of claiming land and fighting over it (and the resources it gives) is centuries long. But the history of humankind roaming the lands of continents is much, much longer. The Roma, like many indigenous cultures, have retained the wisdom from these times and the connection with the land and all living beings. No exploitation and frantic gripping, but taking only what can be easily restored; and giving back.

This is why the symbolism of the sky and earth in the Romani flag is so powerful. They do not claim the sky and earth as their possessions, but as their Gods, their mother and father, that from which they come, to which they will return, to which they belong.

To this day, in Romani culture, weddings take place under the open sky. There are no priests in a Romani wedding, no officiants who proclaim the bride and groom to now be “a husband and wife.” The marriage is made official by virtue of it being witnessed by the tribe, the sky, and the earth.

In her book, “Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey,” Isabel Fonseca recounts a conversation with a Romani woman from a Nomadic tribe.

To our glorious civilizations’ great annoyance, the Roma don’t take borders very seriously. They see them as big obstacles when traveling, as “scars on the Earth” as a Romani proverb goes, as artificial, unnatural structures. But when they cross, they do it peacefully. Their goal has always been to travel, trade, practice their crafts, to meet up with related clans and tribes. And then to move on.

How many wars have been waged in the name of our flags?

The Roma, whose flag links them to the entire planet, have never waged a single war in their history.

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The 16-spoked wheel

The layers of the 16-spoked mandala on the Romani flag are several. It symbolizes, most obviously, a caravan wheel.

This is not only a reference to the Nomadic lifestyle of the Roma, but also to their relationship to the earth. It reinforces the sentiment that they are here not to claim the land but to travel it.

In his book, “The Gypsies,” Jan Yoors writes about his impressions when he first joined a Nomadic Romani tribe as a 12-year-old boy.

The Roma recognize a simple truth that, in mainstream society, we still struggle to accept and re-learn. Life is not a permanent fixture but a flowing river. Change is the only constant. Knowing how to let go is how you truly love and cherish. And gripping things only suffocates them.

The wheel is also a callback to India, the motherland of the Roma. In Sanskrit (from which the Romanes language originates,) the 16-spoked wheel was called “chakra”, meaning “destiny.” The symbolism of the wheel in India is the everlasting cycle of death and rebirth, of constant renewal: something that is deeply infused in Romani culture, touching its relationship with material possessions, animals, and loved ones.

The red color of the wheel was chosen to represent blood, commemorating the Roma lives taken during the Holocaust.

It also represents fire, a staple of Nomadism. Stopping at a camping spot, tending a fire, cooking together, sitting down to eat, singing and dancing: this true happiness. For the Roma, this has been what life is all about, for the last thousand years to this very day: not hoarding, taking, claiming, or owning; but cherishing.

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On November 19, 2009, Pepi and two of his brothers - Jerry and Sadik, walked into one of the many old, abandoned buildings once part of a modern factory complex developed by a Belgian company just outside the Bulgarian capital, Sofia. These buildings gave the name to the neighborhood that gradually grew around them as Sofia expanded over the next century: Zaharna Fabrika, translating to “Sugar Factory.” The factory has long stopped working but the cultural significance and the unique and captivating architecture have earned these buildings protection as “cultural heritage.”

Within walking distance of this cultural monument is one of the largest Roma ghettos in Sofia - also in existence for over a century. The ghetto, originally a smaller community, that eventually expanded to over 3,000 people, was born as most Roma ghettos are born - on the…

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In 2016, two cars crossed paths on a central road of the Bulgarian town Radnevo. A group of four men emerged from one car, a group of three men emerged from the other. They locked into a physical fight. The group of four severely beat up the group of three. Lungs were punctured, skulls were fractured.

Once ambulances and authorities got involved, it became clear that the group of four were Roma and the group of three were white Bulgarians. The Roma were rushed to jail, the Bulgarians to the hospital.

But this was far from over. News of this case spread like a forest fire across the country.

The citizens of Radnevo immediately rallied together and scheduled a protest at the doors of the Roma community. Policemen were dispatched to prevent anyone from getting into the neighborhood. Was that necessary? Yes. There is a cen…

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Hitler had his eyes set on the “Jewish Problem” but that was far from the only “problem” he tackled via mass murder. He was, truth be told, in the grips of the Superiority Problem — where you want to feel superior to everyone else and work hard to figure out what specifically makes everyone else inferior to you.

Germany had, for decades if not centuries, nurtured its hostility towards the Jewish population, so when Hitler came into power they became the first and most obvious target.

Disabled people were an immediate clash with the robotized ideal of the Aryan Übermensch — so off they went, too. Gay people, who to this day are still being vilified as “deviants,” didn’t enjoy much acceptance under the Nazi regime either.

Hitler’s big dreams were cut short but had they become a reality, he would have expanded further East and created Lebensraum (room for life, ironically) for his growing, hopeful Aryan race. And the people who lived East? A…

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In September 1993, something very ordinary happened in the rural Transylvanian village of Haderani. A fight erupted between two “Gypsy brothers” and a young “local man” and his father. The young local man was stabbed and died.

So far, this is a story of tragedy and violence. What happened afterward — that is the ordinary part.

“In retaliation, other Romanians clubbed the Gypsy boys to death with pitchforks and shovels. A third Gypsy was “carbonized at home” (as the English-language Romanian reports described it).

“A group of villagers then went on to torch fourteen Gypsy houses and to damage thirteen others, and that night the total of some 175 Gypsies, whose families had lived there for seventy years, were hounded out of town.”

In her book Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey, Isabel Fonseca goes on to describe her visit to Haderani one year after these events. Had any justice been carried out in the past months?

If you ask the locals — which Fonseca did — justice had been carried out on that September night, by torching and chasing away the Roma population. No official investigation followed. In fact, policemen were present during the attack on the Roma houses, guarding the attackers.

The Romani tried to return to what was left of their homes but the villagers kept chasing them away. One Roma woman was among many who told Fonseca she was still afraid for her life:

“They ring the church bells whenever they see one of us,” she said, “and we know what that means.”

A predictable story

One of the most reliable things you can find in European history is this kind of brutality against Romani communities. It is distinct with its sadistic, hungry cruelty, with the desire to punish to the point of complete annihilation.

The tidal wave of violence in Haderani was unleashed by the death of the young man but it had already been boiling and spilling over the edges— not just in this small village, but in the whole country and all neighboring countries.

Fonseca lists out several examples from the early 1990s in Bury Me Standing. Three houses burned in one village, “for no apparent reason,” by Hungarians and Romanians. Six houses destroyed and four Roma killed by Hungarians in another village. A few weeks later, 35 Romani houses were destroyed by Hungarians in the town of Turulung. A few weeks after that, Romani quarters were destroyed in two other towns. Fonseca writes, “in neither case did the attackers claim a motive or even a pretext.”

And two months after that, a coordinated and unprovoked attack was waged against the Roma community in Bucharest:

“An old Gypsy woman had a fatal heart attack after watching her children and grandchildren being dragged from their hiding places under beds and in cupboards and badly beaten.” — Bury Me Standing, Isabel Fonseca

One unusual thing about the Bucharest attack was that arrests were made. The attacked Romani people were “arrested and thrown into Bucharest’s Magurele military barracks, which was being used as a temporary prison.”

Fonseca wrote her book in the early 1990s and attributes the increasing violence against the Romani to the turbulent times after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Eastern Europeans needed a scapegoat, someone to blame for holding them back from the great promise of democracy.

The Romani were swiftly put in the role of scapegoats as has been the norm all over the world for the past ten centuries. People either brutalize them or watch others brutalize them.

Ask anyone. A Hungarian, a Bulgarian, a German, an Italian... Ask them in the 1990s, ask them in the Middle Ages, ask them today. You’ll get the same answer: the Romani are thieves, criminals, and deserve to be either chased far away or destroyed.

It’s not history yet

One day, we might look back on all the violence against the Romani with some sense of accountability and self-reflection.

But right now, we don’t have to look back. We can just look around.

I’m from Bulgaria, the country that shares the label “largest Romani minority” with Romania. I grew up right next to the biggest Roma neighborhood in the capital, Sofia. I was taught to keep my distance, watch my pockets, avoid eye contact.

At age 33, I’m yet to have a bad experience with a Roma person.

In the past year, I’ve been volunteering with a group that works with people in poverty. We go to one of the Roma communities in Sofia organize games for the children.

There are no church bells there. But you can hear the echoes of Haderani. The houses of over 30 Roma families were demolished by the mayor — at the insistence of the surrounding Bulgarian residents — and the families were crammed into what used to be an old Gestapo office building nearby.

They, alongside the rest of the Roma families who still haven’t lost their houses, are soon to be “evicted” by the authorities — but nobody knows where.

During one of our recent visits, it just so happened that an engagement ceremony between two Roma families was taking place out on the streets. Everyone was gathered, the adults dancing hand in hand to the ancient, fierce rhythm of a Roma orchestra, the children watching and playing around.

We wanted to stay and watch, even dance, but we were outsiders to this community after all. We said hello but decided not to intrude. As we walked past, one of the kids approached us and jokingly asked if we called the police. What a stab at the heart that was. To be seen as someone who would try to put an end to this celebration — while I was aching to join it. But it was deserved. My people have been cutting short Romani celebrations and Romani lives for decades.

We were making our way through the crowd but more and more children gathered around us and slowed us down. One little boy asked me to pick him up. I lifted him in the air, he wrapped his legs around my waist and pressed his cheek against mine. In giggles, we danced to the rhythm of the drums.

Then I let him go and we hugged goodbye.

As we walked away from the music, and from this community that everyone around was working so hard to erase, all I wanted was to turn back and stay.

For centuries, people across Europe and the world have persecuted the Romani, destroyed their homes, enslaved them, murdered them, chased them away, and called them thieves.

It was in a Roma neighborhood — the quintessential place of danger I was raised to avoid — where I saw a friend accidentally drop a bunch of coins and the children rushing to gather them and press them back in her hand.

We sure enjoy fearing the Romani — and punishing them for that. But if you want to meet the real thieves, you won’t find them inside a Roma house. They’re outside, trying to tear it down.

(originally published by Martina Petkova on Medium in March 2021)

Over a thousand years ago, scores of people left Ancient India and haven’t felt at home since.

They traveled through Asia, the Middle East, Byzantium, the Balkans, and Europe. As George Borrow wrote in his 1841 book The Zincali: An Account of the Gypsies of Spain,

“There is scarcely a place of the habitable world where they are not to be found; their tents are alike pitched on the heaths of Brazil and the ridges of the Himalayan hills, and their language is heard at Moscow and Madrid, in the streets of London and Stamboul.”

And everywhere, they became scapegoats.

The reviled Gypsies

The Romani people — also known as Gypsies in the Western world — have not been able to fit in for over a millennium.

The earliest historical accounts of their arrival in Europe sound a lot like the modern-day stereotypes against them: Thieves. Liars. Given every opportunity to participate in society and they reject it.

For centuries, the Romani have been facing unrelenting pressure to assimilate. We’ve outlawed their nomadic lifestyle. We’ve torn apart their communities. We’ve forbidden their language and forcibly changed their names. We’ve murdered them. For a long time, we enslaved them.

Countries across Europe that otherwise differ much from each other have all been united in their attitude towards the Romani: They should either stay far away or disappear entirely. Violence against Romani individuals, families, and entire communities has plagued our shared history.

The Romani were the second-largest group that filled the gas chambers in the Holocaust.

In her book, Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey, Isabel Fonseca describes her visit to Auschwitz in the early 1990s.

“The Polish guide, whose batch of Swedish tourists I tagged along with, never once mentioned the Gypsies. After the tour, when the Swedes had retired to the cafeteria, I asked her.

‘Even here in Oswiecim, the Gypsies didn’t work.’

That was all she had to say about the twenty-one thousand Gypsies murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau.”

The Balkans, known as “the second home” of the Romani, are also the place where they are most despised and disenfranchised. In our home country, Bulgaria, it’s not unusual to hear people wishing “Hitler had finished the job” or criticize government shortcomings with the simple “We’re a Gypsy country.”

The hatred runs deep. But who are the real people who evoke it?

Who are the Romani?

Stereotypes against the Romani describe them as a smudge on human civilization: a wild hive without culture, faith, or morals.

This idea starts to crack as soon as you look more carefully.

The Romani organized themselves, before all else, in groups that are defined by craft. Brick-makers, comb-makers, basket-makers, blacksmiths, locksmiths, herb-gatherers, horse-traders, musicians, to name just a few.

Having honed their skills generation after generation, the Romani were considered master craftsmen and artists in the Middle Ages. They have forged weapons for armies, built houses for villagers, played music at innumerable weddings.

The Nomadic lifestyle was not the aimless wandering painted by stereotypes. It was rooted in rich cultural and geographic knowledge. Travel routes were carefully negotiated and planned during annual meetings between the Nomadic groups.

The Romani language, having barely changed from ancient Sanskrit, is still alive and unaltered today — just like the Romani identity, which has remained intact after a millennium of persecution.

If we look past the stereotypes and into historical records, the Romani emerge as warm, peaceful people. Craftsmen, storytellers, and artisans who you might see occasionally in your village. People who come for a few days and offer to sell you unique jewelry, beautiful scarves, painted wooden spoons, or even music.

The Romani have never waged a war, tried to enslave or otherwise subdue other people, imposed their beliefs onto anyone else, or planted a flag on someone else’s land and called it theirs.

In fact, the Romani didn’t have a flag until 1933 — and the one they designed shows a wheel as a symbol of their Nomadic traditions.

So what did these peaceful, talented people do to us that for centuries we have wanted them either devoured by our society or annihilated from it?

They have been a constant reminder that what we uphold as solid reality is a big shared illusion. They have never seen us as the superior human beings we’ve believed ourselves to be. They have been consistently refusing to bow to our values.

Now, a thousand years after their arrival, we are finally facing up to the consequences of our way of life and we’re slowly starting to seek what the Romani have been doing for centuries.

The Romani wisdom we have always rejected

The Roma culture, by its very existence, defies three core values of traditional societies: work, ownership, and identity.

Why do we work?

History shows that the Romani are very hard-working. Why, then, have they been consistently portrayed as the opposite?

This is best answered with a quote by an angry Romanian villager, who Isabel Fonseca interviewed for her book, Bury Me Standing:

“Here I am, picking plums for someone else. The Gypsies pick these same plums to eat and the rest to sell for themselves.”

The Romani don’t mind hard work. They just prefer to work for themselves.

Regimented labor has always been praised as the backbone of civilized society, as the thing that propels us forward. The two opposing doctrines of Communism and Capitalism both uphold hard work as the highest virtue — when you do it for someone else.

The Romani have never been seduced by prestige, security, or any other of the standard promises given either by land-owners or corporations.

Instead, they have always been entrepreneurs. Honing their craft, seeking and carving out market niches, adapting to the changing world.

For centuries, this made them look suspicious. Today, we’re thirsty for it. Fatigued by industrialized products and monopolized markets that shove unskippable ads down our throat, we crave for things “with a soul.” Things that are “custom” and “hand-made.”

A lot of us crave to make those things. To not be “pinned down,” to be the masters of our own destinies. The “Digital Nomad” lifestyle is booming as “the dream” in the same Western countries that outlawed the true Nomadic lifestyle centuries ago.

What do we leave behind?

Europe has been cut up between its inhabitants for centuries. When the first settlers arrived in the Americas, they similarly started claiming lands and pitching flags.

As nations, we derive an immense sense of pride from physical symbols of our heritage. How can an Italian look at the St. Peter’s Basilica and not feel proud? As individuals, we are similarly preoccupied with what we come to own. The more we own, the better. Same with what we leave behind. Houses for our children and grandchildren, savings, tea sets, jewelry.

For the Romani, this is all dust in the wind. The fact that they have never built a state of their own, nor monuments, nor left behind acceptable tangible markers of culture, has always been used against them as proof that they are inferior.

And yet, the Romani have managed to preserve one of the most ancient languages in the world, as well as the core of their philosophies and culture, despite being dispersed all over the world and being persecuted for centuries.

The Romani are not concerned with ownership the same way everyone else is. They don’t fetishize it. What they own does not define who they are. What they leave behind for their descendants is knowledge, myths and stories, craftsmanship, a strong tribe.

For centuries this made them look inferior in the eyes of the nations who built cathedrals, stadiums, libraries, rockets, factories, shopping malls, and fast-food chains.

Today, after having destroyed half of the forests on the planet to accommodate all the things we wanted to build, what we’re leaving behind looks less like a sophisticated cultural legacy and more like an environmental crisis.

We were never superior to the Romani. They just stood in stark contrast to our greed.

The sense of identity

In Europe, the history of countries squabbling to establish one as better than the other is long and rich. And America has taken this chest-beating to an even higher level.

It’s the same, if not worse, with religion. Christians feel superior to Muslims and vice versa, Protestants feel superior to Catholics and vice versa.

How many wars have been waged in the name of all these labels?

For the Romani, identity is an internal experience. In the book The Gypsies in Bulgaria, Elena Marushiakova explains that the Romani identify primarily with their group but they don’t share with outsiders which group they belong to. Why not?

“The Gypsy considers the question of his group belonging relevant only to himself.”

In the same book, an Ottoman scholar is quoted as criticizing the Romani for being faithless.

“They celebrate Easter with the Christians, Eid al-Adha with the Muslims, and Purim with the Jews.”

The Romani have been continuously written out as “Godless” for adopting customs from the religions they encounter. In reality, their core beliefs and values have remained unchanged. They just don’t vilify different cultures. They embrace and celebrate them.

Why have the Romani been scapegoated for a thousand years? If you look at all of the negative stereotypes against them, you might see a tinge of envy: They celebrate all religions. They work for themselves. They are too free, too joyful, too resilient. Even the Nazis couldn’t force them to conform.

Maybe in the next one thousand years, we will stop demonizing them and start learning from their wisdom.

(originally published by Martina Petkova in the Medium publication History of Yesterday in February 2021)