Jewish and Romani Families in the Holocaust and its Aftermath

Eliyana R. Adler, Katerina Capková

• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781978819528
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire du monde

Diaries, testimonies and memoirs of the Holocaust often include at least as much on the family as on the individual. Victims of the Nazi regime experienced oppression and made decisions embedded within families. Even after the war, sole survivors often described their losses and rebuilt their lives with a distinct focus on family. Yet this perspective is lacking in academic analyses.In this work, scholars from the United States, Israel, and across Europe bring a variety of backgrounds and disciplines to their study of the Holocaust and its aftermath from the family perspective. Drawing on research from Belarus to Great Britain, and examining both Jewish and Romani families, they demonstrate the importance of recognizing how people continued to function within family units—broadly defined—throughout the war and afterward.

PART I

Family in Times of Genocide

CHAPTER 1

The Romani Family before and during the Holocaust

HOW MUCH DO WE KNOW? AN ETHNOGRAPHIC-HISTORICAL STUDY IN THE BELARUSIAN-LITHUANIAN BORDER REGION

Volha Bartash

In the last ten years, scholars have argued in support of including the Romani experience of the Nazi genocide in the field of Holocaust Studies.¹ Following this research path, this chapter demonstrates that such an approach may be fruitful for both fields. As Michelle Kelso has recently shown in her work on Romani women in Transnistria,² the integration of their testimonies into scholarship on women and the Holocaust not only yields more detailed knowledge of the phenomenon but also opens the way for new research paradigms.³ Furthermore, most methodological approaches and analytical frameworks that have been developed for decades in Holocaust Studies could be fruitfully adapted and applied to the Romani experience. Despite the growing scholarship on Romani histories and memories of the Nazi genocide, little has been done so far to differentiate their experiences based on prewar lifestyles (sedentary, nomadic, or seminomadic), family background, social status, age, and gender. After Sybil Milton’s pioneering work on Roma and Sinti women in Nazi Germany,⁴ few scholars have attempted to discuss the fates of Roma of different ages, genders, and social backgrounds.

Nevertheless, some scholars have recently stressed the importance of a family framework and family-based approach in the analysis of the experiences and memories of Roma. For instance, Paola Trevisan began her historical-anthropological study of the Sinti in Fascist Italy with an ethnographic survey of Sinti families.⁵ Likewise, Lada Viková, a Czech anthropologist, approached the topic of Holocaust memory through the reconstruction of the genealogy and history of one Czech-Moravian Romani family.⁶

From a methodological viewpoint, a family-based approach can resolve several research challenges that arise from the underrepresentation of Romani history in archival collections.⁷ But which experiences of Roma explicitly call for a family-oriented approach? Several scholars argue for the importance of a family perspective in the analysis of Romani life and struggle for survival under German occupation. For instance, Sławomir Kapralski notes that sexual violence against Romani women was often meant to humiliate whole families of Roma and, in a broader sense, destroy the very code of Romani culture.⁸ In her analysis of the first-person accounts of female survivors from Transnistria, Michelle Kelso shows how a shift from a gender-based to a family-based analysis of sexual violence broadens our understanding of this phenomenon. According to Kelso, the family members of the victims were targeted and affected as well, regardless of their gender. Some of those who tried to save their beloved sisters, wives, and daughters were physically punished or killed; others were traumatized by being forced to witness those atrocities.⁹ Thus the suffering of Romani women, which at first glance seems to be an exclusively individual or a gender-specific experience, had a family connotation as well.

These examples demonstrate how applying different analytical frameworks or looking at the fates of Roma from different perspectives gives us a deeper understanding of what happened to Romani children, men, women and elderly people. Moreover, it seems that the framework of the family has a unique place among other analytical categories, because it has the potential to embrace people of all ages and genders, thereby obtaining a fuller picture of the Romani ordeal and struggle for survival.

In this chapter, I apply a family lens to the daily life and survival practices of Roma in the German-occupied Belarusian-Lithuanian border region. I first propose a more complex understanding of individual experiences and memories of the war and persecution based on the variety of ways in which Roma of different family and social backgrounds were affected and responded to Nazi violence. In the first part of this chapter, I seek to answer the following question: What was the Romani family like on the eve of World War II? By means of a close reading of the first- and second-person accounts of prewar life in the border region and the reconstruction of family histories, I describe the main family patterns and lifestyles of the Roma. My analysis reveals two “typical” ways of life among the Romani families of the border region—the sedentary and the nomadic. The oral histories of Roma, as well as their family genealogies, show that these two types of families had different structures and traditions. Even more importantly, the very sense of relationship, belonging, collectivity, and solidarity was different for them. For example, for nomadic Roma, their “big” family was their nomadic group, which could include up to fifty relatives. This means that they had a different sense of belonging, collectivity, and solidarity. How did sedentary and nomadic families coordinate their actions and make their decisions? In what ways did those decisions affect individual fates?

Depending on their lifestyle and professional occupations, sedentary and nomadic families had different contact zones and patterns of interaction with the local non-Roma population. Whereas communication with non-Roma had a seasonal variability for most nomadic Roma, sedentary families were integrated into their territorial (mostly village) communities on a more permanent basis.¹⁰ Did this mean that sedentary families found themselves in a better situation during the war?

Using this distinction between the plight of sedentary and nomadic families, I then analyze the family life of Roma under occupation. I am particularly interested in the following questions: How did the families of Roma respond to Nazi violence? What strategies did they undertake to survive the persecution? And is it possible to speak of a family survival strategy?

Despite some considerable differences in their plights, Romani and Jewish families of the Belarusian-Lithuanian border region experienced many similar wartime experiences and postwar challenges. After the war, the surviving members of the two affected communities struggled to build their new lives in the Soviet Union, where their family losses and ordeals were never acknowledged. The similarities between Jewish and Romani destinies and memory paths call for studying them in tandem.

DOCUMENTING THE ROMANI FAMILY: SOME METHODOLOGICAL REFLECTIONS

Any attempt to reconstruct the family structures and lifestyles of Roma in the interwar period will encounter methodological issues typical of any historical study of Romani populations. First of all, there are a limited number of contemporary sources. For various reasons, Romani histories are seriously underrepresented in the institutional archives of Belarus and Lithuania. The scope of this chapter does not allow for a detailed consideration of every methodological limitation encountered in the course of writing the history of Roma in the interwar years. Therefore, I confine myself to several brief observations while placing them in the historical context of the interwar border region.

What is currently the border region between Belarus and Lithuania was part of the Wilno and Nowogródek (Lida and Szczuczyn Counties) voivodeships of interwar Poland from 1921 to 1939.¹¹ Thus, this territory was separated by the state boundaries of independent Lithuania and the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic only after World War II. In this predominantly agrarian region of the Second Polish Republic,¹² most Roma led either nomadic or seminomadic lifestyles, negotiating their relationships with local landlords and peasants. Because of their mobility, it is very difficult to capture the Romani population on any statistical surveys. My survey of the families of Roma from the Wilno and Nowogródek voivodeships shows that, although their nomadic routes were predominantly local, some families traveled to western Ukraine (Volhynia) and back within one or two nomadic seasons (approximately from April to October).

Nevertheless, the nomadic or seminomadic lifestyle was not the only obstacle to the documentation of the Romani population of the so-called eastern borderlands or Kresy. The Polish census of 1931 that associated ethnicity with one’s mother tongue did not list Romani as an individual language and therefore overlooked the presence of the Romani minority. According to official statistics, about 60 percent of the population of the voivodeship identified as Poles. Belarusians (22.7%), Jews (8.5%), Lithuanians (5.5%), and Russians (3.5%) constituted the major ethnic minorities of the Wilno voivodeship. In western parts of the Nowogródek voivodeship, the situation was more or less similar, whereas to the east the percentage of Belarusians was higher.

In my research, I situate the Roma within the ethnic picture of the interwar border region while reflecting on their niche in its interwar economy and society. Again, there are few written accounts of the lifestyle and traditions of Roma in the Kresy. Even though some Polish ethnographers conducted fieldwork there, their studies bypassed the Romani population of the region. In my search for evidence of the Romani presence, I looked through numerous local memorial books and museum exhibitions and spoke with curators of museum collections.

It is remarkable how the Jewish story of the prewar period is gradually entering local historical narratives. This is happening mostly because of the efforts of the Jewish communities of Belarus and Lithuania, as well as those of the descendants of local Jews from abroad. However, the Romani inhabitants of the prewar borderland continue to remain invisible, even as they are “present” in museum collections. Thus, I was able to recognize Romani horse traders and performers in photos of local markets from the 1920s and 1930s. In the exhibit found in the regional museum of Braslaũ (Brasław), there is a photo of Romani blacksmiths standing in front of their forge. Another regional museum in the town of Vidzy (Widze, Vidzh) contains copies of partisan certificates that once belonged to the Yanovich family, many of whom were active in the resistance movement during World War II. However, no exhibit reveals the ethnicity of the people it portrays. For the occasional visitor, these photos remain as mere illustrations of the “old” life in his or her home place, while silencing the people in focus.

Nevertheless, the invisibility of Roma in the representations of local histories has more to do with current perceptions of Roma in present-day Belarus and Lithuania than with their prewar presence.¹³ The oral histories of Roma and non-Roma collected recently show that, despite some mutual stereotypes, Roma were part of the economy and society of the interwar border region. In what follows, I reconstruct Romani family life “under Polish rule” by referring to the family biographies of my informants and to other available evidence, including memoirs of non-Roma townspeople from Belarus and Lithuania.

When written sources are limited or represent an outsider’s perspective, the oral histories of Roma acquire a particular importance. In my recent fieldtrips to Belarus and Lithuania, I had a chance to record the family histories of Roma in both parts of the borderland. Before I started fieldwork among the Roma population, I had been engaged in oral history research among ethnic Belarusians, Poles, and Tatars.¹⁴ This gave me an opportunity to compare similar kinds of narratives of different ethnic groups. When I came to work with the Roma of the border region, I was impressed by the depth of their familial memories. Many of my informants in the age group older than fifty years old were able to share the life stories of their parents and grandparents, including their travel routes, occupational histories, and episodes of interethnic relations “under Poland.” The narratives I was able to collect, of course, differ in their narrating style, length, and emotionality. Moreover, not all informants are equally gifted narrators. However, the persistence of the Romani oral tradition seems to generally foster the preservation of memory within family circles. None of the ethnic groups with whom I worked before had so much respect for talented narrators and experts of oral tradition or valued the time spent in oral communication to such a degree.

According to anthropologist Jack Goody, who devoted many of his works to the comparison of written and oral cultures, oral narration represents a completely different way of expressing oneself from writing. Writing is a more individual experience, whereas oral narration always has an element of interaction between the narrator and the audience.¹⁵ When I asked my prominent informants how they acquired their expertise in Romani tradition and histories, almost all of them replied that it came from their communication with elderly people within their family and community circles. Oral narration remains the main method of intergenerational transmission of memory in Romani families. It happens mostly in natural circumstances, such as family celebrations, dinners, and tea times.

An understanding of the inte...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction: Why the Family?
• Part I: Family in Times of Genocide
• Part II: Intervention of Institutions
• Part III: Rebuilding the Family after the Holocaust
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Notes on Contributors
• Index