Bury Me Standing - The Gypsies and their Journey

I'm not sure I can begin to express the disgust, distress and outrage I have felt in response to the stories and histories presented within this study of a people much maligned. To discover the extent of their persecution at the hands of the Nazis, who seemed to see them rather as an experimental biologist sees a mouse or a monkey bred to 'help' us understand how to handle disease. And yet this fact barely registers within our collective remembrance of the Holocaust, in our focus on the equally horrific slaughter of the European Jewish population.

Perhaps this is in itself a reflection of the ancient racist reaction to these dark-skinned people arriving in Europe before the notion of racism was born, justified for centuries by their apparently asocial behaviour. It seems to me that this essentially comes down to the basic human intolerance of difference - my god they uphold a different style of living to us - we must outlaw it - and shit, if they dare to maintain their nomadic ways, we'll hang them, lynch them, expatriate them, burn them out of their homes.

But in fact, in a similar way to how we might view the attitudes and approach to living of the Australian Aboriginals, the Native American Indians, the Canadian First Peoples, etc, if we were open-minded, we might perceive a way to appreciate something of the Gypsies' approach to living. I don't want to suggest that we ignore the multiplicity of developments in scientific understanding about the real way the world works, that a populace as, on the whole, uneducated as the Gypsies might overlook in their maintenance of ancient superstitions. But their determination to live in the present moment, not dwelling in the trauma of yesterday, which we have no power to change, could this not be psychologically beneficial as an approach to life? And the valuing of the family and community over the individual, has this not some value in our age of egotism?

Aside from the tendency to rant that this fascinating anthropological study has inspired in me (!), I also feel drawn to find out about some of the initiatives, novels, activists mentioned within its detailed and wide-ranging pages.