people from other countries may be asking “why aren’t more amerikkkans out in the streets?”, to which I offer this answer:

1) have you been paying attention? Getting out in the streets is not a thing USians do en masse, pent up covid anxiety (2020) notwithstanding. We’d love to see it too but most people here are too afraid to fucking jaywalk and it’s been that way as long as I’ve been alive. I don’t see anyone elsewhere burning down a US embassy to help (that’d be rad. We’d love it)

2) For those of us who do have strong protest muscles, I’m actually taking it as a good sign that there haven’t been a bajillion calls for us to go mill around the nearest fed building like, say, at the beginning of the Iraq War in 2003, what’s been dubbed the worlds largest protest (that didn’t stop jack shit). Sure, I’d love to see riots, but it’s fucking January, half the country is freezing, California has been burning up, and the radlibs are too busy being shock-and-awed by Trump. The rest of us have been making plans, caring for each other, spreading info, keeping tabs on ICE, and waiting to see exactly which new fascist bullshit sticks and which the courts will take care of. It feels like we’ve sort of collectively decided that this is where our energy is better spent right now than endless marching in circles, and I’m cool with that.

Today is remembrance day for those lost in the Porrajmos (The devouring). In the Balkans it is known as samudaripen (The mass killing), Russian roma call it Kali Traš (The Black fear) or Berša Bibahtale (The Unhappy years).

In July 1936, the Ministry of the Interior established its first “Gypsy camp” (Zigeunerlager). This was located at Marzhan, a place near Berlin. This was initially a point to centralise Gypsies who were forced to register and moved into work camps under the so called "liberal" Weimar republic period. When the NSDAP took power in 1933 they kept this act and intensified the work being done by gypsy prisoners. Travellers of all subcultures were captured and forced to work in this time. Primarly Roma, due to the fact they made up the majority of the population, but also Sinti (in large numbers), Kale and other minor groups.

Persecution of travellers has been a long standing fact in Europe for as long as we have been here. It is noteworthy, however, that scientific racism drove much of the need for cleansing gypsies from wherever they were. In 19th century Ukraine Gypsies were also subject to the same pogroms that Jews were. Jews and Gypsies have close ties as a result.

During the Nazi reign in Germany Gypsies formed the 'test phase' of the Holocaust/Shoah/Porrajmos and their transporting to work camps was in many cases undocumented, many Gypsies were undocumented persons, despite the law stating they must register with the Government. Anti-roma sentiment was prolific and many felt that the Nazis were finally expelling Gypsies from Germany, which was a popular move. This, however wasn't the case. Many German-born Gypsies were transported to remote work camps, forced to cut trees or dig in mines and formed a slave class within German industry.

Many died as a result of the labour, worked until their backs broke, until their hands couldn't grip any more and on a diet of gruel and simple boiled cabbage. Life in the camps consisted of catching rats for protein and avoiding the freezing mud in winter. Prisoners went into camps with the clothes on their back at first, but as the Nazis became more organised they also took on the characteristic 'striped pyjamas'. These offered little protection from the elements and during the first winter of 1936 many simply froze to death. Those who didn't would eventually catch pneumonia and either died in bed, or be shot when they were found to be too well to work. Some were even buried alive in holes dug by their families as they prepared mass graves.

Women were frequently sexually assaulted, as were young girls of all ages. The cruelty of the Nazis knew no bounds. It is a time worthy of the name Kali Traš.

Estimates on the numbers killed by the allies who defeated the nazis estimate around 500, 000 gypsies died. Modern romani historians think maybe between 1 million and 1.5 million may of died. This number does not include the people killed resisting capture as the nazis burned their possessions in front of them. In total the estimates on the number of people killed in the holocaust vary wildly, but the best estimates are between 20 and 40 million people were killed. First with bullets and firing squads, then with hard labour and later with gas in chambers and burnt in ovens.

The hardest, maybe the most crucial thing to remember about all of this, is that this started when people began blaming the failing economy on different groups of people and not on a government who mismanaged it, the businessmen who hoarded obscene wealth or people who harnessed that hate to perform a power grab. Judging the world and people based on economic potential is how this came to be, it is an attitude that persists today. We live in a world where the disabled are slowly having what little they have to survive taken away, where people of colour are drowned at sea escaping these same horrors and one where 'strong men' are more popular than ever before in politics. The whole world is at a precipice, and I hold my breath waiting for us to take the single step it will take for us to fall into darkness.

Latcho Drom (Rom: Good Journey)