Joakim Eskildsen The Roma Journeys

Joakim Eskildsen THE ROMA JOURNEYS

EXCERPTS

SELECTED BOOKS

Göttingen, Germany: Steidl, 2007

The Roma people exist somewhere beyond all provident care, only seldom does anybody speak up for them, and they cannot think of any nation that would be prepared to give them a voice that everybody would listen to. This people has an estimated 20 million members, the single largest minority in Europe and one that none the less does not receive sufficient recognition. Where does this inexact figure come from? Nowadays we all want to know everything exactly, to know everything to the exact fraction of the decimal point. We have replaced our morning and evening prayers with statistics and stock exchange listings, we are professional number crunchers, yet, as soon as we want to know more precisely about this so numerous people, we are forced to rely on rough estimates. There are reasons for this imprecision. Whether it be here in Germany, in Lithuania, in the Czech Republic, or Slovakia—indeed throughout Europe—many Roma simply do not dare to reveal their backgrounds. Experience has taught them of the injuries they and their families can be subjected to once they have been identified—which means registered. . . . In all the countries of the European Union, members of this minority are on the one hand present, and yet on the other it is as if they do not exist. . . . They are the blind spot on Europe’s conscience .... They are bothersome to us. They are foreignness incarnate.

-from the foreword by Günter Grass