ANTI-GYPSISM AND RACISM IN EUROPE
ANTI-GYPSISM AND RACISM IN EUROPE

Summary/Abstract: Between the 1st and the 13th centuries, the Jews suffered much hostility and evil in Europe. From the 14th century on, powerful waves of not just anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism, but of anti-Roma and anti-Gypsy sentiment began to buffet Europe. One can discern in this process the imprint and reflection of peoples, states, and epochs, of popular belief, cultural and political conditions and problems, economic conditions, prevailing social relations, legal norms, and the ethical and moral consciousness of individuals and peoples, bundled up with their day-to-day existence and the psychopathology of that daily life. With regard to the Jew or the Gypsy, one could reveal oneself as one really was, in all one’s mortal imperfection, with no need to show any remorse or shame afterwards. In fact, they were protected from any accountability, even rewarded and promoted. [...] They arrived in Europe at the beginning of the 14th century, in groups, as the members of different tribes, castes, and sub128 castes. Clearly different from most European peoples in terms of physical appearance, attire, way of life, and culture, they were treated as “strangers” and, in some countries, as “heathens.” Consequently, the Roma were subjected to much the same treatment as the Jews had been and continued to be subjected to. Compelled to live separately from the majority populations, the Roma lived for centuries in a double isolation, which made them easy and accessible prey to any who, whatever their reason or motive, took a dislike to them. On the other hand, the prevailing historical level of cultural development attained by the countries in which they had arrived and the new historical conditions then emerging in a large number of European countries, some of which had just come under the rule of the Turk, only exacerbated the situation of the Roma. [...]

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