Gypsies or Roma: European and Polish attitudes towards

Romanians mean Gipsies or people from Romania?

but the polish are the best!!!!!! (after to the spanish and the english)
sorry grzegorz!!!!

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Of course, I've just never had the chance to meet one.

I'm sure nobody all over the world can be in competition with Romanians (Gipsies as well as Romania residents).
Don't be angry, Grzegorz.

The international attitude to Roma sucks big time.Some of the comments here and elsewhere sound like jokes or the very least what mad old bats used to say a hundred years ago.All thats missing is " gypsies kidnap gadjos babies" or other such BS. Im not saying there arnt Roma crime gangs etc but when your from a comunity that has been persecuted for centuries how much respect are you going to have for the outside world? Proportionatly the Roma of Europe lost more people murdered in the holocaust than the jewish people but where as one "race" now has its own country and numerous specific laws protecting it from harm the other Race,the Roma/Sinti?Gypsies have nothing and seem to bring out the worst in many peoples nature. In this day and age,the conditions that Europes Roma are forced to live in is shamefull.Look at more moderate societies or area's where roma are a bit more accepted/intergrated and you see a totaly different side to this fascinating culture that predates the creation of Poland as a state.
k
ps and without them music would have stopped on the western banks of the danube....

without Gypsys you wouldn't have Lurchers, my favourite dog

you've obviously never visited Balnain House in Inverness

When I lived in Poland I had no preconceived ideas about what the Gypsies (or Roma) were like. In my town of 60 000 you could see them very often, so probably about a twentieth of the population could have been Gypsy. They would hang out in the park, sing, eat, talk (loudly!). When the Romanian Gypsies arrived in the mid-nineties, those would beg: young women with children sitting out on the pavements in freezing weather, that kind of thing. I never saw the native Polish Gypsies help them in any way, so there goes the notion of a general Roma solidarity. I think it's more like every tribe for itself. I have also never heard of Gypsies being prosecuted in any way, there were no fights in the streets with the Polish, nobody set their houses on fire or threw their children out of schools. Quite the contrary, school authorities would bend over backwards to keep Roma children learning for as long as possible. Even so, most kids are taken from education by their parents by the time they are about 13! And then they get married and have kids of their own. I have seen many a pregnant Roma teenager who looked as if she would rather climb trees and ride her bike. Now here in London I have gotten to know the culture much better, as a community interpreter I am in touch with the Roma almost every day. They came to the UK as "refugees" from terrible acts of Polish racism, they go around telling stories of how Poles raped their women, beat their children, burnt down their homes etc., etc. This quite shocked me, as some of these Roma actually hail from the town I used to live in, and I should have witnessed these horrors, and most of the center of town, where the Roma lived, should have been reduced to a pile of rubble I guess! I know they made up 99% of these stories to have a credible refugee profile, and as no loyalty is due outside the clan, suck it up Poles! Tough luck you're Gajo!
They also talk about not being allowed to send their children to school in Poland, but all the Roma families I'd worked with here sooner or later come into contact with the Social Services over... not sending their kids to school!
Their music might be beautiful and their culture is certainly very interesting, nevertheless, they do marry off their children as teenagers and then often masquerade the ensuing pregnancy as either rape or youthful folly to their GP (as if they would ever allow their daughters to stay away from home for even one night!), they do not send their children to schools, they usually try not to work longer than 16 hours a week (UK residents know why), and they still think Council housing and all sorts of social handouts are their God-given right, even though Poland is now in the EU and the rules of the game have changed.
Around 2005, I often had to interpret conversations along the lines of: Poland is in the EU! Go get a job! We have to withdraw your refugee status! - But but but I cannot speak the language, I am a refugee! Give give give! - I told you... Poland is in the EU... etc. etc.
And last but not least, speaking of tolerance: a Roma lady for whom I was interpreting at a medical centre told me, while we were chatting idly in the waiting area, that any Roma girl or boy who leaves the clan, marries a Gajo of any sort - is dead to their family. They cannot visit or even call! This of course is seen as great tragedy, and so avoided.
To sum up: I am quite friendly with a lot of these Roma that I work for, they are generally nice people, but do remember that they are very different - and that THEY want to keep it that way. They do not overmuch love work and generally have an attitude that life should be going their way "just because". I think it would have been a much better solution for both us and them if they had been allowed to keep roaming the world in their tabors.
BTW - a wonderful, beautiful film about Gypsies, acted I think by Gypsies, is "Dom za Vesanje" (Czas Cyganów in Polish, Time of the Gypsies in English) by Kusturica. It shows both the ugliness and the luminous beauty of this culture. Because like every culture it has both, and I disagree with the PC axiom that nothing bad can ever be said about any minority. We are all people.

magdalena, I heartily agree with all the points you've made above.just trying for a little balance against the witch hunt. Ive never heard myself of persecution per se of Roma in modern day Poland either,in fact,to my shame I own a "hit"record by some lass called kayah singing with a Gypsy "prince" kid I think he sort of raps in Polish and she warbles in Rom.
Made up stories of hardship in an attempt to stay in the UK are Im sure not confined only to gypsies though,many africans ariving claim to be from warzones etc when theyre actually just economic tourists.
No,the persecution of the roma to such a disgusting standard as to have needed a UN commision set up is actually more in Romania and Slovakia where opprtunities are closed due to nothing more than rascisim pure and simple.
The main "problem" in the UK is not with genuine roma/gypsies,our problems are with the so called "irish travellers" or more commenly known as " Pikeys". No one seems to know who these people are supposed to be,they are all as white (or ginger lol) as your avarage irish person but have somehow,without putting anything into this country managed to obtain some sort of protected status as a "racial minority" which is utter tosh as they are white europeans who at some time were bandits or tinkers back in the emereld isle,kicked out of ireland for being a pain in the ass then ended up over here dripping with cheap gold chains and beating up young girls left right and center.
k

No,tell me more,thats ma families neck of the woods :)

it has a museum of Highland music, examples of musical instruments going back thousands of years, it would take a couple of days to listen to each recording

FLAMENCO!!- nothing other that spanish Gypsy dance

true not very nice but better than dress of some polish womans, i wonder why they(not all) wear this crazy clother they look like they willnot have nothing so what deferent ??
in my opinions polish people dont like so much Gypsy and in many examples they have right ,Gypsy dont want work and this is fact, iknow many gypsies and some even openly tell that its hards whites people dont trust them but if they try they can find work and live normal .its many confilcts to on their own area but not abaut this is this topic..
however some of them are really nice :)

regards from sunny Morocco ;)

My Lord!!! Gypsies are humans. Remember the holocaust, 3 million dead because someone think is a solution. Give them better oportunities in life and the countries will see changes. READ the Roma people history first. By the way, Gypsies in the Middle Ages help armies to contain the Ottoman invasions, a debt a lot of countries have with them. And remember some famous Gypsies: fantastic artists, businessmen, and very good and respectable people. The policies in some countries about Gypsies are simply evil.I hope the younger generations overcome the mistakes of their antecesors in matters about Gypsies.Generation Net, my hopes are with your kind.

I don't know what "better" opportunities in life you could get than what Polish Roma are getting in the UK. Free education, free housing, benefits galore, support from the Social Services, you name, they got it.
Most of them haven't even bothered to learn English - they get interpreters paid for by the local authority.
They do not attend schools, they very rarely work, and they are always asking for more, more, more!
I don't think the tragic deaths of their ancestors have anything at all to do with it, and they should not be used as an excuse.

as well as I know we have good policy towards gipsies, we spend a lot of money to try to educate them and include them into society, some of them successfully ended university, what is more we havent created gettos for them like Czech rep, Slovakia or other southern Europeans states so we try to include them into society, last time we started to use EU funds in this case and we have small successes. I think that our way is better than Czech or Romanian, maybe we can do it our way because there is only 12 000 - 50 000 of Gipsies in Poland, and in Romania there is 550 000 - 2 000 000 gipsies in Czech rep there is 200 000 gipsies closed in ghettos. I know that there is big Gipsy society in western Europe but I dont know the details about them.

Ghetto in slovakia

upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/pl/6/67/Osiedle_romskie_Słowacja.jpg

as to attitude towards Gipsies ... I m not going to tell nice stories about Poles who love gipsies ... attitude is definitely negative, but a lot of people like their music or dancers and I think that art is place where they should try their chances.

as to Gipesies

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romani_people

We were out with my cousins (8 of us) walking on the Rynek on a Saturday afternoon and there were a couple groups of them. It took me and my brother a few minutes to realise whoi they were but our cousins directed us away from them so we did not have to come into contact with them.

Forgot to add, everyone else on the Rynek seemed to be avoiding them too.