Romanian Roma Survivors’ Recollections of 1942: Deportations to Transnistria.
In this talk, I reflect on the deportation of Romanian Roma to the occupied territories of Transnistria during the Second World War. The discussion starts with recollections of the survivors of the deportation and that this generation’s memories of the past would disappear along with them. The discussion correlates the deportation to later waves of displacement in the early 1990s and now those who migrated abroad due to discrimination and lack of opportunities. Even though each of these waves of uprooting and persecution differs from the others, when viewed from inside family and community life, their effects prolong one another and cause Roma to live under the threat of siege and displacement permanently.
Dr. Ana Chirițoiu
Dr. Ana Chirițoiu is a social anthropologist and a collaborating researcher for this seminar series in Romani Studies. She received her PhD from the Central European University (Vienna/Budapest) in 2022 and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology, Uppsala University. Chirițoiu’s research explores how the social exclusion of Roma reflects onto the emic ideologies that underpin the social reproduction of “Romaniness”. Her current book project describes how Roma attempt to circumvent marginalization through the cultivation of virtue, especially in the spheres of kinship, social order, and vernacular law. As of 2019, Ana is an editor of Anthropology Matters Journal.