Book Presentation: “The Persecution of Roma and Sinti in Fascist Italy: History, Ethnography, and Memories (Viella, 2024)”
Paola Trevisan’s book, La persecuzione dei rom e dei sinti nell’Italia fascista: Storia, etnografia e memorie (The Persecution of Roma and Sinti in Fascist Italy: History, Ethnography, and Memories), Roma: Viella, 2024, 330 pp. (ISBN: 9791254694077, published in Italian) is the first comprehensive attempt to reconstruct the anti-Gypsy policies implemented by the Fascist regime in Italy, examining their profound impact on Romani families. Dr. Paola Trevisan will share insights from her extensive research “in the field” and in various archives, which brings to light the overlooked suffering of Roma and Sinti communities during Fascism. Before the 1930s, Romani communities were vaguely considered “foreign vagabonds,” resulting in police confinement and forced deportation of dozens of Roma and Sinti families living in the border provinces towards the southern regions.
During the war, they faced further displacement, being sent to faraway internment areas all over the peninsula as well as to the concentration camps. In post-war Italy, the memory of these persecutions largely remained within the most intimate space of affected Roma and Sinti families, contributing to the failure to acknowledge them as victims of the Fascist regime and, consequently, the denial of citizenship rights to many Romani people living in Italy today.
Based on extensive archival research and the cross-referencing of direct records with historical and ethnographic materials, Trevisan’s work provides a crucial historical and anthropological perspective on the systemic exclusion of Roma and Sinti and answers the questions, how did Fascism relate to those labeled as “Gypsies”? How did the anti-Roma and anti-Sinti persecution develop? And why did its memory find no place in Republican Italy?
Dr. Paola Trevisan
Dr. Paola Trevisan is a PhD in Cultural Anthropology and Gender Studies who focuses on the anthropology and history of Romani communities in Italy. She participated in several national and international research projects on the persecution of Roma and Sinti under Fascism, including her research fellowship at the Mandel Center of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C., researcher’s position at Free University Bolzano (Italy) and l’École des Hautes Études en Science Sociales (France). The geography of her research expands to Italy, Slovenia, and Croatia. Among Trevisan’s previous works are Storie e vite di Sinti dell’Emilia (Stories and Lives of the Sinti in Emilia) CISU, 2005 and Etnografia di un libro. Scritture, politiche e parentela in una comunità di Sinti (Ethnography of a Book: Records, Politics, and Family Nets in a Sinti Community), CISU, 2008. These publications explore the lives and experiences of Sinti communities in Italy, contributing to a broader understanding of their social and cultural history. Currently, Dr. Trevisan is working on the project Encyclopaedia of the Nazi Genocide of Sinti and Roma, directed by Heidelberg University (Germany).