Before you can really know about the problems going on today, you must first know about the past, the people, the history that leads up to what is going on today. This section gives that information.

Roma History

The Roma people are believed to have originated from Nothwestern India, and started to migrate towards Europe sometime around 1000 AD. When they arrived, they were at first welcomed with curiosity. They told the Europeans that they were from Egypt, and that they were the decendants of those Egyptians who had enslaved the Jews in the Old Testament. Since the Europeans greatly disliked the Jews, they accepted the Roma people into Europe. But things soon turned sour, and the Roma people were subject to just as severe descrimination as the Jews. Being a "Gypsy" even became illegal at one point, and they could be sentenced to death for nothing more than their ethnicity.

Roma Culture

• High value on extended family.
• A variety of "purity laws." "Marime" are still respected by modern Roma.
• Wasing clothes from lower body seperate from other clothing.
• Childbirth is considered impure and mother is impure for a period of 40 days

Religion

• Roma people often practiced the daminant religion of the country in which they resided, while always honouring Roma traditions and customs.
• Post-WWII, Roma culture has seen the development of Roma religious movements and the creation of autonomous churches.

Persecution

• The European persecuation of the Roma people dates back to the late 1300's witht he first recorded sale of Roma into slavery.
• An estimated 500,000 were exterminated at the hands of the Nazis during WWII. This number does not include extermination at the hands of Nazi allies.
• On January 8, 1998, New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman signed into law Assembly Bill 2654, repealing the state's anti-Roma law, adopted in 1917. Governor Whitman's signature effectively repealed the last anti-Roma law on the books of any U.S. state.