Between memory and amnesia: Silencing the genocide of the Roma in local memory in the Czech Lands 1

Abstract

This chapter argues that although the culture of commemoration in the contemporary Czech Republic changed significantly in the 1990s, the Roma and Sinti genocide remains starkly disconnected from local community-oriented practices of commemoration of the Second World War. In order to understand these processes, it offers a microhistorical case study of the struggle of an extended Romani family to obtain the social status of “decent citizens” within the small rural Czech community in Čížová (South Bohemia) between 1929 and 1947. This detailed analysis of the Růžička family demonstrates how the presence of Roma and Sinti was erased and silenced in the local collective memory in the aftermath of the Second World War.