Unwanted Neighbours, Unwanted Memory. Slovak–Roma Relations in Marek Vadas’s Six Strangers

Abstract

In contemporary Slovakia, the Roma population are often seen as unwanted neighbours – a marginalised community, which experiences discrimination in various spheres of life. Anti-Romani sentiment, which constitutes the basis of negative attitudes to- ward the Roma minority, is hardly a new phenomenon; its manifestations, including specific acts of violence, can be found in the past. One of the examples of this kind of violence – the bloody pogrom in Pobedim carried out against the Romani populace by their Slovak neighbours in 1928 – offer a starting point for Marek Vadas’s Six Strangers (Šesť cudzincov, 2021). The historic site of the massacre, which is not commemorated in any form, has be- come a non-site of memory, while the tragic events have been pushed out of Slovak historical consciousness. Vadas’s prose is an attempt to bring them back to the collective conscious- ness and raise a number of important questions concerning the operation of cultural codes that permit and justify violence, the position and responsibility of the bystanders, as well as silence as a form of complicity in acts of aggression. In addition, it introduces a contemporary perspective, pointing to the persistence of mechanisms of discrimination, stigmatisation and exclusion of the Others, understood in many different ways, from the community.