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Tofsy is Roma Genocide Remembrance Day.For decades the girl pictured here on a train to Auschwitz in this well known photo was assumed to be Jewish.It took the painstaking detective work of Dutch journalist Aad Wagenaar in the early 1990s to establish that it was in fact a nine-year-old Dutch Romani girl by the name of Anna Maria ‘Settela’ Steinbach.Settela was born on 23 December 1934 into a traditional Sinti family in Buchten in the south-east of the Netherlands.In May 1940, the Nazis occupied the Netherlands, but initially did not target the Sinti and Roma. It was only in July 1943 that an order was issued prohibiting them from travelling by waggon, and all Sinti and Roma were forced into one of 27 guarded assembly camps. The Steinbach family were deported to the central assembly camp in Eindhoven and Settela’s father Heinrich ‘Moeselman’ was picked up by the police from there. He survived the war and died in 1946.On 14 May 1944 the Dutch police received the order to move all ‘Gypsy families’ from the assembly camps to Westerbork transit camp. Two days later, Settela and her family were rounded up. At Westerbork, Settela, like all the other Roma girls and women, had her head shaven, and she wore the torn sheet to cover her bald head that is seen on the photo.Altogether 574 ‘gypsies’ ended up at Westerbork. However, on further inspection by the camp authorities more than half of them turned out to be either not Roma even though they lived in waggons, or they had foreign passports, and they were therefore released from the camp. The remaining 245 Sinti and Roma were put on a cattle train and deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau on 19 May 1944.Upon arrival, they were taken to the Auschwitz Gypsy Family Camp. Those regarded as fit enough to work were later transported to labour camps. Settela and the rest of her remaining family were murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz, probably during the night of 2 August when the Auschwitz ‘Gypsy Family Camp’ was liquidated.Today is Roma Genocide Remembrance Day, which marks the liquidation of the ‘Gypsy Family Camp’ at Auschwitz.Read Settela's life story: www.hmd.org.uk/resource/anna-maria-settela-steinbach/#OnThisDay #OTD #RomaGenocideRemembranceDay #Roma #Romani ... See MoreSee Less

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Looks great. Giant figure in the water.Libertalia SALT LAB Performance I 30. Juli 2022 I Esplanade Altmünster I www.salzkammergut-2024.at/libertalia-salt-lab-performance/Fotocredit: Edwin Husic ... See MoreSee Less

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7 days ago

Brilliant. ... See MoreSee Less

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1 week ago

The story of our friend Emira.EMIRA RAMIC HUSAREVIC – BOSNIAN FOLK MUSICEmira has lived in Dalton, Huddersfield, since 1993 and is aged sixty. She arrived in Huddersfield as a refugee from the Bosnian War aged thirty. She was born and brought up in the small town of Sanski Most in north-east Bosnia, about 35 kilometres from the city of Banja Luka. She is a member of the Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) community. In 1991, the municipality of Sanski Most had a population of just over 60,000 of which 47% were Bosniak, 42% Serb and 7% who classified themselves as Croat.In 1993 her quiet rural district was attacked by elements of the former Yugoslav National Army and the Army of Republika Srpska, who were determined to drive out Bosniaks and Croats and impose Serb dominance.In the chaos she was separated from her husband and (for a short while) her two-year-old son. Her husband was captured by the Serbs and spent the next two years in a series of prisons and concentration camps, with Emira having no idea whether he was alive or dead. Meanwhile she lived with her parents. Eventually he made it to a refugee camp in Croatia where he was taken into the care of the Red Cross. They arranged for him to leave the region and to find asylum in the UK, and he arrived in Kirklees in August 1993. Three months later he was able to contact Emira via the UNHCR and call for her and their toddler to join him. She arrived, along with two other families, in the midst of winter with almost no belongings. She would not see her parents for another 5 years.The family were given a brand-new house by West Yorkshire Housing Association and a grant of £1,200 for clothes and furniture, and friends and neighbours also donated household items. They settled in well and remained in the same house in a close-knit neighbourhood. Her son is now a proper local lad who speaks both Bosnian and English with a Yorkshire accent and has a good job working for the hospice charity shop.In Bosnia, Emira had been employed as a teacher of art and music. Once settled in Britain, and having learnt the language, she returned to teaching, helping Bosnian communities in the north of England. For 5 years she taught at the Bosnian school in Dewsbury and then a further 5 years in a similar establishment in Hull. The Bosnian Embassy in UK has established a well organised system for teaching language, creative arts and Bosniak culture, providing teaching materials and running examinations leading to qualifications that would enable students to reintegrate into Bosnia should they wish to do so.As a student in Bosnia, Emira participated in choirs and played violin and piano, although her primary instrument is accordion. As a child she was brought up on a variety of Bosnian folk music alongside Italian arias and foreign pop. The style of folk music she recalls most fondly is Narodna Kola which comprised happy tunes about courtship and drinking played by the agricultural peasantry. On graduating as a teacher, she worked in three schools over 10 years before the war. Under the Yugoslav communist regime, the system of teaching was rather rigid and the discipline quite austere, but in her isolated mountain district the main emphasis was on the maintenance of local folk culture. Although under a nominally atheist regime, she was able to maintain education in Muslim moral and cultural values (Bosnian Islam is derived from Sunni and Sufi traditions).Musical and art education was given high status and much time was devoted to it both within and outside the main curriculum. There would be annual competitions between different schools and villages and important concerts and tournaments in the big cities. Emira spent much of her time preparing choirs and ensembles for these events. She always felt that the rural children, benefitting from better air and food, sang better than their urban counterparts. Even at the height of the war when the electricity had been cut and bullets were flying, Emira tried the best she could to keep teaching and practicing music in her village.Music would often be connected to folk dancing and the most prevalent form was Kolo, a circle or chain dance popular across the Balkans. This would be combined with elaborate costumes and would often be associated with important community and family celebrations. She cannot recall music which was particularly political or religious in nature from her time in Bosnia. The music she recalls was usually about nature and the landscape or relationships. She can even recall a Bosnian folk song appropriate to her life in Huddersfield, entitled “Raining Raining”. She loves the fresh grass and green hills of her adopted home. She no longer refers to Huddersfield as her second home. Whilst she has revisited Bosnia several times, she cannot envisage returning there to live. With her son now settled here and a happy family and social life in the town, she knows that this is now her home.From her visits to Bosnia, she is a little concerned that some of the folk culture of her youth may be fading away. Imported rock and pop, and a dominant new local musical form called turbo-folk is now sweeping the old folk styles away.It has also been a struggle to maintain Bosnian folk culture in the UK. There were not sufficient numbers, nor critical mass in one location to generate enough people to produce and consume the music. To her knowledge she is the only Bosnian musician living in Kirklees and her skills are fading through lack of practice.Nowadays, Emira devotes more time and effort to her interests in the visual arts rather than music. She has made more than 700 paintings and the subject matter is often the life she remembers in the Bosnia of her youth. Folk songs are often the inspiration for a painting. During lockdown she devoted herself to some major pieces of work, including a portrayal of the famous bridge in Mostar. She donated it to the Bosnian Embassy in London, who notified the media in Bosnia. She was invited to Bosnia where she appeared on national TV to talk about her life in Britain and her artistic and musical activities. She also valued lockdown for the emphasis this placed upon contact via Zoom. This opened her up to many new people and internationally-scattered Bosnian communities.Emira has found that when she sings and plays her accordion via Zoom she can reach and touch the hearts of many people she otherwise would not have met.Photo: Emira Ramic Husarevic plays the accordion, Budimlić Japra, Bosnia, circa 1995. Photo courtesy of Emira Ramic Husarevic ... See MoreSee Less

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