engleski

The Stance of the Authorities and Public in the Kingdom of Croatia and Slavonia towards the Roma Populations during the First World War

In this article we have examined the perception and stance of the Croatian authorities and public towards the Roma population during the First World War. By analysing the key documents and media writings and putting them into a synchronic (by referring to the steps taken by the state authorities and the public opinion towards categories of citizens labelled as “unreliable” or “suspicious” during the “Great War”) and diachronic (by taking into account half a century of attempts to legally regulate the “Gypsy Question” in Croatia and Slavonia) perspective, it becomes readily apparent that only the Serbs and Roma tended to be collectively suspected of being “unreliable” elements in the examined area. However, while the former were treated like this due to their ethnic affiliation being linked to the political goals of the Kingdom of Serbia as an opponent in the war and the resulting oppression was conducted through various emergency laws which didn’t specifically mention Serbs as their target, there existed laws explicitly aimed against the Roma population. Although these were aimed at the part of the Roma population which lived a nomadic lifestyle, they inevitably legitimized the already deeply-rooted stigmatization of the entire Roma minority population as being incompatible with the political system, social order, and cultural ambient. As we have shown above, this type of regulation of the “Gypsy Question” and stance towards the Roma population indicated a decades-long continuity, which was more strongly manifested in the context of the general wartime trauma in the society, and continued as a conventional legacy in the interwar period.

The Kingdom of Croatia and Slavonia, First World War, Roma, legal provisions

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