To expel those who do not have the right to stay


'For this purpose the Roma – those with Italian nationality and those without, EU citizens and those from outside the Community – will all have their fingerprints taken. And the rule will even apply to Gypsy children – for reasons that to many of Mr Maroni's supporters must have sounded obvious: "to avoid phenomena," as he put it, "such as begging". The new measures, he said, were indispensable "in order to expel those who do not have the right to stay in Italy"' - no not in Italy in 1938 but in Italy today. Read the full story in the Independent. I fear it is the shape of things to come, and not just in Benito Mussolini's old stamping ground.

Now playing - Bela Bartók's Roumanian Dances with Antal Dorati conducting the Minneapolis Symphony on vinyl LP (SRI75105) in glorious Mercury sound in those wonderful days before the 'benefits' of digital encoding, multi-tracking, multi-miking, multi-editing and multi-promoting. The seven movement dance suite was originally written for piano, and uses tunes transcribed by Bartók from Gypsies in Máramaros in Northern Transylvania. Bartók researched Gypsy folk music in the field travelling with an Edison phonograph. Like the Roma Antal Dorati was forced to migrate by political forces. Born in Budapest, he worked in Dresden before he moved first to Monte Carlo, and then to the US where he recorded this wonderful album with the Minneapolis Symphony, whose music director he was for eleven years.

The header photo of Roma is from an excellent photo essay in Catalyst magazine that I featured here last year. Now read more about the forgotten Holocaust victims, who were expelled, and worse, because they did not have the right to stay.
Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Comments

Pliable said…
Jessica Duchen picks up on this story here -
http://jessicamusic.blogspot.com/2008/06/plea.html
6:22 pm
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