Mnemonic border-crossings: how Roma communities from the Baltic borderlands remember their shared past

Volha Bartash

Journal of Baltic Studies, 2023, vol. 54, issue 1, 67-86

Abstract: How have Roma communities, separated by state boundaries, remembered and commemorated the Nazi genocide? How have they communicated and mourned for their losses across shifting borders? This article explores the complex relationship between community memory and borders, drawing on my oral history and ethnographic research in the Lithuanian – Belarusian and Belarusian – Latvian border regions. Departing from family histories of Roma before, during, and after the Nazi genocide, my analysis takes several analytical directions by: 1) linking the memory paths with the trajectories of Roma communities; 2) highlighting the ways in which changing border regimes have shaped a Romani commemoration practice; 3) revealing communicative aspects of cross-border memories. My analysis enables me to outline a phenomenon of a cross-border memory community. Such communities are based on family and community networks of Roma, their shared histories, and attitudes toward the past, for instance, nostalgia for the Soviet time. The last section of the article demonstrates how the Soviet nostalgia interweaves with the commemoration of the Nazi genocide.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01629778.2023.2161589 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rbalxx:v:54:y:2023:i:1:p:67-86

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rbal20

DOI: 10.1080/01629778.2023.2161589

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Baltic Studies is currently edited by Liisi Esse

More articles in Journal of Baltic Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().