A matter of looking

by Marco Revelli

a tongue cut

Were 500,000, maybe more, the "sons of the wind" exterminated in concentration camps. Hundreds of thousands were persecuted imprisoned, deported, the families dissolved, communities dispersed, the declared purpose of eradicating Wandertrieb, the 'nomadic instinct ", identified with the eugenetic paranoid fascist with disorder and transgression, the admixture of blood and degradation of the costume. Yet their - in the era of political correctness and the homage ritual often the victims of all genocide - is a tongue cut out. A memory dramaticall silenty.
Attempts to redress this silence that leaves the disturbing sensation of a second Porrajmos, the tribute (the 5th since 2000) that the anarchist magazine "A" dedicated to the memory of Fabrizio De André: two DVDs (one black, with 4 movies of testimony and a red one with two pieces of the show and a history of life) and a booklet of documents, grouped under the title " A forza di essere vento…" (In The Wind ..). These are the tools for a trip through a historical "other" than conventional boundaries of our truths. Who we face, will meet the other radical - this is for us the "gypsy", the 'last of the last "- that tells our story untold: the story of our guilt. Of our being gone over in the process of dehumanization of the other of us, to lose every shred of humanity.

Take the incident of 16 May 1944 in Birkenau, as it is rebuilt in the splendid action-class by Marcello Pezzetti, of the Jewish Center of Contemporary Documentation in Milan. Birkenau was the component of the concentration camp of Auschwitz destined for extermination. There, next to the Jews, from December 16, 1942, in implementation of the "Auschwitz decree" with whom the Reich government had started the "final solution" for Roma, had begun to flow, in Block IIe, tens of thousands of Roma and Sinti, men, women and children, bound, unlike the others, all together, families not divide, until May 1944 when it was decided the liquidation of the "Gypsy industry". The nomads about 4,000 survivors were to be sent in one shot to the gas chambers. And that's when the incredible happened: the gypsies resisted. With bare hands, someone armed only boxcutter in makeshift tin shacks, made opposition to the SS. The few survivors tell of mothers who were in the front row, to defend with tooth and nail their children, some of them a few months, born in the camp itself. It was - Pezzetti says - "something extraordinary. Something you should always talk about" one of the few facing a death camp, and the only one to ever have happened because the operation was stopped, the destruction stopped. At least temporarily. Two and a half months later, after having transferred a thousand deported to Buchenwald and have weakened the resilience of Block IIe, August 2, 2847 Gypsies - men, women and children (about 300) - will be "passed by the fireplace "No to the crematorium number 5. Since then, comments Pezzetti, after which the voices of those 300 children who survived the horrors were extinguished, "there will be no life at Birkenau."

The noise of the wind

Or look at pictures of Hugo: Hugo Hollenreimer the shocking testimony of a German Sinto who knew the cruelties of Dr. Mengele, in the ambulatory of Birkenau where the SS doctor used the gypsies twin pairs as guinea pigs for his experiments in ' 19 minutes interview with Giovanna Boursier - who is also author of a brief but well documented essay in the accompanying booklet - with background images of Auschwitz in the background and wind noise, during the pilgrimage, a group of Sinti and Roma did in the 60 ° of the final extermination of the Gypsies. It is a rare document, because the culture of those peoples is rooted in the idea that we can not "tell the bad." And speaking of the dead - especially those "dead" - it's too painful, that upsets the speaker and the listener, somewhat unbearable. In fact, the beautiful face of Hugo contracts and twists the words even before communicating the horror, the harmonious lines break when he remembers the blond man, forced to run naked with the dogs who dismembered the body, or pain iron enters the flesh, as if, in those lives lost, we lost him too. And, finally, returns the echo of the first sentences of the story, when after the raid that began the deportation and detained pending translated to Auschwitz, he and his father was held the following dialogue: "Dad why are we here? - Because are we Sinti - But we Sinti we have not done anything wrong ... ".
It is the dialogue that resonates even today in many parts of the world. Moni Ovadia said it very well, in 19 seconds at the beginning of the so-called black, under the title of Have you ever had a gypsy friend? "We live in a society that can not accept others and can not see the point of view of ' other ". This is the node: the point of view. And, therefore, a matter of look. To be able to see. Or rather, to know which side to get to "see." Fabrizio De André knew. It was the point of view of the recent past as they are, not as we would like them (usually "like us", indeed, as we would have to no avail). For this reason his songs are, with a cry for justice, a potent antidote to the hypocrisy. The last stanza of Khorakhané said, "and if that means stealing / this thread of bread between misery and luck / mirror of this kampina / in my eyes as clear as a farewell / he can say only those who can collect in the mouth / point view of God. " An invitation to remain silent if you are not able to take the views of others. It was his poetic way of judging the judges. And to say that never again must be given to the jailers the power to decide which life is "virtuous" and which "degenerate." The good, to be assimilated, and the bad, to be deleted. For this reason - they are right, the editors of "A" - we miss so much "his anarchist eyes."

Marco Revelli

taken from "Alias", a weekly supplement of "Il Manifesto" 11 / 11/2006, originally titled "500,000 children killed by the fascists of the wind"

rivista anarchica
       anno 37 n. 323
       febbraio 2007