© Sophie Ziegler
At least 500,000 Roma and Sinti were murdered in Nazi-occupied Europe between 1933 and 1945. Many believe the actual number is significantly higher. And the persecution did not cease when World War II came to an end. Two projects funded under the Education Agenda NS-Injustice commemorate not only the suffering of the Roma and Sinti people but also their resilience up to the present day.
“The lamp shines, the lamp burns in the middle of the camp, and even now all our Roma lie there,” sings an elderly woman with solemn grace in a piercingly beautiful voice.
She is the vocal soloist Vera Moldvaj who appears at the beginning of the documentary film Poems of Pain and Remembrance singing “Phabol Lampa” – a song that vividly conveys the suffering in the Nazi camps.
As the film progresses, we learn how her father escaped a mass execution as a child in occupied Serbia – the only person to do so. Twelve years old and already resisting.
Although the origins of “Phabol Lampa” have not been definitively established and various versions exist, it is believed to recall the fate of Roma people in the Crveni krst (Red Cross) concentration camp in Niš. The musician Jakup Ašimović is said to have composed and written the song there at age 27. He was executed in 1942 along with his father Čazim. Before his death, he managed to smuggle the lyrics out of the camp on a cigarette carton.
Music was carried far beyond the walls of the camps – which is something you can only do with music. And there’s not just one writer but many.
After being passed down orally for decades – along with the memories it carries – the song is now being written down as a full orchestral score for the first time. The project “Erinnerungen an Samudaripen im musikalischen Erbe der Rom:nja” [Memories of the Samudaripen in the Musical Heritage of the Roma] is a German-Serbian collaboration between the RomaniPhen Association and the Roma Writers’ Association of Serbia, led by Vera Kurtić. The film Poems of Pain and Remembrance was produced in connection with this project. For this, musician and composer Dejan Jovanović produced new arrangements of the songs “Phabol Lampa”, “E laute bashalen thaj roven”, and “Lila si ma”. Working with composer Konstantin Blagojević, he adapted the songs for performance by symphony orchestra, choirs, and opera soloists. As a contemporary addition, a youth choir and band also performed new, original songs as part of the project.
Isidora Randjelović explains why archiving musical heritage – and especially performing camp and wartime songs – matters so deeply:
Through these songs, history becomes a living exchange between people. It goes beyond the abstract facts and figures of academic history and makes the past emotionally tangible. Something happens between the performers and the listeners. What you feel is what you pass on. It’s both a personal and an interpersonal experience – and also a universal experience of suffering that crosses all boundaries of time and place.
Randjelović underscores the social relevance of non-academic forms of knowledge transmission here.
A key question, she says, is: “What is passed on when a song is sung by a new performer? Every individual brings their own pain – the second generation, the third. The songs kind of adapt to the people.”
Such as when Vera Moldvaj weaves her own experience of extreme poverty and captivity into her singing and adds a new line to a song: the song becomes not only an act of remembrance or a memorial, but also an expression of present-day exclusion and disadvantage – as well as a testament to resistance and survival told from the perspective of those directly involved.
© Romanity
That makes it all the more important to Radoslav Ganev, founder of RomAnity, to reach as many young people as possible using modern media and methods. “There has to be space for mourning when we remember the genocide, but in the end, we have to focus on life, on reaching and empowering as many people as possible.”
That also explains the importance of “Unbroken”s community-based approach, which ensures that Sinti and Roma people are actively involved in every step, from conception to distribution of content. This includes, for example, the development of an accompanying blended-learning platform. Designed for use in classrooms from grade nine and up, it allows for interdisciplinary, in-depth engagement with Sinti and Roma history in combination with the film. So far, history education in schools and universities has failed to offer reliable answers, instead leaving blank spaces and question marks.
Rap, classical music, gypsy swing, and traditional Roma music – including the “Roma anthem” Djelem Djelem – form the musical backbone of the anime production. The soundtrack also includes a song written by Vanessa “Puppa” Meinhardt and dedicated to her grandfather Galo Petermann, a Holocaust survivor.
And then there are the songs from the camps, the police checkpoints, the pubs and family celebrations that have found their way into the present.
Isidora Randjelović and Radoslav Ganev agree: history has to be told from the perspective of those who lived it. It is their voices that need to be heard. And their descendants carry on that legacy, in their own way. As civil rights activists, filmmakers, educators, researchers, and singers, they keep the memory alive. They are working to bring about change.
“It’s a path that hasn’t been taken before,” says Ganev about the “Unbroken” project. It’s a start, anyway, even if there is still a long way to go.
To the RomaniPhen project website.
Author: Sarah Rosenau
Djelem djelem lungone dromesa
Maladilem schukare romenza
Djelem djelem lungone dromesa
Maladilem bachtale romenza [...]
Ake vriama, usti Rom akana
Men khutasa misto kai kerasa
(„Djelem Djelem“ in the version by
Žarko Jovanović)
I traveled, I traveled on long roads
I met proud Roma
I traveled, I traveled on long roads
I met happy Roma …
Now is the time – rise up, Roma
We will rise to where we belong
