“Encampment of Gypsies with Caravans,” a painting by Vincent van Gogh depicting a caravan of nomadic Romani. Via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

This piece, written by Mary Drosopoulos and Oana Dumbrava, was first published by Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso Transeuropa (OBC Transeuropa) in December 2024. Global Voices has republished an edited version under a content-sharing agreement.

The so-called “stateless people,” who originally migrated from northern India to Europe in the 14th century, are today officially referred to as “Roma” and “Travellers,” two umbrella terms adopted by the Council of Europe to embrace a wide range of ethnic groups, divided as follows: Roma, Sinti/Manush, Calé, Kaale, Romanichals, Boyash/Rudari, Balkan Egyptians (Egyptians and Ashkali), eastern groups (Dom, Lom and Abdal), Travellers, Yenish, populations referred to as “nomads,” and persons that identify themselves as “Gypsies.”

The history of the Roma in Europe is one of suffering. For centuries, many were enslaved by noble families and states until slavery was finally abolished in the 19th century. But freedom never meant equality. Forced assimilation, violent expulsions, and the horrors of the Holocaust — in which between 220,000 and 1.5 million Roma lost their lives — left deep scars. The Roma continued to face systematic discrimination after World War II, yet their vibrant cultural heritage in music, dance, and storytelling endures. Today, the Roma community continues its struggle for equal rights and recognition.

What do Romanian history textbooks say about the Roma people?

During the Nicolae Ceaușescu communist regime in Romania, there were almost no references to Roma in school textbooks. In an attempt to promote a unified national identity centered on ethnic Romanians, the experiences and contributions of the Roma, as well as other minorities, were left out of history books. This exclusion was intentionally designed to downplay ethnic diversity and foster a monolithic version of Romanian identity. Assimilationist policies aimed to push Roma communities to abandon their cultural practices, reinforcing their invisibility in official discourse and perpetuating old stereotypes and discriminations that persist.

After the fall of communism, Romania’s education system was affected by the slow transition to democracy, marked by continuous reforms and frequent changes. In the years of transition, the tendency of the individual to turn to their ethnic group led to the process of social categorization on an ethnic basis, determining further discrimination.

Greek Roma women. Image by user Stalik via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

Today, the Romanian Ministry of Education oversees multiple textbook options for each subject. The offer is very varied in quality and approach: while some textbooks focus on traditional narratives, others include more modern, inclusive perspectives. Teachers can, in principle, choose the books they consider most suitable for their students. This freedom of choice is welcome, but this flexibility leads to inconsistencies.

The high school history textbook (Gymnasium edition), published in 2007, was one of the first schoolbooks to mention the slavery of the Roma. Still, it addressed the issue through stereotypes, linking the position of the Roma to their “backwardness.” “Since their arrival in these lands,” the book states, “the Roma were considered an inferior people because of their backward lifestyle and physical appearance. Therefore, from the very beginning, they were marginalized and isolated.”

Today, high school students in Romania learn from a textbook (ART edition) that “enslaved” Roma lived in poverty, practicing their trades and maintaining their traditional lifestyle. Taken out of context, this description reflects prejudices and risks leading to generalizations. Another textbook (published by CD Press) speaks of the Roma in the Middle Ages as people “subjected to all forms of injustice and abuse by their masters” but claims that the Roma “lived among Romanians, integrated into medieval society.”

As for the Roma Holocaust, we read (Niculescu’s textbook version) that “many were deported, some of them died because of the detention regime.” The textbooks do not provide more details that could facilitate a better understanding of the historical context.

Addressing Roma history is not only about slavery, deportation and genocide but also about giving visibility to those who have overcome these traumas. As Luiza Medeleanu, an expert in intercultural education, suggests, Romanian students should learn more about people like Anna Frank, but also Constantin Anica, a young Roma Holocaust survivor, to foster empathy and dialogue.

However, history teacher Ioan Cristian Caravană points out that history taught in Romanian schools is still “an official history, to be learned by heart. Rather than encouraging critical thinking, lessons present a pre-established narrative that limits deeper understanding.” School is the best place to tell meaningful stories, initiate debates, and encourage Roma teenagers to understand their roots and history and increase their self-esteem.

Stamps of Romania, 2014-16. Via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

For Vintilă Mihăilescu, a renowned Romanian anthropologist, history education profoundly impacts students’ sense of belonging. When textbooks focus only on Romanian heroes and ignore the history of the Roma people, they risk sending a negative message to Roma students, making them feel excluded.

The case of Greece

The first references to Roma populations in the Peloponnese region date back to the 14th century. Although there is no academic consensus on the routes and circumstances of Roma migration, it is assumed that their arrival is a consequence of migratory waves towards central Europe, the Balkans, and Greece—mainly in the regions of Thrace and Macedonia—conditioned by the gradual expansion of Ottoman rule to the territories of the Byzantine Empire at the end of the 14th and beginning of the 15th century, culminating with the fall of Constantinople in 1453.

Despite their long presence in Greece, Roma acquired political rights only in the 1970s. The first mapping of Roma communities was carried out in 1996. According to 2021 data from the General Secretariat of Social Solidarity and Combating Poverty, the country's Roma population is 117,495 permanent residents, constituting 1.13 percent of the total population. The majority of Greek Roma are Orthodox.

According to the UNICEF office in Greece, Roma are still a vulnerable minority who face difficulties accessing housing, health, education, and employment. Over the last decades, the Hellenic Ministry of Education has launched several initiatives to combat illiteracy and delinquency among Roma communities. Since the 1990s, several Greek universities have launched pilot programs with an ambitious goal: to bring Roma children from the streets and child labor into schools. Specifically, since 2015, the state has promoted several extracurricular courses for Roma children.

Otherness, exoticism and pseudo-interculturalism

“August Moon” by Greek author Voula Mastori is one of the classics of post-war Greek children’s literature, a title traditionally included in students’ reading lists. The book tells the story of a young tomboy who attends the last grade of primary school in a suburb. With her anticonformist behavior, the protagonist raises concerns in conservative society: she becomes friends with a young Roma tinsmith, whom the children from the neighborhood fear and from whom they run away. The presence of a male character who, contrary to popular belief, is neither a thief nor a child abductor is one of the “less negative” references to “Gypsies” in Greek children’s literature that has preserved, if not even reinforced stereotypical and discriminatory representations of the Roma people.

The cover of “August Moon” by Greek author Voula Mastori.

As for the history and fiction books used in schools, references to Roma culture are entirely absent in them. The Roma people and their language are only briefly mentioned in the drama books for the final grades of primary school. However, these are incomplete and relatively conventional references.

Aggelos Hatzinikolaou is a retired primary school teacher. Having spent most of his career teaching in Dendropotamos, the most notorious ghetto in Thessaloniki, inhabited almost exclusively by Roma, he has developed a deep understanding of Roma culture in the Greek context. Interviewed by OBCT, he comments on the ethnocentric nature of the Greek school system:

In the name of supposedly promoting multiculturalism, as expected in our globalized societies, there have been superficial attempts to include populations considered as others, such as Roma, migrants and refugees. However, as is usually the case, an intercultural dialogue cannot be achieved by stereotypical references to food, dance and songs. There needs to be a much deeper dialogue, lacking in our education system.

The late professor Sofia Gavriilidis conducted crucial academic work in pedagogy, illustrating examples of “pseudo-intercultural” books for children in formal education and literature. Pseudo-interculturalism refers to attempts to acknowledge other cultures but in ways that either exoticize the Other, further emphasizing differences rather than building bridges through shared traits or implying the dominant culture's superiority by depicting Others as victims.

Georgia Kalpazidou is an activist, writer, and co-founder of the NGO REVMA (Roma Educational Vocational Maintainable Assistance), based in Ampelokipoi-Menemeni, northern Greece. PhD linguistics candidate and a Roma community member, Kalpazidou has been mentoring young girls in accessing education. Driven to fill a gap in Greek children’s fiction, the young writer has published a children’s picture book about early school leaving among Roma children. When asked about the presence of Roma culture in textbooks, her answer confirmed the abovementioned trend.

This is an interesting issue, I have also studied it, concluding that there are no references, apart from some stereotypical (although not necessarily negative) images that students can encounter when reading fiction books. So it is up to the teachers to decide whether to delve into the topic or not; formal schoolbooks do not contain any indication in this regard.

Conclusion

In conclusion, juxtaposing the cases of two countries in southeastern Europe, Romania and Greece, it seems that today, more than ever, representing history in schoolbooks is a complex challenge. It is not just about dates and events but also about including voices, facing uncomfortable truths, and dismantling outdated perspectives. Although the history of the Roma people is marked by hardship and resilience, from enslavement to surviving the Holocaust, this reality is often belittled or misrepresented in textbooks. This raises a difficult but necessary question: how can we teach history that reflects everyone’s experiences?