Roma Community Facing Forced Eviction

[ROMA DAILY NEWS]
CALL FROM AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL FOR URGENT ACTION: Roma Community Facing Forced Eviction.

This would destroy yet another community of 200 Roma people, leaving them without possessions or place to live as families. I wrote the following letter to the Mayor of Milano, Italy, with cc. to the Newspaper ‘Corriere della Sera’ in Milano, and the ‘International Herald Tribune’ in Paris.

[ROMA DAILY NEWS]

CALL FROM AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL FOR URGENT ACTION: Roma Community Facing Forced Eviction.

This would destroy yet another community of 200 Roma people, leaving them without possessions or place to live as families. I wrote the following letter to the Mayor of Milano, Italy, with cc. to the Newspaper ‘Corriere della Sera’ in Milano, and the ‘International Herald Tribune’ in Paris.

Re: Eviction of Roma/Gypsies from Rubattino area

Dear Dott. Lombardi,

My name is Sonia Meyer. I grew up after World War II in a very distinguished Jewish family of highly distinguished scientists. One of my uncles (by marriage) earned a Nobel Prize in physics. I had the honor of meeting in person Italy’s greatest physicist Enrico Fermi, a poetic man in person. In the States I met many distinguished Italian Jewish refugees from Italy. All these people, despite fascism, never lost their love for the Italian people, who they felt were not their true enemies. Many of them returned to the country they loved to spend their last years of life.

I am afraid these same people would turn in their graves, if they learned what is happening to their beloved country. The Gypsy people are not strangers on European soil. They’ve lived among us for over 600 years. They are our highly artistic, maybe at times stubborn and hard to manage, European brothers and sisters. I was born in Germany and, although my family went underground during the Hitler regime and my blood is very mixed, I feel shame for whatever little German blood flows in my veins. Don’t leave that same heritage to your children.

It is not too late, stop the eviction of your fellow Europeans from the Rubattino Camp. I could personally try to get Roma leaders here in the United States to send their own people over to try and work out possible solutions. In fact Gypsies have no reason to trust non-Gypsies, their lives have had nothing but tragedy since they arrived on European soil. I believe, and I have dealt with Roma for a great part of my life, it would be best to start involving Roma to deal with Roma. It would be an effort that would show very positive results in a short time.

I am available to you if I can be of help. I realize the economic situation everywhere makes life difficult for many countries, but let’s try to solve problems in a way that makes us proud to be human.

Sincerely,

Sonia Meyer