"Apal nás aba slobodo te phíras le vurdonenca". The End of Itinerant Life in Former Czechoslovakia from the Perspective of Vlax Roms
Abstract
This paper is based on interviews with eyewitnesses from the group of Vlax Roms living in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, who remember the situation in the late 1950s, when the Communist Party forced the itinerant group of Roms to settle down (enforced via law no. 74/1958). This study combines the methods of oral history among the Vlach-Rom eye-witnesses of the time before and after the years 1958/1959, and archival research.
In academic literature, the scholars have very often described the whole process of sedentarisation as uniform for the whole group. However, the author argues that many Vlax families and subgroups were settling down under different circumstances and within a different time range.
The Romani eyewitnesses talked about their routes and geographical trajectories, describing the motivations and reasons of their mobilities with wagons and horses, and gave an account of the itinerant lifestyle without a house. The author wants to point out that some families of Vlax Roms settled down voluntarily already in the pre-war period or even earlier, while other families were on the move even after the years 1958-1959, at the time when the itinerant lifestyle was strictly outlawed.