Gypsies in Slovakia

[kaima]

A documentary on the Gypsies in Slovakia, some 51 minutes long, in Polish.



Spędziłem 30 dni wśród Cyganów we wschodniej Słowacji -- mówi reżyser filmu Stanislaw Mucha. Każdego dnia zdjęć żyłem w ciągłym napięciu, nie wiedząc, co mnie spotka. Jednak nie mogłem nie ulec ich życiowej swadzie, dobremu nastrojowi, potrzebie narzekania, gestom i hojności".

Celem Muchy było wniknięcie do świata Romów, sportretowanie go, a następnie pokazanie szerokiej widowni. Cyganie -- jako najszybciej rozrastająca się grupa etniczna -- stają się sąsiadami mieszkańców całej Europy. „Rozproszeni są po całym kontynencie. Nietrudno ich znaleźć w ich wioskach i obozach, ale mieszkają także w wielkomiejskich slumsach, w odrapanych i podupadłych budynkach. Trzeba uświadomić sobie, że oni również żyją w Unii Europejskiej, w bliskim sąsiedztwie nas samych" -- przekonuje Mucha.

Według różnych szacunków w Europie żyje od 6 do 11 milionów Cyganów. Liczby te, choć niedokładne, czynią z nich liczniejszą grupę etniczną od np. Duńczyków. A jednak Cyganie, jako odrębna nacja, stanowią wciąż wielką zagadkę dla większości Europejczyków.

From a Google translation of the write-up:

Published on Feb 27, 2012

I spent 30 days among the Gypsies in eastern Slovakia - says director Stanislaw Mucha. Every day of shooting, I lived in constant tension, not knowing what will meet me. But I could not be their life swadzie, good mood, need to complain, gestures and generosity. " Mucha's aim was to penetrate into the world of the Roma, portraiture, and then show a wide audience. Gypsies - as soon as the
growing ethnic group - are neighbors, people all over Europe. "are Scattered across the continent. It is not difficult to find them in their villages and camps, but also live in urban slums in dilapidated and run-down buildings. need to realize that they, too, live in the European Union, in close proximity to us same "- says Mucha. According to various estimates, in Europe live from 6 to 11
million Gypsies. These figures, though inaccurate, make them more numerous ethnic group from the Danish example. But Gypsies as a separate nation, are still a big mystery to most Europeans.
INFO:

Genre: Documentary Year: 2008
Director: Stanislaw Mucha TVRip [HQ]
LANGUAGE: POLISH LEKTOR

[Jaga]

Kai, good translation of the Polish text. I think it is easier to translate from Polish to English than the other way around. Just yesterday I laughted since one website had translations of their health articles into Polish language that was in use 500 years ago somewhere on the province. It was just so strange and funny!

Referring to gipsies.
The most gipsies I saw in Romania. I remember when I visited Slovakia in late 80s some gipsies lived in huge countryhomes. I was wondering how they became so rich. Not sure, I know the whole story.

[JustJohn or JJ]

I have often been intrigued by this culture. Here is some good info.




Gypsy history

To: sci.anthropology
From: STEPHANIE G. FOLSE ([e-mail])
Date: 4 Feb 1995

<long argument -- about "parasitical" cultures and how the term can or cannot be applied to the Jewish and Gypsy peoples -- cut>

Well, to give people some sort of basis for their arguments about Gypsy culture (since at least one has admitted his knowledge of Gypsies mostly comes from bunco squads), I present here a history of the Gypsy peoples that I pieced together from varying (and sometimes contradictory) sources.

I admit freely that some of this may be wrong due to the fact that *good* sources for Gypsy history and culture are few and far between. If I have anything wrong, or if you can clarify anything, please feel free to e-mail me at: [e-mail].

My sources are the same ones that I listed in a post earlier in this thread, so I won't repeat them here. E-mail me if you would like them.

I don't claim that I do doctorate-level work, but I am working towards my Masters' degree in Anthropology, so I have some knowledge of the discipline :-).

Stephanie G. Folse
[e-mail]
University of Denver

Tracing the history of a non-literate culture

Linguists compare Gypsy languages to historical languages; they look at words borrowed from other languages and when and where those words originally existed. It is possible to trace Gypsies back to their origin: the Sind area of India (today south central Pakistan -- the mouth of the Indus). Three separate emigrations occurred over the course of about four hundred years, traceable today in three identifiable linguistic populations: the Eastern Gypsy (Domari) in Egypt and the Middle East, the Central Gypsy (Lomavren) in Armenia and eastern Turkey, and the Western Gypsy (Romani) (Romany refers to the people, Romani refers to the language, Rom refers to a man or the people as a whole. Confused yet?) in Europe. This last group is the population most widely dealt with in reference works and literature, and therefore most of the information here pertains to them.

The first exodus was spurred by a ruler of Afghanistan, Mahmud of Ghanzi, who invaded the Sind area in A.D. 1001-1027. The second exodus arose out of attacks upon northwest India by Mahmud of Gorh (A.D. 1191-1192), and then the empire expansion of Genghis Khan (A.D. 1215-1227). The third took place during the reign of the khan Tamerlane in the late 1300's and early 1400's, when he attempted to repeat Genghis Khan's exploits.

Origin of the Gypsy

The cultural group that would later become the Gypsies led a semi-nomadic life in India, and has been tentatively identified as the Dom, which has been recorded as far back as the sixth century. The Dom performed various specialized jobs such as basket-making, scavenging, metal-working and entertainment, traveling a circuit through several small villages each year. This is not a unique phenomenon; the Irish Travellers, although completely unrelated genetically to the Gypsies, fulfill the same functions. Indian caste beliefs of the time may have been the original model for the strict purity and pollution ideology of the present Gypsies, modified over time through contact with other cultures. This semi-nomadic life allowed the Dom the opportunity to easily flee when battles threatened the area in which they lived, and apparently did so three times during the Middle Ages.

The European Gypsies are perhaps the original refugees from Mahmud of Ghanzi's wars, for all sixty Romani dialects contain Armenian words, suggesting that they passed through Armenia in the early 11th century on the way into the Byzantine Empire. The impetus to continue on and enter Byzantine Anatolia was most likely provided by the Seljuk Turks attacked Armenia during the 11th century and spurred the Gypsies onward

The earliest currently known reference to Gypsies is in a Life of St. George composed in the monastery of Iberon on Mt. Athos in Greece in 1068. It relates events in Constantinople in 1050, when wild animals plagued an imperial park. The Emperor Constantine Monomachus commissioned the help of "a Samaritan people, descendants of Simon the Magician, who were called Adsincani, and notorious for soothsaying and sorcery," who killed the beasts with charmed pieces of meat. (I wonder if the concept of "poison" never occurred to these people?) "Atzinganoi," the Byzantine term for Gypsies, is reflected in several other languages: the German "Zigeuner," the French "Tsiganes," the Italian "Zingari," and the Hungarian "Cziganyok."

During the next 200 years, the Gypsies slowly advanced southwest into Arabia, Egypt and North Africa, northwest into the Byzantine Empire and established themselves in the southern Balkan countries (Serbia, Moldavia, Bulgaria, Hungary and the surrounding area) before 1300. It seems likely to me that this movement was slow due to the westward pressure of the Mongolian Empire; all of Eastern Europe's population was in turmoil and Russian refugees were fleeing west at the time. Once Khubilai Khan died in 1294, the Mongolian Empire began its decline and the borders crept back east, easing pressure on Europe and allowing the Gypsies to expand more rapidly than the previous two centuries. They entered Dubrovnik (modern-day Yugoslavia) before 1362, and had blanketed the Balkans by 1400.

The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries came as close to a Gypsy Golden Age as there had ever been. Gypsies covered Thrace, Macedonia, Greece, Yugoslavia and Rumania long before the Ottoman Turks conquered those lands. There was a large population at the seaport of Modon in the 1300's, on the most popular route to the Holy Land, settled in the Gypsy Quarter, a tent-city just outside the city walls sometimes called Little Egypt. This exposure to pilgrims and the attitudes and privileges accorded to them may have led the Gypsies to adopt pilgrim personas once they spread into Western Europe.

The Gypsies seemed to prefer Venetian territories such as Crete and Corfu, perhaps because those lands were relatively safe from the constant Turkish incursions. The population, and therefore their annual dues, in Corfu increased enough to form an independent fief conferred in 1470 onto the baron Michael de Hugot, which lasted until the nineteenth century. In the town of Nauplion, in the eastern Peloponnese, the Gypsies apparently formed an organized group under a military leader, one Johannes Cinganus (John the Gypsy). The Venetians expected to be given military aid in the case of increasing Turkish raids, and may have hoped the Gypsies would cultivate depopulated land.

Gypsies a little farther north, in the Balkans, were not quite as lucky. They certainly had economic importance, valued as artisans practicing such trades as blacksmithing, locksmithing and tinsmithing, and also filled the niche between peasant and master, but to prevent escape the government declared them slaves of the boyars. They could be sold, exchanged or given away, and any Rumanian man or woman who married a Gypsy became a slave also. Liberty was not fully restored to them in Moldo-Wallachia until the nineteenth century.

During the fifteenth century, the nature of the Gypsies' hesitant travels into Western Europe changed. Before that time, they were quiet, unobtrusive and loosely organized, but afterwards they moved in a purposeful way, courting attention, claiming to be pilgrims and demanding subsidies and letters of dispensation. During the two decades after 1417, there are some interesting observations to make. The Gypsy bands seemed to have some unity of action and connection with each other, telling the same tales and displaying similar supporting documents (papal letters and such). A surprising fact is that well into the sixteenth century there is no mention made of Gypsies having their own language, and no apparent difficulty in communicating with the inhabitants of countries they were visiting for the first time. These groups were organized under leaders with noble names and titles, sometimes exchanged with other chiefs. This is unusual in that many of the countries of central and eastern Europe made sure that Gypsies did not rule Gypsies.

What was behind this curious behavior? It may have been the Turkish invasion of the Balkans in the early 1400's; Wallachia capitulated to Turkish rule in 1415, two years before the first Gypsy bands were recorded in Western Europe. The Gypsies themselves would probably not have been affected in the long run under Turkish rule (ignoring the immediate fires, sacking and battles), due to the Turkish habit of leaving civilian populations free as long as they paid taxes to their conquerors, not an unfamiliar state of affairs for Gypsies. Many people stayed and embraced Islam, but there are records of other refugees including nobles wandering west in groups and subsisting on charity. One traveler who visited Modon attributed the Gypsy migration to lords and counts who would not serve under the Turks. It seems that the self-interest of barons of Gypsy fiefs who stood to lose quite a bit under Turkish rule was the impulse behind the organized incursions into Western Europe, and at least during the first few years the men who claimed to be barons, counts and dukes were telling the truth.

Whatever the impetus, the Gypsies exploded into central Europe. The usual scam involved a group claiming to be from Egypt or Little Egypt (perhaps referring to Modon?) showing up in a city and informing city officials that they were Christians doomed to wander for a period of years to fulfill a penance imposed upon them for the sin of neglecting their religion. They would collect food, money and letters of protection from the city and then continue to the next town. By 1417, Gypsies were recorded in Germanic cities. In 1418, several thousand Gypsies under a leader called Count Michael showed up in Strassbourg. Gypsies were entering Brussels and Holland by 1420, Bologna in 1422, and showing up in Rome in July of that same year. They travelled into Spain by 1425 and Paris by 1427. By the middle of the century, rulers and town governments started banning Gypsies, usually citing theft, fortunetelling, begging and sometimes espionage as the reasons. Europeans also recognized as lies the Gypsies' claims to be pilgrims in exile from Egypt, but there are a few instances of alms being given into the sixteenth century, apparently by slow learners.

At this point their meteoric expansion westward stopped for almost a century. Groups traveled east from the Balkans into Russia, establishing themselves in Siberia by the early sixteenth century but they did not enter Great Britain until 1514, probably because a completely separate ethnic group, the Tinkers, already occupied Britain and performed the same roles Gypsies did in other countries: nomadic entertainers, knife-grinders, pot-menders, woodworkers, transient field employees and so forth. The impetus to enter the British Isles was probably given by late fifteenth century Spanish policies ruling against and banishing Gypsies. With nowhere else to go, they entered Britain, then finally Norway in 1544 and Finland in 1597.

Why stay nomadic for so long?

From an anthropological point of view, I would say that this transient, fully nomadic lifestyle developed in response to the constant fighting pushing them west. Originally refugees from India, they may have thought they would return to their homeland as soon as Mahmoud of Ghanzi's fighting stopped. Refugees quite often stay ready to return to their point of origin for many years once pushed out of their native lands. (A modern example: some Cuban refugees still keep bags packed in anticipation of returning at any time.)

When the Dom people left the Sind, they probably planned to live on the road for a few years and then return to their home territory. Normally, the second generation would have settled down in this "temporary" new area, but they were semi-nomadic to begin with, and then the Seljuk Turks invaded and pushed them farther west. After that the Mongolian expansion kept pushing them, and eventually the idea that there was a "back home" was lost. They retained their original semi-nomadic lifestyle in the midst of sedentary cultures, keeping their language and strict pollution ideology in order to maintain their unity as a people as well as clinging to something familiar in the midst of strange new cultures. They were mostly successful until the nations of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries grew powerful enough to force the majority to settle. Their identity as a separate people is still strong enough for them to remain the brunt of prejudice and hatred, a fact hammered home by the killing of half a million Gypsies by the Nazis during World War II. Now, it may only be a few generations until any idea of nomadism is leached out of almost all Gypsies.

[Nictoshek]

I still saw quite a few polskie cygany while living there.

[karl]

Interesting presentation of the Roma. As depicted by the still photo with associated urls of the manner many live is quite accurate. Not all live that way though, for some are very prosperous and live in some very nice homes with a currant year auto as similar. These though, usually are in business for them selves.

Whilst others are as you would imagine, just a step up from total rags and metal tins. Most though, are attractive people with very good features.

In of the url nicely provided, is very interesting in the basic manner of begging. For they are well organized in the manner of taking money form those that give.

It is more interesting to study by observation their street organization. If perhaps to locate a elevated street that over looks an extent of 2 intersections then observe their operation. For each will have their own section to work and they know their target in advance {the smart ones}. If to observe properly, as a pedestrian is targeted and gives to the receiver what ever money. This is noted by the section boss and communicated to the next Roma worker to not bother that pedestrian, but to target the following pedestrian for money.

At end of day, the street boss gathers up his workers on his area section, collects the monies and makes the accounting as to which worker is the slacker. One corrective measure with a stick, and that formerly work slacker is now very active once released from the alley way.

The Roma for the most part, are communal. A portion of monies collected is then return to each as their wages with perhaps a gift amount as incentive for their hard work. The remainder is divided up as needs be with an amount provided to the Roma leader, this person inturn will forward to his boss, and expected amount for the privilege of his existence.

These Roma people are very well organized and most examples of their activities is planned in advance for a purpose, and that purpose is to extort monies out of the pockets of working people.

If perhaps to believe these people are crooks and thieves. Please to consider our selves for what we do, we do very similar, but in a different manner.

For example: We produce a product at the price of what it takes to produce. Then we inflate that price to sell at a profit to a customer or whole saler. This person will then mark up the price for a profit for resale, and on and on.

When we work for another, we sell our time for the best profit that is marketable. Our employer uses the time he/she has purchased of our time and skills, and uses this for a base to create another profit, and so on and so on. Until the final product and/or service is purchased by the consumer at a vastly increase in final cost.

For the actual value of most any given product is initially worth only the cost of raw materials and labour. Until increased value is establish by the purchaser of product.

In this manner, it is difficult to treat harshly the activities of the Roma for are we better then them? Or are they our equals in use of marketable skills?

Karl

[Nictoshek]

The lives of the Sinti and Roma in Germany

DW.DE

At a small dead-end street in a suburb of Cologne-Roggendorf, well kept houses line the streets. Popularly known as a "Gypsy settlement," the area is home to 18 Sinti families.

Children play in small groups on the street, men stand on the sidewalk, and at the end of the row of houses, women prepare food. The smell of firewood hangs in the air on a warm, sunny day in October.

Markus Reinhardt, a musician has lived here since his youth. When the settlement was planned at the beginning of the 1970s, in a suburb on the outskirts of Cologne, there were disagreements with locals, he said, "the old-timers didn't want us to be here." One of the local bar owners even put a sign up saying "no entry for gypsies" before removing it later himself out of fear of legal action against him. The situation has relaxed somewhat over the years.

Next door to the Gadjes

Today, there is still friction between the Sinti and their neighbors, the non-gypsies, or Gadjes, over everyday things. "They get upset once in awhile about the smoke," said resident Sekulo Steinberger. "When we party a little longer than we should, the police are here really quickly. Then we use our steam-violin, that sounds really romantic. That's how we send our neighbors to sleep," he added with a grin.

Community life in the village happens outside. In the spring, some families without school-age children take a caravan and go on a holiday. "When the first rays of sun come out after winter, we get itchy feet," said Johann Feix, who left Saarland for Cologne and married into the local tribe.

Language identifier

Amongst themselves, people here speak the language of their ancestors. "We have no written language, everything is passed on orally. The elders are our books, so we are dependent on them," said Reinhardt.

Members of both the Roggendorfer Romani clans speak fluent German. And like other languages the Romer language is constantly changing. "For many things we use German words. For example we don't have a word for war in our language, because we've never been a nation who has had to defend themselves," said Reinhardt.

The politically correct term "Sinti and Roma" is not one Reinhardt said he likes, "We want to be called Gypsies, that is the normal German word for us. That it was used so negatively in the Third Reich is one thing, but Sinti and Roma is just wrong. What is with all the other clans that are simply omitted?"

Reinhardt said he and his family regard Cologne as their home, "When the FC [football club] loses, then half the settlement is crying," he said. And his cousin Johnny added, "We are Cologne Sinti."

In addition to the language, the cohesion of family is vital to the survival of the culture. Only then is it that everyday rituals are taught to the younger members of the clan.

"The boys see what we do," Reinhardt said. "That makes the gypsy life. If I live alone, I can't share my knowledge with the community."

Gypsy music

Another link between old and young, is music. "My great uncle Django Reinhardt, for example, played old favorites, but in a very specific way," Reinhardt said. "We learn music, like children learn language. We watch the older people, until we can do it like they do."

Dislo, Reinhardt's son, and a friends Samjo and Speckoformed the hip hop group Westside Sinti Music (WSM), and although they speak perfect German, they said they choose to rap mainly in Romani "because it flows better." Their lyrics are about everyday things like being outside, going on holiday and the strong cohesion within the settlement.


The Sinti are very much German, with their deer heads adorning their walls

Integral part of Cologne's cultural life

The entire settlement attended the 2012 Rheinland Gypsy Festival, organized by Cologne local Han Krauthäuser, and heard WSM play.

"Our family thought it was cool," Specko said. It's thanks to the Gypsy festival, which was attended by enthusiastic non-Gypsies, that the Sinti-culture now has a firm place on the Cologne culture scene.

Clichés are there to be changed the settlements inhabitants said. Completely relaxed, they play to the public's perception and greet us with patience, humor and hospitality. As a Sinti musician, Reinhardt moves between the two extremes, romanticization and stigmatization. Prejudices mean nothing to him, he said, you just have to be willing to change them.



_

[pieter]

Sinti music in the Netherlands

By making music, Sinti can express their selves best and it has always been a very important part of the Sinti culture. Nowadays also modern society appreciates their music, e.g. Het Koninklijk Zigeunerorkest Tata Mirando (Royal Gipsy Orchestra Tata Mirando), the Rumanian bornGregor Serban (Brăila, Augustus 1, 1909 – Delft, December 12, 1997), the Hungarian born Lajos Veres (1912 - 1981) (Veres daughter was the world famous singer Mariska who was known as the singer of popgroep Shocking Blue), the global success of The Rosenberg Trio and the many Gipsy music festivals (that start appearing) all over the world. Also the movie world has taken interest in Gipsy culture and especially Sinti music (e.g. Vengo and Swing by Tony Gatlif and When the Road Bends: Tales of a Gypsy Caravan by Jasmine Dellal).







Daughter of an Hungarian Gypsy, Mariska Veres




Music has been the language of the Sinti for ages. Their language and music has never been written down, but were, are and will be heard forever. Music is given through by father to son, uncle to nephew and so on. Almost everything is done auditorial and their talent is a gift from mother nature. Artistically Sinti have a big potential regarding musical qualities and instrumental skills. The fast pace, improvisations and the virtuosity are very special and this is why their music has an almost untouchable authenticity on stage which cannot be taught, it is in their veins.

During the 30’s Django Reinhardt introduced a new style of music known as Hot Club de France. His style of playing the guitar was far ahead of it’s time and this music is of great inspiration to many Sinti musicians. In The Netherlands the core of this music is situated in Zuid-Oost Brabant (in the Southern part of the Netherlands) and especially the city of Nuenen.





In the tradition of the Dutch School of gipsy-swing, making this type of jazz is a group-thing, where the standards are always the same, but by playing these standards on-and-on, in the end a high musically level is reached. Despite this, almost encoded, way of expressing, a very creative process has been put to work in which their own feel and emotion find a great balance. Today, more Sinti musicians compose their own songs, but Django is still their hero and his work will always be the standard by which their songs are measured.

Zuid-Oost Brabant is famous for it’s large number of gifted Sinti (gipsy) musicians, especially in the Hot Club de France genre, but the interest from within different jazz genres is growing. All over the world the Sinti from Nuenen have a great reputation. This inspired the American musicologist and ethnologist Michael Horowitz to write the book "Gypsy Picking" specifically about Dutch Sinti musicians (Nuenen) and the technique they use when playing their guitars. Wasso Grünholz is a Dutch Sinto from these parts and his style is recognized by many Sinti musicians as far as France. He was also the tutor of many, like Stochelo Rosenberg and Paulus Schäfer. International they speak about the Dutch School, which they interpret the music of our bands.



Paulus Schäfer with his mother, who is the singer

[pieter]

The Dutch schlager singer, Frans Bauer, who comes from a Dutch Travellers family. The Dutch Travellers have a similar lifestile to the Irish Travellers (Irish: an lucht siúil) or Pavee, a traditionally nomadic people of ethnic Irish origin, who maintain a set of traditions and a distinct ethnic identity. Here he visits the Hungarian Gypsies in a Gypsy camp in Hungary. He shows Dutch guests the place and explains that he lived under similar circumstances in his youth. His parents didn't have a normal house, but a Mobile home. And his traveller neighbours lived in caravans or motorhome's or mobile homes too.

Dutch travellers and Dutch gypsies are different groups, because Dutch travellers are original Dutch people (native Europeans), who became Nomads, and Gypsies in the Netherlands are colored people with North-Indian roots, and they orginally come from Hungary and Rumania. Most Dutch Gypsies are Sinti and Roma. Only a few Spanish Gitano Gysies live in the Netherlands.

[Nictoshek]

A court ruling is slowly helping lead to joint classes for white and Roma students in Slovakia

In Its Efforts to Integrate Roma, Slovakia Recalls U.S. Struggles

By ANDREW HIGGINS
May 9, 2013

SARISSKE MICHALANY, Slovakia — Gazing out his window during morning recess on his first day at work, the principal of an elementary school here, Jaroslav Valastiak, was caught up short: all the children playing in the asphalt-covered yard were white, a strikingly monochromatic scene at a school where a majority of pupils are dark-skinned Roma.

The Roma children, he then discovered, had all been shepherded into a separate, Roma-only playground.

Lunchtime brought another shock. The school canteen served only white children, with Roma pupils left outside with bagged rations, instead of hot food. Classes were also divided, officially on the basis of academic aptitude, but in a manner that ended up grouping students along rigid ethnic lines.

“The segregation here was as obvious as fireworks,” Mr. Valastiak said.

The 59-year-old principal has spent the past year trying to break down barriers, both physical and mental, in a painful struggle for integration that some here say echoes that of the United States more than a half-century ago.

“The situation in Slovakia now is exactly the same as it was in the United States,” said Peter Pollak, a Roma member of Parliament and the government’s plenipotentiary for Roma communities, who recently visited the United States to learn about its battles over segregated schooling and other entrenched barriers to equality.

In a continent faced with an economic crisis, soaring unemployment and bursts of nationalist populism, the elementary school here in eastern Slovakia is a microcosm of one of Europe’s biggest challenges: how to keep old demons of ethnic scapegoating at bay and somehow bring its most disadvantaged and fastest growing minority into the mainstream.

Many Europeans associate Roma with crime, particularly well-organized gangs of young Roma pickpockets who prey on local residents and tourists alike in the Continent’s wealthier cities.

Descendants of medieval migrants who arrived in Europe from India more than a millennium ago, Roma, also known as Gypsies, now account for around 10 percent of Slovakia’s population and a substantial minority in Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, the Czech Republic and Macedonia. There are also Roma communities scattered across Western Europe.

In all these places, they outpace all other groups in unemployment, illiteracy and other indicators of deprivation and as targets for abuse and sometimes violent attack.

Only 20 percent of Roma men of working age in Slovakia have jobs — compared with 65 percent in the general population — and they die 15 years earlier than the national average, according to a World Bank report last year. Only 28 percent of Roma children even start the equivalent of high school, compared with the 94 percent of native Slovaks who graduate.

In terms of health, income and education, the report said, the “dire situation” of Slovakia’s Roma “is more comparable with that of countries in sub-Saharan Africa than the European Union.”

The struggle for desegregation in Sarisske Michalany and other towns and villages across wide stretches of Europe has galvanized a small but energetic band of civil rights activists and stirred angry opposition from defenders of the status quo.

“There is a lot of resistance to what we are trying to do,” said Vlado Rafael, the director of EduRoma, a group that is now working with Mr. Valastiak, the school principal.

The most powerful lever working for desegregation in Slovakia has been the court system, which has been reinforced by antidiscrimination statutes adopted in the past decade to bring the code into conformity with European Union standards.

Inspired by the landmark 1953 United States Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which declared segregated schooling unconstitutional, Vanda Durbakova, a Slovak civil rights lawyer, filed a suit in 2010 against the Sarisske Michalany elementary school. Recently, she won a legal victory.

An appeals tribunal in the city of Presov ruled that the school had violated an antidiscrimination law by separating students. The three-judge panel rejected arguments that segregated teaching was driven by legitimate academic considerations, and ordered that classes be integrated by the start of the next school year.

Ms. Durbakova, a lawyer with the Center for Civil and Human Rights in Kosice, the main city in eastern Slovakia, said she chose the village not because it was a particularly egregious offender but for the opposite reason, because the “school is not exceptional.”

The appeals court ruling, which came into force in February after the school decided against further appeal, “won’t solve the problem,” she said, but does give legal force to arguments long made by Roma activists that discrimination exists, is illegal and must be combated.

Leslie Hawke, an American, has worked for more than a decade in Romania helping to get Roma children into preschools. She worries that the focus on racial discrimination distracts attention from the abject poverty of many Roma and their alienation from modern mainstream norms, which she considers a more serious brake on integration.

Many Roma activists, Ms. Hawke said, “see everything through the prism of racism” and play down economic and social obstacles. “Tremendous racism” exists, she added, but “there are no Jim Crow laws to strike down.”

Mr. Valastiak, the principal, said he welcomed the court’s ruling but cautioned that integration ultimately depends mostly on narrowing the cultural gap. When he opened the school canteen to Roma students, for example, “we had to teach them how to use cutlery, and some had trouble digesting warm food.”

He also abolished separate playgrounds and lifted a ban on Roma parents entering the school building. But, he acknowledged, integrating classes has only just started and has already created frictions, not only because white parents object but also because Roma children often do not want to leave their friends who remain in the segregated classes.

“I need to move slowly,” he said. “I can’t make a radical break.”

Among the faculty, wariness of Roma runs strong. “These people are interested in only two things: money and sex,” said Vladimir Savov, an English teacher. “They are lazy and don’t want to learn.”

Like other teachers, Mr. Savov now accepts that change is necessary, if only to satisfy the court, but he is deeply skeptical about abandoning segregated teaching. “Mixed classes are a good idea in principle, but the question is how will they work in real life,” he said.

On paper at least, the school has never had separate classes for Roma but only special, remedial ones for slow learners, all of whom happened to be Roma. A 2009 study by the Roma Education Fund, a Hungary-based group, found that more than 85 percent of the students enrolled in special classes in Slovakian schools are Roma.

Mr. Valastiak said that not all Roma belong in remedial classes, but that many, particularly those who travel to his school from a garbage-strewn ghetto in the adjacent village of Ostrovany, do have trouble keeping up with their white schoolmates. Most Roma children from the ghetto, he said, start their schooling with no previous exposure to books, a poor grasp of Slovak and little or no discipline.

Of his school’s 435 students, 270 are Roma, with 220 of these coming from the ghetto, which has no school.

Vincent Lesso, Sarisske Michalany’s mayor, said he supported integration during recess and lunch, but not in the classroom. “Sudden integration is not an option,” he said, and will only drive the white children to other schools. A handful of parents, angry at Mr. Valastiak’s policies, have already sent their children to a school in another village that has no Roma families.

Mr. Pollak, the government’s senior official for Roma affairs, agreed that the authorities needed to go slowly to curb the risk of “white flight.” Officials also worry about extremist groups seizing on white frustrations to promote their overtly racist views.

“To think that there will soon be only integrated schools in Slovakia is naïve,” he said.

White parents in Sarisske Michalany denounce the pressure for integration as the work of outsiders ignorant of local realities. “Why should my kid be forced to be part of an experiment that holds her back with Roma children?” said Lubos Bernat, head of the village school board and of an all-white parents association.

Monika Duzdova, one of two Roma teaching assistants hired by Mr. Valastiak to help the integration program, said she understood some of the concerns of white parents and added that the better-off Roma families were also alarmed by the flood of destitute children from the nearby ghetto.

The ghetto in Ostrovany is separated from the white neighborhood by a seven-foot concrete wall, erected in 2009 in response to a rash of robberies. It has not stopped thieving, but, said Peter Kaleja, a resident of the ghetto who works as a teaching assistant at the elementary school, has left Roma children even more alienated.

His biggest headache these days, Mr. Kaleja said, is not hostility from whites to integration, but from Roma children and their parents. “They have got used to separation,” he said. “There is now a wall in their minds.”

SLIDESHOW:

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