"Qu'ils mangent de la brioche"

As Ann Widdecome is a former Government Minister a present Member of Parliament a devout Christian and a member of the 'Conservative Christian Fellowship' I thought her views would be of interest.

"There's a distinction between the genuine Romanies and the rest'...It's the rest that the law should come down on." - Ann Widdecome.

These ideas are not new. Heinrich Himmler suggested the establishment of a remote reservation, where "pure Gypsies" could continue their nomadic lifestyle unhindered.

According to him: The aim of measures taken by the State to defend the homogeneity of the German nation must be the physical separation of Gypsydom from the German nation, the prevention of miscegenation, and finally, the regulation of the way of life of pure and part-Gypsies.

Nine representatives of the Romani community in Germany were asked to compile lists of pure-blooded Romanies to be saved from extermination. However, these lists were often ignored and some who were named on them were still sent to concentration camps.

The extermination of Romanies was started as early as 1933 while camps were being established by the Nazis to contain Romanies at Dachau, Dieselstrasse, Mahrzan and Vennhausen. The vast majority of Romanies were to suffer the same indignities as the Jews. The Society for Threatened Peoples estimates the casualties at 277,100. Martin Gilbert estimates a total of more than 220,000 of the 700,000 Romani in Europe, including 15,000 (mainly from the Soviet Union) in Mauthausen in January–May 1945. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum cites scholars that estimate the number of Sinti and Roma killed to lie between 220,000 and 500,000. Dr Sybil Milton, a historian at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Research Institute, estimated the number of Romani lives lost to be up to 1,500,000.

Most of the above is from the 'Porajmos' page in Wikipedia.

I personally find the way Ann Widdecome dismissed out of hand generations of Travelling Peoples family life and  culture as though it was some form of ignorance that could be righted if "they" got a small flat, to be brutish of her.

Evensong

Give up your Jews
Give up your Jews
Give up your Jews

And your Gypsies too

Give up your Colleagues
Give up your Neighbours
Give up your Friends

Give up them All
Give up Control
Give up your Soul

We have a Law...To make you Obey
We have a Law...To take you Away
We have a Law...To kill you Today

Law is Might...Wrong is Right
Dark is Light...Blind is Sight

No turning back at the Mississippi Turnpike

Now for Evensong.