Mr. Polansky's presentation
 

Our second speaker in two days, Mr. Polansky gave us his insights into life among the Roma. You folks had a lot of questions. Now it is your turn to reflect on what you heard.

What surprised you?
What would you want to know more about?
What impressed you?

In general, like the previous posting, what are you thinking about so many hours later?

Posting due on Friday.

Mr. Polanski's Presentation
 

In Mr. Polanski’s presentation, he surprised me when he said he lived with the Roma for several months at a time. I was also quite surprised when he said that the Roma first originated in Punjab, India. I never knew they would originate there. What surprised me even more was when he said that just in Europe there is something like fourteen different dialects of the Roma language, spread across Europe alone.
I would like to know more about the living conditions and more about the kind of typical daily life for a Roma family. Also, I would of like Mr. Polanski to give an example of the writing the Roma use for their language. It would have also been nice if Mr. Polanski gave an example of the language of the Roma, and shared or taught us some words and phrases in the Roma language.
What impressed me was when Mr. Polanski said that the Roma were very warm and welcome with their hospitality. I was also impressed about the very distinct customs the Roma had, like how you should only marry a Roma in the same clan. Not only did their customs impress me, but also of how long the existence of Roma has been in our world.
From Mr. Polanski’s presentation, he seems to be a very dedicated man to his job and interests. This point is especially supported when he told us that he lived with the Roma for several months, and how he has written two or three books on them. After hearing him speak, I came to believe that he really is an expert on the Roma. Not that I didn’t think he was, but he surprised me about his complete full knowledge of them. I believe Mr. Polanksi should speak more often with schools and in general bigger audiences. The reason why is because I believe he can make the prejudices and discriminations of the Roma disintegrate with those people he has influenced. Mr. Polanski has certainly influenced me very much, and therefore, forced me to change my views on the Roma. Before the presentation, I believed the Roma were all involved with drugs, that they were thieves, liars, untrustworthy, and dangerous people. All that has changed now after I heard Mr. Polanski present his knowledge to us about the Roma. Mr. Polanski has taught me about the customs, beliefs, the history, and language of the Roma.

Mr. Polansky
 

What surprised me was that Mr. Polansky seemed to be generalising a lot about the Roma. He also seemed to be contradicting himself. At the end of the presentation I got the impression that the Roma were a very kind, very hospitable, very intelligent, sexist society. Also, I am sure that there ARE Roma who do not speak five languages. It seems that in trying to convince us that the Roma were a very interesting and intelligent people, Mr. Polansky ended up exagerating a lot. He seems to set the Roma apart from the rest of the world as the most intelligent, kind, interesting people, and he seems to forget to address the high levels of crime in their society. So, basically, I think that his presentation would have been more effective if he had not attempted to seperate Roma from all other groups, because, after all, we are all people!

I found Mr Polansky extremely knowledgeable about the Roma and I was very impressed that he had lived with the Roma for about 10 years. The reason this impressed me was that it really seemed to prove that he was extremely dedicated to his research and also extremely interested in the Roma. Another thing I liked about his presentation was that he had an introduction before the question and answer period. Unlike with Dr. Wiener, we had had no prior knowledge about his life, so this introduction was very helpful and informative. He also seemed to be very willing to answer all of our questions, and his answers were very clear and interesting.

I would like to know more about why he decided to dedicate so much time to studying the history and culture of the Roma. I know that someone asked that question, but I don't think that he answered why he decided to live with them, and what exactly sparked his interest enough to spend ten years and about 16 books learning about them.

the fact that surprised me was that the roma came from india. i had kinda known that from before but the actual reason for their leaving had been told to me as people going far and wide to fight for kings' armies and then not returning but moving on. i didn't know that they had left because of conflict in Multan.
i wanted to know more about the way they live and didn't know that they existed in india. i have never seen one before and wanted to know where in india they could be found.
what impressed me was the speaker's vast knowledge about them and the fact that he spoke a bit of their language and was able to appreciate them in a different them.
what i was thinking some time later was that when i go back to india next summer want to go and visit some gypsies and see if they actually do believe in snakes or not. i also want to see what kind of customs they maintain and if they really do think that the snake is lucky.

Mr. Polansky's presetation
 

Although very different content-wise and information-wise, Mr. Polansky's presentation about the Roma community was as interesting as the one of Dr. Weiner. What I admire about his positive attitude towards contributing such a community is his constant determination and will for making a change. I was surprised by the variety of jobs that he takes part of, including his literary status of publishing about 14 books, which, given that his job is filled with plenty of adventures, must be quite interesting; his working in Kosovo, teaching in the university of Iowa and working on tracing the steps of Roma dispersion around the planet many centuries back. I was impressed by the various facts, such as that the naming Domes is a synonym to Romas, that the most sacred “thing” to the Romas is the sun, for which they have, over time, formulated various proverbs; that the biggest sin a Roma could ever commit would be killing a snake, and so on. After thinking about it, I now regret that I didn't ask him to tell us some Roma proverbs about the sun. I would also be interested in learning his opinion about the situation during which, a couple of years back, the Czech Romas unsuccessfully tried to migrate to countries such as England and Canada.

The part that I found the most interesting, however, was the retelling his experience of living amongst the Roma community for about 10 years. The lifestyle that the gypsies lead, including the tough role of the women, who basically function as baby bearers, and slaves, the concept of buying a bride, the discrimination that the Romas constantly face leading them to falling into crisis of unemployment, which have continually led them to travel all around in search of jobs, although not quite nomads, and thus spreading their culture into all the corners of the world are all factors that put a distinction to this ethnicity. That they would easily assimilate to the customs and traditions of their host nation, I knew before, what I didn't know however, was that about 70% of the words from their spoken language are directly taken from the language that community around them speaks. The thing that I also found extraordinary about this group of people was their phenomenal talent for learning a great deal of languages, which is certainly something that the others can be jealous of.

All in all, being given a presentation about this ethnicity didn't cause us any harm. The way that Mr. Polansky presented was very interesting, informational, as well as understandable, which is essential for him since being a professor. What Mr. Polansky does is, I think, not a matter of courage, since he doesn't really face any harm, but a matter of will and sentiment for feeling with and understanding the outcasted, which Mr. Polansky certainly has.

Paul Polansky
 

Hello,
I'm glad that we had Paul Polansky in class on Tuesday. His presentation was good.
1) You know what really suprised me? That English has only 200 words originally, and the rest comes from Latin, French, German... this was the biggest surprise! What else was interesting is that mr. Polansky said that the Roma are actually very talented, they speak at least five languages, and that they are very friendly and welcome foreigners. I never knew about that, so now I know.
2) I would like to know more about their customs, i know that men buy the brides, but isn't it strange? When you buy a bride, and you really love her, what's the point then? Moreover, it seems like women are valuable so why are they treated like slaves? And the money goes to the bride's father, and the father will more or less give some money to the daughter, and his daughter lives with the groom. Hm.. this doesn't let me sleep.
It just doesn't make sense. So I would like to know more about the mentality of the Roma.
3) What really impressed me is that Mr. Polansky loved his job and lived among the Roma for several months.
And that the Roma believe it is good luck to have a snake in the house. This is really interesting.

*****---> I have known about the Roma before, because there are a lot of them in the Czech republic. You know, the Roma here in CR don't have such a good reputation, because they are liars, THIEFS!!! I don't have anything against them, but mr. Polansky spoke about the Roma so nicely, and he didn't say anything bad about them, if I remember well.

***my experience---Many Gypsies live in OSTRAVA <the 3rd largest city in CR for people who don't know!> and I grew up there. A group of Gypsies stole my mom's purse in the center of the downtown. It was in 1993. Of course, we were chasing them, but if a few Czechs didn't help us, we would be helpless. Since that day, I have always thought that Gypsies are bad people. If they stole someone's purse just once, i wouldn't think anything. But a few Gypsies also almost killed one Vietnamese man, who was by the our acquaintance, and there were many other problems with the Gypsies. You Czech people know what I am talking about!!!

BUT on the other hand, not all the Gypsies are like that. I have seen beautiful Gypsies, educated Gypsies, polite ones, but there are not so many of them, at least not in the Czech republic.

So for you guys, who do not have any experience with the Gypsies, simply, do not judge them by mr. Polansky's presentation, nor by anyone or anything else. They are normal people like us. Konec.

Mr. Polansky
 

This presentation by Polansky was extremely informative, and clear. First of all, I never knew Roma meant Gypsies or at least referred to them. Another thing is that I always had thought that Gypsies were from Europe, but now I know they originated from India. That they used to have a homeland, but after they were kicked out, and since then they have traveled out in all directions of the compass. They tend to be like Jews who live in groups, though not to the same extent. Also I never knew that the name gypsies came from Egypt. I would like to know more about how they are different know for different parts in the world. For example how gypsies live in Africa compared to European Gypsies. What impressed me the most is that Mr. Polansky has lived with them for ten years!!! This must be something hard to adapt to at first. However, as we have seen, someone has managed to do it for ten years now. I am wondering now how Mr. Polansky got such a HUGE motivation to do this for ten years. Also till now we can still see that he is interested in gypsies.

Mr. Polansky unfortunately didn’t impress me as much as Dr. Wiener. Although I sometimes sympathize with the situation of the Roma in the Czech Republic, I wasn’t able to take all that Mr. Polansky said about them. I believe that there are very many Roma who are intelligent, artistic, good hosts, kind, musicians…and all the other characteristics that Mr. Polansky mentioned, but as Molly said, he made it seem like every one of them is like that, and that is quite hard to believe. He said something like that he has never met a Roma that wouldn’t know at least three languages. That is also quite hard for me to believe, but I guess I’m not someone to judge that. Mr. Polansky is the expert here, but sometimes it seemed to me like he idealized the situation a bit, but perhaps that’s only my impression.

I would definitely like to know a little more about how the Roma live. Mr. Polansky told us about how easily they assimilate, but he never told us things like what their homes look like, how they interact (of coarse except for the husband /wife relationship), if they are able to interact with the community they had moved to… What I also found interesting is that Mr. Polansky never quite answered Mr. Crane’s question about the difficulty to unite them in an area and therefore to have their voices heard.

I don’t want to be negative about Mr. Polansky though. He has defiantly dedicated his life to the study of Roma, which is very impressive. It’s great that he was able to make his own theory about the origin of Roma people. His theory seemed very convincing, because he had many supporting facts. It is awesome that he is writing books about the Roma, because they are definitely and issue that should be talked about so that their problems in society and the way society views them will finally be resolved.

Mr. Polansky's presentation was also interesting, as Mr. Weiner's was. However, I do not know why, but it was easier for me to believe Mr. Weiner's words. I will explain why afterwards. What surprised me? Hmm, maybe the fact that Mr. Polansky mentioned many times, that Romas are kind, calm and friendly. From my previous experiences with Roma, I would not say this, but if I think about the fact that Mr. Polansky actually lived with them, then it convinces me to believe. Maybe Romas are nice to people they believe, not to foreigners. However, Mr. Polansky actually said that they are friendly to everyone and that it is easy to make friends with them. That is why I kind of could not believe each of his words. What impressed me? The fact that Mr. Polansky lived with Romas, eventhough I would say that Czech people are pretty scared of Romas. And what I thought about after this presentation? I tried to combine my experiences from tram, metro and abandoned parts of Prag where Romas make me scared with their screams and hands in women's bags with Mr. Polansky's words. Yes, I know there are also many Czech people acting the same way as those people in parks and trams, but I do not see as many of them, as Romas. I hope my ideas do not seem as racist's ideas, but ideas of confused person, that sees something different than than hears in presentation from person that lived with Romas for ten years.

I was very happy to have Mr. Polansky come and speak with us, I feel that we are very lucky to have people come in and help us look at the good side of people, I am sure that a lot of us, think of the gypsies that we saw stealing a woman’s purse. When we think of roma, I was impressed with Mr. Polansky's, continuous effort to live with the roma, and learn through oral history. I think that is honorable to do what he is doing. Mr. Polansky mentioned that the roma people have a great talent for learning languages, this was interesting to hear. I suppose that he would be the person to know, if somebody else told me this, I would probably say that they are generalizing or making it up. I am not quite sure that the statistic he gave us was accurate but I do think that if somebody were to know it would be him
I would be interested to know more about how the roma people have become so dispersed throughout the world today and why they do not know more about their roots.
Something that has stuck with me, is why somebody would decided to go live with a group of people for ten years! I have no problem with charity, on the contrary, that is what I would like to be doing later on in my life, it just seems to me more likely to go and help a different group of people I suppose, I would not have felt surprised if somebody decided to put themselves in the position of a homeless person, to deny themselves what the majority of people take advantage of. But to just go live with the roma seemed in a way unique. I am not critizing; I am just somewhat admiring the fact that he took the time to do this.
Overall, I enjoyed his presentation very much

The information this speaker gave about the Roma was informative and relatively interesting. However I come from a country with too huge of a Roma population to try and integrate in a normal society. Though stereotyping is wrong, some parts of it, pertaining to the Roma are true. The Roma I have encountered throughout my life in Bulgaria and every time I go back, do steal, threaten, and sometimes kill. It is a challange to stay on a bus long enough, and not get robbed, not to mention walking alone at night. With the kind of mentality I have developed against such acts commited by the Roma, it will be hard to convince me of their peaceful and friendly nature that the speaker talked about. And not only that but every time you get in a bus you cannot miss the pack of Roma women, wearing golden jewelery and chains, and trying to take the bag of an elderly woman. Like Assen mentioned about Romania, Bulgaria too has a self-proclaimed leader of the Roma who calls himself "King Kiro" and who lives in a three story mansion and is covered in gold. So after I have wittnessed all that a thousand times, no one can convince me that the solution is to integrate them in normal society. I do not have an answer to what can or can't be done. What I do know is that security needs to improve for all people.

Hi!
I really enjoyed listening to this speaker :D, and i think part of the reason was because the Roma are people who I see quite often and it is a present day issue. I learned a lot from his speech and I began to understand the problems the Roma have today. Most people don't like the Roma and generalize them way too much. My mom, for instance, always says that none of them want to work and that they all steal and have twenty kids. I do share the opinion with her in some cases, because truly some of them are like that, but there are many Roma that are nice, civilized and polite people. The reason why I do support her opinion in some ways i because we once lived in an apartment bulding with the Roma. They recieved the apartment from the government and it was just a floow above ours. They lived there for a year and I must say it was awful. Once in every few days, around 20 people came to their apartment to stay overnight. They left extreme mess everywhere. The hallways in the entire building were so dirty and nasty it looked as though nobody ever cleaned them. There were 6 kids in the family and the mother was pregnant twice that year. The kids all had barely any clothes and shoes and did not go to school. The parents did not work. And of course that Mr. Polansky did say that they are not allowed to work and so on, but I don't believe that they cannot get any kind of work. If they are given an apartment, I'm sure the government would give them work too, or what else whould be the point? But I guess they did not use their chance to work. And also, I don't believe that they couldn't have less kids. The life of the children was so bad! I felt really terrible for them, because it certainly wasn't their fault. However, that was only one example. I was glad to hear that there are other, educated Roma around. I also respect Mr. Polansky for researching this topic and living with them for 10 years! I think that's really great. I also find it amazing that he got their trust so well that they even told his their life stories. Also I find it really unfair to not give the Roma jobs and etc. because they actually have nowhere to go.
I was most amazed though be the thought that even after the civil war in the US, even after the Holocaust and the numerous other racism incidents, there are still books written about the Roma, the Roma are not given much from the government and just in general, the conditions are perfect for racism against them to evolve. I just find it very amazing. It's like walking in a circle. Why can't people understand that hate will never make things better?

What surprised me was the fact that they were actually a very peaceful group, other than that they were sexist and ran after each other with axes. I was also quite surprised that they didn't really keep to their own methods of doing things; instead they would adopt the country's methods of doing things. I would really want to know more about what daily life was like. Even though he tried answering my question it didn't really. I would rather have told me what his schedule was like, if they had any specific chores, if they had certain ceremonies and things along those lines. What really impressed me was the fact that he had lived among them for 10 years. I don’t think that very many people would have the chance or persistence to do something of this sort. Also what impressed me was that just because he knew a famous Roma he was automatically accepted into their society. What I couldn't stop thinking about even hours after I had left the presentation was that he had lived with them for so long and he seems no different from any other person that I had seen, and I would have thought that most Roma looked much different from most people that we see in our society today. I did however learn that Roma have jobs and live in our society and that they are no different from anybody else.

-A Morbid Whisper-

I haven't met any Roma before, not that I'm aware of anyways, so I have no judgement on them so I guess I take the speakers word for it, when he says they're actually friendly. What I really don't understand is how someone can devote so much time out of their lives to live with a different group of people, to move out of your own "habitat" to live like that. I would probably find it interesting and enjoyable for a certain amount of time, but after a while I would want to return to my own life. It's not that I wouldn't want to live with the Roma specifically, cause like I said above I haven't met them, I don't know what they're like, but I'm used to my own life and therefore I would find it hard to change my style of living for so long.

I found the presentation very interesting. When I was younger I remember always thinking of the classification “gypsy” being simply a way to call people that lived in a ghetto. It is horrible I know yet that was the idea that I was subjected to, primarily by the government in fact. Then later on I found out that they were actually a people that had traveled around the world a long time ago and had settled in different places. Yet one thing that I found the most fascination about the presentation was the root of the Roma. I would have never thought that they originated from India and then branched into different parts of the world. I was also very impressed by the fact that even today, many of their customs have remained in tact (obviously not for all Roma as Mr. Polansky explained, but for many). The question that I find myself asking is are there many people like Mr. Polansky who dedicate a large portion of their lives to try and make the Roma more understood in society. Of course, there are many people that do so with specific groups or small religions, but has there ever been someone that has really taken the time to study the Roma and their past. I’m guessing not, since Mr. Polansky is considered a head authority on Roma.

Mr. Polansky’s presentation about the Roma was, as mentioned by other students, interesting because of certain unrevealed facts about the Roma that he explained to us. I had different views of the Roma before Mr. Polansky’s presentation. I knew they were heavily discriminated by many Czechs and understood why, but I didn’t know where such discriminations had come from. Mr. Polansky revealed a good number of reasons why the Roma are discriminated and how they are currently perceived by Czech and other societies. He compensated for this by telling us that the Roma are excellent language learners/speakers and are capable, imaginative artists and musicians. This surprised me because most of the Roma that I have seen in Prague weren’t exactly artists or musicians, but construction workers and other poorer jobs. Mr. Polansky explained why and this has enabled me to change my views of this people.
I would like to know more about what the Roma are capable of doing, not only about how well they fulfill their stereotypes of thieves. If what Mr. Polansky said was indeed true, then they could become a valuable addition to Czech culture, in terms of music and development of language. If they continue to be discriminated as they currently are, we will never stop hearing stories about Ladas filled with a family of ten gypsies and how the car was on the verge of falling to pieces because its stolen parts didn’t fit together. I don’t think any group of people deserves to be attacked by such prejudice, which unfortunately is not entirely false. The Roma are simply not given sufficient opportunity to grow into the average Czech middle-class citizen who can earn his/her living. At the current rate of the way Czech society perceives them, it will be painfully long before they can actually develop into a respected group of people.
I was impressed by Mr. Polansky’s perseverance in his career. He actually let his career take up ten years of his life which I find to be very notable. And in the end it was worth it – he obtained the information that he had been striving to obtain for the last ten years. He was told about the concentration camp for gypsies, which was a topic left completely unspoken and forgotten by the camp’s victims. And so he could put together the holocaust project he had been inspired to do for so long.
Mr. Polansky has led an inspiring career, and in short I’m glad that he could share it with us.

As many people have already mentioned. . . . The fact that surprised me most was that he had lived among Roma, this must have given him such a strong understanding of the Romany people that he wouldn’t have learnt through merely research.

I would want to know more about whether or not Mr Polansky's life and lifestyle had changed before and after his 10 years living among the roma, also whether his perceptions on different moral matters had changed.

The fact that impressed me the most is his sheer compassion, my response to impressed, is very much similar to my response to surprised. My expectations were of a historian, who had merely studied Roma history, and Roma civilisation, and not experienced it.

Hours after the talk I was thinking about how people misjudge the roma society, and the truth in what Mr Polansky was stating regarding how a certain percentage of any group will do things that are perceived as "wrong", so why should this small % of roma represent the whole society.

-LyDiA-

Mr. Polansky and the Roma.
 

This presentation brought many surprises to me, because I knew nothing about the Roma. All the things I knew of the gypsies came from the stereotypical view of their life. Mr. Polansky presentation was very interesting and informative. I found out the origin of the Roma, their culture and religious believes. Mr. Polansky was mostly telling us that gypsies are not what we tend to think they are. However, it is hard for me to believe that after 1000 years in Europe the stereotypes of the gypsies remained and people’s opinion hardly changed. I doubt that these stereotypes were built on human’s fantasies. Mr. Polansky also talked that some gypsies do steal and rob; therefore not all stereotypes are false. Unfortunately Mr. Polansky didn’t talk about the rituals and the fortune telling that the Roma perform. Mr. Polansky presented the other side of the gypsies that I didn’t know about, Thank you for that.

Mr. Polansky’s presentation was not nearly as interesting as Mr. Weiner’s talk with us. Although some of the things he said were interesting, the total effect of the presentations was not as fascinating as Jan Weiner’s life. This is mainly because he had not suffered as Jan Weiner had; instead, he tries to end other peoples suffering. Although I was not as interested in his presentation, I did learn a lot about the Roma, the first thing, their name. I had always called them Gypsies, and had never heard anyone call them Roma. Also, I had no idea that they had come all the way form India, I believed that they had originally appeared in Eastern Europe and that they were persecuted there and had therefore fled.

What most impressed me about the Roma is the ability to keep their culture despite all the hate and cultures around them. IT is amazing that they have not totally assimilated with so much moving and that they still have their own language (with its variants).

I would like to know more about their difficulties in the world, and exactly what has been said about them that has made them a hated minority.

Mr. Polansky had very fixed ideas about Roma. He talked only about the positive thing about Roma, and did not even mention other things. There are so many stereotypes about them in almost every country, and almost all are the same. I’m not against Roma, however, if they are such nice, gifted, honest and smart people, why do people have such bad stereotypes about them. To convince us more that they are very nice people, he should have talked more about the negative thing and stereotypes, and explain the possibilities why we have those kinds of stereotypes.
He also mentioned that all the Roma have relatives all over the world. He said that they are communicating more and more, even if they never have met each other. The main way of communicating is e-mail, internet, which is quite interesting. We have seen the hate.com web pages that actually have negative influence on people against many groups, but in this case, internet is actually helping them.
Mr. Polansky said that Roma do not live well, and that they struggle because they do not have jobs. So the fact that American man lived in those conditions which he described as poor is very surprising. He must be a brave man.