The Life and Death of a Polish Shtetl Book

This is a solid intro for anyone who has even a passing sympathetic interest in the only (other) group of people that are hated as much as the Jews. Crowe gives a systematic re-tracing of how the Roma-I tend to avoid using the word "Gypsy" since it has too much "Hate-story" attached to it-came to be "here". In Europe,America,... and our heads.As they are...except they're not. Bothering to actually find out how "History/Hate-story" came to be written, one finds a rather remarkable timeline covering hundreds of years and many diffrent "nations". The one thing uniting all of these places is,of course,their treatment of the aforementioned "ethnics". Except that it was not always like this; at their earliest time of recorded "appearance", the Roma were,at least in some places, highly prized for their skills in metal-work,music and various other occupations. It did appear to me that with the event of "modernity" (i.e. mass-prodution,mass-society),Romany individuality became an "undesirable" quality...together with their refusal to be "tied down" to a prescribed form of making a living. The book also covers what happened to the Roma after the collapse of Communism,but the author does have a tendency to end many chapters with the same phrases and no concrete ideas of what could be done to change their situation. But I may be a bit harsh here,Crowe is more of a historian than an activist,and there are of course no "quick-fixes" available for these "group/s" of people who have suffered centuries of very "institutionalized" racism/xenophobia. Reading this book,I came to realize that Europe has it's very own "Slavery issues" to deal with,and unlike the US,we have not yet organized a civil-rights based movement that takes up the battle for "Roma Rights/Equality". Maybe reading this book will help people to understand that what most regard as "deviant" behaviour is really often just a sign of deeply traumatized men and women who have been robbed of their past, and are in danger of being deprived of a future. This book should be widely read,prefably starting in schools...the earlier one learns of what has been done to the Roma the better. I highly recommend this,it is hopefully going to change any readers perceptions/ideas/pre-conceived notions about "Gypsies".