In an old beautiful building on Krakowska street 10 in Tarnow you find the Ethnographic Museum. It has two parts - one with local handcrafts, and one about the Gypsies, or the Roma people, as they prefer to call themselves.
A Roma Hymn:
I've travelled travelled long roads
Meeting with happy Roma.
Hey, Roma, from where have you come
with tents set on Fortune's Road?
For some unfortunate reason, photos I took with the flash did not come out very clear. But I can only urge you to go there yourself and study the exhibits.
The Roma seem to have started their journey from India around 1000 years ago, arriving in Europe around 500 years ago.
Their life was never easy, but during World War Two a great number of Roma were murdered according to the Nazi ideology.
What is particularly sad, is that the names and lives of those murdered are in most cases lost forever.
Seeing the map of the numbers of Roma living in the different European countries and deported to death camps, I saw that 60 Roma persons had been deported from Norway.
Who were they?
Are they remembered in Norway?
Outside the museum is a collection of old Roma waggons.
This is a place to come back to, to learn more about this ethnic group, and perhaps be there when they themselves gather to do their own Remembrance Trail in the paths of those murdered in WWII.
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