Memoáry romských žen (Memoirs of Romani women)

The pub­li­ca­tion Mem­oirs of Romani Women presents two auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal sto­ries of Romani women who were born dur­ing the 1920s and 1930s. One side of the book, enti­tled Eli­na — The Saga of the Holomek Fam­i­ly, con­tains the mem­oirs of Eli­na Machálková, a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the so-called Mora­vian Roma, from her birth to 1997; how­ev­er, her nar­ra­tive part­ly goes back fur­ther, to the 1880s, when her grand­par­ents were born. The oth­er side of the book fea­tures the rem­i­nis­cences of Karolí­na Kozáková, a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the so-called Czech Roma, and is enti­tled Karolí­na — a jour­ney through life in a gyp­sy wag­on. They cov­er the peri­od from the mid-1920s to 1969.

Each of these sec­tions opens with an Intro­duc­to­ry Note by Jana Horváthová. The fol­low­ing chap­ter (bear­ing the same title as the book’s title) explains the sig­nif­i­cance of the two wit­ness­es and why their sto­ries have been pub­lished togeth­er. The next chap­ter is devot­ed to the main char­ac­ters fea­tured in the sto­ry. This sec­tion con­tains a list of the names of the ances­tors of both sur­vivors, often includ­ing dates and places of birth, or dates, places and cir­cum­stances of death, and a note if the per­son died in a con­cen­tra­tion camp. The main parts of the book are the auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal texts them­selves, divid­ed into chap­ters accord­ing to place, time, and per­sons, and in some cas­es accord­ing to sub­ject or event, but not in strict chrono­log­i­cal order. They are accom­pa­nied by numer­ous pho­tographs from fam­i­ly archives and the Muse­um of Romani Cul­ture in Brno. Each of the two sec­tions con­cludes with Edi­tor’s Notes, which sup­ple­ment the infor­ma­tion from both autobiographies.

It is the first ever pub­li­ca­tion of auto­bi­ogra­phies of Romani women in the Czech Repub­lic. Emílie Machálková wrote her mem­oirs in Czech in 1998 by hand in an A4 school note­book, and Karolí­na Kozáková also in Czech in 2000 in an out-of-date diary. The man­u­scripts were tran­scribed by Ivona Parčiová and Eva Šrámková. The edi­tor Jana Horváthová made only min­i­mal changes to the text in order to pre­serve the orig­i­nal style of the nar­ra­tive as much as possible.