Mnemonic border-crossings: how Roma communities from the Baltic borderlands remember their shared past

Abstract

ABSTRACT How have Roma communities, separated by state boundaries, remembered and commemorated the Nazi genocide? How have they communicated and mourned for their losses across shifting borders? This article explores the complex relationship between community memory and borders, drawing on my oral history and ethnographic research in the Lithuanian – Belarusian and Belarusian – Latvian border regions. Departing from family histories of Roma before, during, and after the Nazi genocide, my analysis takes several analytical directions by: 1) linking the memory paths with the trajectories of Roma communities; 2) highlighting the ways in which changing border regimes have shaped a Romani commemoration practice; 3) revealing communicative aspects of cross-border memories. My analysis enables me to outline a phenomenon of a cross-border memory community. Such communities are based on family and community networks of Roma, their shared histories, and attitudes toward the past, for instance, nostalgia for the Soviet time. The last section of the article demonstrates how the Soviet nostalgia interweaves with the commemoration of the Nazi genocide.