She’d got rid of the gyppos

Author: Katerina Holubová
Location: Brno
This happened about four years ago at one of the junior training centers in Brno. Lucie Horváthová, a Rom who today is 22 years old, told me about it. She was studying here to be a baker.
"One morning I went to the cloakroom, and four skinheads stopped me. One of them had been in my class and the others also went to the same school. There were a lot of skins in that school. ‘If we see you here once more time, we’ll beat you up,’ they told me.
The whole day was ruined. I kept hearing THAT SENTENCE. When I came home, I told my parents.
The next day after class they were waiting for me in front of the school and I couldn’t leave to go home, I was so scared. After a long time I left the building with a teacher, and when I got home I told my parents what had happened.
The third day my father went to the school to see the principal and told him that I was afraid to go to school because I was being threatened. The principal said he would take care of it.
That was all for nothing, because a week later it happened again.
My parents solved the problem by taking me out of the school: I was too scared to go.
And when they left the principal’s office, they heard my home-room teacher announce she was glad she’d got rid of the ‘gyppos.’ “

One Response to “She’d got rid of the gyppos”

  1. That’s outrageous, but are you a gyppo?

  2. To John Smith:

    Katka is in fact Romani, but does not speak English, hence this response. (I’m the director of the project)

    Why do you ask, incidentally?

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