Knapp zweieinhalb Monate nach einem tödlichen Brand in einem Wohnhaus in #Solingen ist ein weiteres Wohnhaus in Flammen aufgegangen. Die Bewohner*innen, überwiegend #Sinti und #Roma, konnten sich mit Verletzungen retten. Polizei und Staatsanwaltschaft gehen von #Brandstiftung aus.
I passed this beautiful palazzo in
with my students back in 2009. The tour guide told us what famous person lived there--and there's a plaque in the photo. But the resolution isn't high enough. Look familiar to anyone?
An inscription in the confessio of the basilica of San Lorenzo fuori le Mura in #Rome marks the burial place of St Stephen, St Justin Martyr and St Lawrence
Today in Music History May 16, 1953: Romani guitar wizard and jazz legend, Django Reinhardt, died. Reinhardt was the first major jazz talent to emerge from Europe and is still probably the best. He formed the Paris-based Quintette du Hot Club de France in 1934 with violinist Stephane Grappelli. This group was one of the first jazz groups anywhere to feature guitar as a lead instrument. Reinhardt toured briefly with Duke Ellington in 1946. He died unexpectedly of a stroke at age 43. In 1928, he had an accident that left him only able to use his first two fingers on his left hand. This forced him to invent a new technique that allowed him to become even more proficient than he had been prior to the accident. He never learned to read or write music and played completely by ear.
Today in Labor History, May 16: Romani Resistance Day, commemorating the Roma people who fought the fascists during World War II. The date was chosen due to a Holocaust survivor stating that on 16 May 1944, there was a rebellion of Roma detainees at the Auschwitz Birkenau concentration camp. However subsequent research by the Auschwitz Museum discovered that this date was most likely incorrect. It was actually in early April that a number of Roma prisoners refused orders from the SS to leave to work in Germany. Instead, a Polish prisoner was ordered to make a list of Roma able to work to be transported later. By 2 August 1944, those Roma able to work had been transported elsewhere, when the SS came to take the others to the gas chambers. The prisoners armed themselves with crowbars and fought back, but were eventually overcome and gassed. And just a few days ago, The European Committee for Social Rights (ECSR) unanimously concluded that Italy’s new fascism government was violating the European Social Charter as regards the housing rights of the Roma, 15,000 of whom are currently living in shanty towns on the margins of big cities such as Rome, Milan and Naples.
Powerful letters by artist Jonas Staal and writer China Melville rejecting their DAAD Artist Residency in Germany this summer, in response to Nancy Fraser’s Albertus Magnus Professorship at Cologne being rescinded. Staal’s:
“I fail to imagine how you, as a representative of a German state institution, feel you are entitled to dictate to Jewish people what they are supposed to think or say about the crimes of the Israeli occupation.”
@pvonhellermannn Staal writes so poignantly -
"I am appalled by your #antisemitic narrative that equates the Israeli regime with the global Jewish diaspora. And I do not comprehend how, in consideration of the brutal history and shame of the #Holocaust and mass persecution which saw the killing of Jewish, #Roma, and #Sinti people, as well as #queer people and #communists, you are today actively contributing to a culture in which the oppression of speech of people faced with genocide is normalized."
Here is a wonderful blog retracing the steps of the Einsiedeln Itinerary, probably compiled in the 7th century for pilgrims walking between Catholic holy sites in Rome, especially shrines to martyrs.
If anyone has walked these streets around Testaverde in Rome, please get in touch as it might relate to some exciting research I'm doing on Roman tituli and church inscriptions.