Invisible: Part I

A young Roma boy in Belgrade

I step outside the hotel and a woman dressed practically in rags rushes up to me.

"Do you speak English?" she pleads. She speaks no more than those four words herself but the yellowed paper she waves at me is printed in English.

"Nein," I reply without breaking my stride or even looking her way.

Assuming I am a local she fades back into the scenery. Invisible.

This scene repeats itself in different spots around Berlin throughout the week. Sometimes the woman carries an emaciated infant on her shoulder. Sometimes she is missing a limb or has some disfiguring condition. Sometimes she is aggressive, sometimes resigned. It always ends the same way, with us walking away and her moving on to some other soul, trying to be seen. Soon we barely even notice it happening.

On December 19th the BBC posted a story on its news portal announcing that work had begun in Berlin on a memorial to the Roma people who perished at the hands of the Nazis in World War II. The numbers are staggering - between 220,000 and 500,000 Roma were killed during that time period. Perhaps even more shocking is the fact the estimates can be no more precise than this - no one could tell you how many Roma perished, only that it was more than 220,000 and less than 500,000.

Since reading that story it has been nagging at me. The Roma - also referred to by the pejorative "Gypsies", derived from the mistaken idea they had originated in Egypt - seem to be all but invisible. Hundreds of thousands perished. They were directly targeted by the Nazis, even having their own distinct "brown triangle" to wear in the concentration camps. Yet it has taken this long for their loss to be recognized.

Most North Americans think "Gypsies" are the stuff of fairy tales. In Europe, however, they are a fixture of life. They are a distinct people group with their own genetic history, language and culture - but without a country. In many European cities the Roma take the worst possible jobs, the jobs no one else will do. They are despised for having perfected begging to almost an art form, often accused of intentionally placing the infirm and disabled in highly visible areas to beg and of starving their children to help bring in more money.

I met a man in Montenegro who was desperately trying to help a Roma child receive medical attention. He had gone through all the channels - the boy's life could be saved, the surgery was feasible, but there was a timeline of only a few short months before the effects of the boy's illness would be irreversible. The only problem was that legally the boy did not exist and the paperwork to recognize him as a person would take longer than the time he had left.

I cannot think of any more poignant example of invisible people than this. I am sad to say I do not know how the boy's story ended, though I often wonder. I see a man with his heart breaking for a child he barely knows, trying desperately to get the boy noticed in time. I know this... and yet I cannot reconcile it with my own attitudes and behaviours.

I wanted to say more but I feel that will come in another post. For now, let me say this:

We walk through this world and we are sometimes the visible and sometimes the invisible. Either way, too often our eyes are closed. What would happen if we were to dare to open them and see the teeming masses of invisible people all around us? I think the first thing that would happen is that our hearts would break.

But what would happen next?