Josef Giňa

* 1968

  • "Why would I be? I'm a gypsy, but I'm exactly the same person as you. We're human too. And if we were easily offended, just at the word gypsy, that wouldn't be good either. Why not? It's true - I am [a gypsy], I'm not ashamed of it. Absolutely not. I'm proud of it."

  • "In England there are nice people, people are completely different there. They don't make any differences. So there are Indians living, Pakistani, all kinds of people who look like Roma, and they're not Roma. So there is no difference there. When you go to an office, people there are from various countries, they don't make any difference, like, you are this and you are that. Kind of racism, it doesn't exist there. It's not there. So you feel better there. Safe. You have children there and tell yourself that children don't have to be offended, to be reprimanded or abused, insulted, even beaten, without reason, just because they are Roma. That's not normal. It's not like that there. It's much better in England. There, everyone is equal."

  • "All over England, there are Roma almost everywhere. So every time, for example, when they call from a celebration from that city, for example from Birmingham or Leeds, Brattford, Nottingham - those are the cities where there are a lot of Roma, Romani people. And they've lived there for many years, 20 years, for example. They have jobs there. Imagine, those Roma people are working there. They want to work, not that they don't want to work. It's hard for a Romani person to get a job here, but not there, where they go to an agency and get hired right away."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Ostrava, 18.01.2022

    (audio)
    délka: 02:09:45
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
  • 2

    Ostrava, 25.01.2022

    (audio)
    délka: 01:50:16
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

I‘m a gypsy, but I‘m also a human being. The same person like you

Josef Giňa, late 1970s
Josef Giňa, late 1970s
zdroj: Witness´s archive

Josef Giňa was born on 27 July 1968 in Opava into a Romani musician family coming originally from Slovakia. His father and uncles were members of the famous musical ensemble ‘Giňovci’. He had nine siblings and from the age of three he learned to play the violin and later the cimbalom. After his marriage in the 1980s, he worked in technical services for three years, but soon returned to music. In the 1990s he worked in Brno in the Rom-art gallery and later he played for tourists in Prague. Because of the increasing racism in the Czech Republic in the post-revolutionary era, he emigrated with his family to England in 1999. There he enjoyed being treated equally to other inhabitants. He returned after a few years, but went back to England several more times for longer stays. At the time of recording in 2022, he was living in his native Opava and playing the cimbalom in the band Valašský výběr (Wallachian Selection). He has seven children, five are living in England and two in France.