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Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and their Journey by Isabel Fonseca (5-Sep-1996) Paperback
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About the author
Isabel Fonseca
15 books51 followersFonseca studied on Columbia and Oxford.
Writes for many newspapers and magazines, The Independent, Vogue, The Nation, The Wall Street Journal.
For four years, she has been living with the Gypsies from Albany to Poland.
Currently lives in London with her husband Martin Amis and their two daughters.
Writes for many newspapers and magazines, The Independent, Vogue, The Nation, The Wall Street Journal.
For four years, she has been living with the Gypsies from Albany to Poland.
Currently lives in London with her husband Martin Amis and their two daughters.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 15, 2026
This was an education for me on the history of the Gypsies and how they continue to be oppressed today. Some highlights included the following:
For more than 400 years, until 1856, Gypsies were slaves in Wallachia and Moldovia, the feudal principalities that with Transylvania now make up modern Romania.
It is not really known how the enslavement began. One theory is that Gypsies came over as chattels of the invading Tartars.
Anyone who could not name his or her master when stopped on the road automatically became the property of the Crown. Foreign Gypsies that were just passing through –tourists let's say- were routinely rounded up.
Despite the laws against miscegenation there was a good deal of mingling between Gypsies and Romanian peasants. [As a result] Romanians on the whole are darker than their Slavic neighbours.
It was even possible to sell ‘half a Gypsy’ which meant a woman with half of whatever children she would bear. Proof that, despite other laws that expressly prohibited it, Gypsy families were systematically sundered....More were imported by the Crown to keep stock up as value increased... to be used as forced labour... The terms Gypsy and slave were interchangeable, they described a particular social caste.
Though not quite regarded as human, Gypsies nevertheless made good concubines. A pretty girl could fetch a much higher price than a mere hard working one, or even a fit and skilled young man.
Whereas it was illegal to prostitute one’s slaves... it was acceptable to give girls away. Nothing of the kind could have befallen a peasant girl –who, along with her family, was attached to- and in a sense, safeguarded by –the land.
If a slave had served as a concubine and her master had failed to free her before his death, she and her children automatically walked free.
The diary of Emriten von Gauting, a German tourist who passed through Craiova on his way to Constantinople in 1836, gives a chilling account of such relationships:
‘In the evening when the heat went down, I went out into the city, and there I saw a scene that I could not have thought of in my own imagination. Along with a bunch of animals, the wife of some boyar had a few gipsies, among them a very beautiful girl of 15, whom she sold to a man for two gold coins.
The girl was to be taken at the very moment that i passed in front of the miserable house where she stood with her family crying. Her parents, brothers and sisters were all crying, but she was wrested from the arms of her mother and taken away.
I went up to the barbarian man and told him that I would buy her back, but he was very rich and laughed at my offer of 50 gold coins. He bragged that he had brought her for his pleasure... and if she would not obey him he would beat her until she did. He told me that if I wanted to buy gipsies he had 500, and among them some very beautiful girls. He said he wouldn't mind selling those ones as they had already served him, but with this girl he was really in love and could not part for any price.
I went to the police and have gone and talked everywhere, but they all laugh at my stupidity “Gipsies are our property and we can do with them what we like”’.
In the sixteenth century, Portugal became the first country to deport Gypsies to its colonies in Africa, and later to Brazil and to India. Though less systematically than Portugal, France was sending Gypsies to Martinique and Louisiana; England and Scotland sent shipments to the West Indies. The historian Angus Fraser points out that this novel method of expulsion was considered acceptable, and useful for the slave labour it provided (cargoes of Gypsies preceded African captives), because the Gypsies were transported only within the empire, and so, were not strictly speaking, deported.
[At the time of writing the book], Walls across Eastern and Central Europe are sprayed with ‘Death-to-Gypsies' slogans , too many to be the work or sentiment of a small group.
[In November 1933] ...Sinti and Roma were involuntarily sterilized. Two laws banned marriage and sex between Germans and non Europeans, including Gypsies... semi official commentary on the Nuremberg laws stated that ‘in Europe generally only Jews and Gypsies are carriers of alien blood’.... In the 1937 Laws Against Crime, [the Nazis] ... counted among ‘those who by anti social behaviour even if they committed no crime have shown that they do not wish to fit into society; beggars, tramps (Gypsies), prostitutes, persons with infectious diseases who do not follow treatment etc’, in later legislation they appear as a new troupe : ‘Jews, Gypsies and Poles’... The Nazi’s collected more than thirty thousand genealogies, measured skulls, collected blood samples and charted eye colours [of Gypsies]...At least 500,000 Gypsies (some claim as many as a million) were killed in the Holocaust, -or the Devouring, as it is known among the Roma. They were the only group apart from the Jews who were marked for extermination on grounds of race.
For more than 400 years, until 1856, Gypsies were slaves in Wallachia and Moldovia, the feudal principalities that with Transylvania now make up modern Romania.
It is not really known how the enslavement began. One theory is that Gypsies came over as chattels of the invading Tartars.
Anyone who could not name his or her master when stopped on the road automatically became the property of the Crown. Foreign Gypsies that were just passing through –tourists let's say- were routinely rounded up.
Despite the laws against miscegenation there was a good deal of mingling between Gypsies and Romanian peasants. [As a result] Romanians on the whole are darker than their Slavic neighbours.
It was even possible to sell ‘half a Gypsy’ which meant a woman with half of whatever children she would bear. Proof that, despite other laws that expressly prohibited it, Gypsy families were systematically sundered....More were imported by the Crown to keep stock up as value increased... to be used as forced labour... The terms Gypsy and slave were interchangeable, they described a particular social caste.
Though not quite regarded as human, Gypsies nevertheless made good concubines. A pretty girl could fetch a much higher price than a mere hard working one, or even a fit and skilled young man.
Whereas it was illegal to prostitute one’s slaves... it was acceptable to give girls away. Nothing of the kind could have befallen a peasant girl –who, along with her family, was attached to- and in a sense, safeguarded by –the land.
If a slave had served as a concubine and her master had failed to free her before his death, she and her children automatically walked free.
The diary of Emriten von Gauting, a German tourist who passed through Craiova on his way to Constantinople in 1836, gives a chilling account of such relationships:
‘In the evening when the heat went down, I went out into the city, and there I saw a scene that I could not have thought of in my own imagination. Along with a bunch of animals, the wife of some boyar had a few gipsies, among them a very beautiful girl of 15, whom she sold to a man for two gold coins.
The girl was to be taken at the very moment that i passed in front of the miserable house where she stood with her family crying. Her parents, brothers and sisters were all crying, but she was wrested from the arms of her mother and taken away.
I went up to the barbarian man and told him that I would buy her back, but he was very rich and laughed at my offer of 50 gold coins. He bragged that he had brought her for his pleasure... and if she would not obey him he would beat her until she did. He told me that if I wanted to buy gipsies he had 500, and among them some very beautiful girls. He said he wouldn't mind selling those ones as they had already served him, but with this girl he was really in love and could not part for any price.
I went to the police and have gone and talked everywhere, but they all laugh at my stupidity “Gipsies are our property and we can do with them what we like”’.
In the sixteenth century, Portugal became the first country to deport Gypsies to its colonies in Africa, and later to Brazil and to India. Though less systematically than Portugal, France was sending Gypsies to Martinique and Louisiana; England and Scotland sent shipments to the West Indies. The historian Angus Fraser points out that this novel method of expulsion was considered acceptable, and useful for the slave labour it provided (cargoes of Gypsies preceded African captives), because the Gypsies were transported only within the empire, and so, were not strictly speaking, deported.
[At the time of writing the book], Walls across Eastern and Central Europe are sprayed with ‘Death-to-Gypsies' slogans , too many to be the work or sentiment of a small group.
[In November 1933] ...Sinti and Roma were involuntarily sterilized. Two laws banned marriage and sex between Germans and non Europeans, including Gypsies... semi official commentary on the Nuremberg laws stated that ‘in Europe generally only Jews and Gypsies are carriers of alien blood’.... In the 1937 Laws Against Crime, [the Nazis] ... counted among ‘those who by anti social behaviour even if they committed no crime have shown that they do not wish to fit into society; beggars, tramps (Gypsies), prostitutes, persons with infectious diseases who do not follow treatment etc’, in later legislation they appear as a new troupe : ‘Jews, Gypsies and Poles’... The Nazi’s collected more than thirty thousand genealogies, measured skulls, collected blood samples and charted eye colours [of Gypsies]...At least 500,000 Gypsies (some claim as many as a million) were killed in the Holocaust, -or the Devouring, as it is known among the Roma. They were the only group apart from the Jews who were marked for extermination on grounds of race.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 13, 2025
Fonseca's part-travelogue, part-journalistic investigation, and part-history book documents the lives and struggles of Roma communities through her travels in the Balkans during the early 1990s. More than anything, her account shows that if there is one thing the region’s hotchpotch of ethnicities and cultures seems to agree on, it's their mistrust of the Roma - a people stuck in the popular imagination between parasite and victim.
I laboured over this book, mainly due to its haphazard structure and poor editing.
What I most enjoyed — and where the book truly comes into its own — are the chapters on Romania. Fonseca weaves a compelling investigation into the violent attacks on Roma communities in rural Romania. She describes the moment as “the spectacle of the region in the still early post-communist days — the violence of violated men.” She also documents the migration struggles of the Roma to Germany after the Romanian Revolution.
Her chapter on the history of the Roma in Europe, Hindupen, was quite interesting, though at times frustrating due to the lack of written records and historical scholarship. Given their strong oral culture and nomadic tradition, much of what we know about the Roma comes from what others have written about them (which is incredibly problematic). Fonseca explores how language (for instance, Persian-rooted words in Romani, such as baxt) offers fragmented clues to their origins. She examines the legacy of Roma slavery in Romania and their persecution during the Holocaust. But what struck me most was her observation that Roma have no widely shared origin myth, no founding national narrative, and few collective memories that extend beyond a few generations.
Published in 1996, this now reads as a historical account of the Roma in the Balkans in the 1990s. Some of Fonseca’s insights may be less relevant today. Still, her sharp observations, curiosity and empathy capture the contradictions of a region in transition, shifting its gaze from East to West. She asks whether modern Europe — with its tight overlap between nationalism and citizenship — can ever truly accommodate a transnational people like the Roma. Nearly thirty years later, that question feels as relevant as ever.
I laboured over this book, mainly due to its haphazard structure and poor editing.
What I most enjoyed — and where the book truly comes into its own — are the chapters on Romania. Fonseca weaves a compelling investigation into the violent attacks on Roma communities in rural Romania. She describes the moment as “the spectacle of the region in the still early post-communist days — the violence of violated men.” She also documents the migration struggles of the Roma to Germany after the Romanian Revolution.
Her chapter on the history of the Roma in Europe, Hindupen, was quite interesting, though at times frustrating due to the lack of written records and historical scholarship. Given their strong oral culture and nomadic tradition, much of what we know about the Roma comes from what others have written about them (which is incredibly problematic). Fonseca explores how language (for instance, Persian-rooted words in Romani, such as baxt) offers fragmented clues to their origins. She examines the legacy of Roma slavery in Romania and their persecution during the Holocaust. But what struck me most was her observation that Roma have no widely shared origin myth, no founding national narrative, and few collective memories that extend beyond a few generations.
Published in 1996, this now reads as a historical account of the Roma in the Balkans in the 1990s. Some of Fonseca’s insights may be less relevant today. Still, her sharp observations, curiosity and empathy capture the contradictions of a region in transition, shifting its gaze from East to West. She asks whether modern Europe — with its tight overlap between nationalism and citizenship — can ever truly accommodate a transnational people like the Roma. Nearly thirty years later, that question feels as relevant as ever.
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