In Search of the True Gypsy

It has only been recognised tardily and with reluctance that during the Second World War hundreds of thousands of itinerants met the same horrendous fate as Jews and other victims of Nazism. Gypsies appear to appeal to the imagination simply as social outcasts and scapegoats or in a flattering but no more illuminating light as romantic outsiders.In this study contemporary notions about Gypsies are traced back as far as possible to their roots in an attempt to lay bare why stigmatisation of gypsies or rather groups labelled as such has continuned from the distant past even to today.