Sep 29, 2011

King of the Gypsies


According to my mother, a Gypsy king was buried in Allentown in around 1960, she knew about such things. She was born in Galgo, Hungary, an area of Transylvania, now part of Romania, near present day Gilgau. In Galgo, the Jews and Gypsies lived on the edge of town. In the early 20's, my grandparents, along with their Gypsy neighbors, came to Bethlehem to work at the Steel. On weekends, to make extra money, my grandparents would open their house and show Hungarian movies. None of their relatives, Jew or Gypsy, save one cousin, survived the nazi's; even the cemeteries were desecrated. As you can see from the document above, my grandfather earned his citizenship the hard way.

reprinted from Sept. 7, 2009

1 comment:

  1. I feel compelled to state that it seems acquiring citizenship meant something more back in the day than it apparently does today, for many.

    Thanks for the post.

    Chumscrubber

    ReplyDelete

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