NewsTracker Answers for week of Sep. 13, 2021

Q: Pope Francis is paying a visit this week to a severely impoverished Roma neighborhood in Slovakia’s second-largest city of Kosice one of the highlights of his pilgrimage to “the heart of Europe.” Where is the small Central European nation of Slovakia? (It’s south of Poland, west of Ukraine, north of Hungary and east of Austria and the Czech Republic.)

Circle the area on this map

Q: The Roma have suffered centuries of persecution in Europe. Where did this traditionally nomadic people come from?

A. Egypt

B. India

C. Mongolia

D. Russia

B. Linguistic and genetic evidence suggest that the Roma, or Romani, left the northern Indian subcontinent about 1,500 years ago and first reached Europe about 900 years ago. The English term Gypsy, considered by many Romani people to be pejorative, comes from a mistaken belief in the Middle Ages that the Roma came from Egypt.

Q: For fear of discrimination, many Roma people refuse to register their ethnic identity in official censuses. It is estimated that 9.17 percent of Slovakia’s population is of Romani ancestry. Which nation has the highest percentage of Roma?

A. Bulgaria

B. Czech Republic

C. Russia

D. United States

A. It is estimated that 10.33 percent of Bulgaria’s population is Roma. While the United States is believed to have 1 million people with Romani ancestry (more than in Bulgaria or Slovakia) it is a tiny fraction of the U.S. population of more than 334 million. Estimates of Roma populations vary widely, but there are believed to be about 10 million Romani people in Europe, many living in abject poverty.

Q: Through the centuries, Roma in Europe have been banned under threat of execution, enslaved, suffered forced sterilization and sent to death camps by German Nazis and their allies during World War II. Which Europeans expressed the most anti-Roma views in a 2019 poll?

A. Bulgarians

B. Czechs

C. Italians

D. Slovaks

C. The Pew Research poll found that 83% of Italians, 76% of Slovaks, 72% of Greeks, 68% of Bulgarians, 66% of Czechs, 61% of Lithuanians, 61% of Hungarians, 54% of Ukrainians, 52% of Russians, 51% of Poles, 44% of French, 40% of Spaniards, and 37% of Germans held unfavorable views of Roma. Only 0.3 of a percent of Italy’s population is Roma.

Q: The former nation of Czechoslovakia carried out a policy of sterilization of Romani women, starting in 1973 and continuing at least until 1989. The nation of Czechoslovakia was first created after the break-up of which empire?

A. Austro-Hungarian

B. Byzantine

C. Ottoman

D. Russian

A. The Austro-Hungarian Empire broke apart after it was on the losing side in World War I. Czechoslovakia was recognized as one of the successor states to that empire. It was dissolved by the Nazis in World War II and reemerged as a Communist state after the war. After the Communist government was toppled in 1989, the nation peacefully spit into the existing Czech and Slovak republics in 1992.