Slavery is not a new concept to ethnic Travellers, but historically they have been the victims. In fact in 1930s Nazi Germany there was even a "comic" song about Gypsies as slaves, called "Come Gypsy; Show Me How You Can Work!". The song was adopted by the German press and quoted in headlines and articles to mock and denigrate German Roma, linking them to crime, brutality and squalor. Many European Roma were subsequently wiped out in the gas chambers and slave labour camps of the Third Reich ? this holocaust is known in the Romany language as the Porajmos ? or 'devouring'.

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