Identity crisis/help.
(This could be considered a ran/vent under the flair too. Mods I beg you don’t take this down because there’s a genuine question at the end.)
I’m too embarrassed to use my main account to write this, I just joined this community today anyways. Embarrassed/shame/fear, I don’t know but it’s anything but pride and knowing who I am. I need help. I don’t even care if I sound desperate. I feel like an imposter, more so, a thief. I don’t feel enough.
My maternal g-g grandparents were victims of the h-caust. For my sake, I will change their names.
Franz was Sinti from Austria, and his wife Jolana was from Budapest, Hungary, as what I was told from my grandma. We don’t know much about her. As a way to protect their family, they forbade themselves from teaching their culture and their ways. They were very traumatized, which was extremely common for families who suffered from that genocide. I think it’s why there’s so little about her more than Franz that we know. Then again, from what I remember if I’m right, she was kind of reserved from what my Grandma told me. So I assume in general she wasn’t as outgoing than her husband, Franz.
Let’s say I began spiraling because of results, I began obsessing with my percentage. Knowing we were of Sinti (Franz) + Romani (Jolana) heritage, is not new. I’ve known for a few years now when my Grandma finally had the discussion and told me what happened to our family. I just never became connected, because anything that elders knew was not allowed to be known. And anything that was known, was little information. My grandma never cared for percentages, even when she did her test, she never saw us as more or less. The numbers she saw never changed her perspective, the history and the family only mattered. She even said that to me, “It’s your culture too.“ It’s only one of the problems. I’m not connected. I haven’t lived the life as a Sinti + Romani person, nor have I lived the experience. I am apart of a marginalized community, but our oppressions and struggles aren’t the same.
The other issue though, is that based off of the test, I don’t believe Franz’s wife was ethnically Romani. And I understand it will vary depending on the families personal history, mixing with non-Roma or not, or just in general what Roma and where did they come from. But based off of the math, even if she had some, it doesn’t contribute to my %, even the slightest bit of higher than it already is. Nor do I have Hungarian DNA, most of it is Germanic. Now what I do believe, is that she was possibly adopted by a Hungarian Roma family, carried the language, traditions, customs, etc. She did become a victim in the holocaust herself, and I doubt they were DNA testing anyone (sarcasm but serious). But by association, family, and her upbringing did it make her a target. In their eyes, they saw her as Romani anyways. A key thing I remember though my Grandma told me was one way they would pass down culture was by recipe. One was a hungarian dish and another Austrian.
Do I even have the right to connect regardless of my percentage? But specifically in Jolana’s case, do I even have a right of learning the culture she was welcomed into and considered as one of theirs? Although by blood that connection is not there? I took pride in knowing, I didn’t care much for a commercial tests results. But recently I began worrying. Even by acknowledging I feel like im taking, even by asking questions and connecting I feel like taking. I feel like I should just be quiet about it like I never knew. Then again, that’s what Franz and Jolana wanted.