WHEN Daniela Abraham was a little girl in Slovakia in the 1980s her mother asked her why she was spending so much time scrubbing herself in the bath tub. “Because they told me I was a dirty Gypsy,” she told her mother.

Daniela is Roma. Her persecution in Slovakia began even before primary school — at nursery level: tiny tots refusing to play with her, being bullied, being called a “cigany,” meaning thief, criminal, liar.

Today Abraham, 39, lives in London, where she recently organised the first-ever collective Roma protest against Slovakian neonazis when they visited the capital to try to rally Slovakians living in Britain to their cause.

She uses her mother’s maiden name, rather than her family name, because she still has relatives living in Slovakia, where the rise of the far right is leading to even worse persecution of Roma than existed during her childhood.

In Britain she is also involved in the Sinti Roma Holocaust Memorial Trust. At least 750,000 Roma and Sinti people died in the Holocaust. More recent research says the number is more likely to have been twice that. Much of the slaughter took place after the nazis invaded Hungary in 1944. Members of Abraham’s family were among the victims.

Today’s rising Slovakian neonazis — the LSNS, the Our Slovakia Peoples Party — deny the Holocaust ever happened.

Abraham’s early story is one of thousands being repeated today in Slovakia and elsewhere in eastern Europe.
Her schooldays were not happy.

“From childhood it starts, almost from nursery. You get the bullies. You don’t understand why this is happening. The children don’t want to play with you. Calling you cigany. Being called that from when you are five or six years old affects your childhood.

“They call you ‘dirty Gypsy.’ They ask ‘why are you brown? You’re dirty.’ I remember as a child I would stay in the bath for hours trying to wash it off. My mother explained that I could not wash it off because this is our colour.

“I asked her ‘why am I this colour? I’m not dirty.’

“Even if I wore nice clothes, had a nice satchel, always they bullied me in school, didn’t want to play with me. I felt I wasn’t part of the collective.”

The teachers were no better. She continually found herself being given low grades despite her excellent work.

“I thought, ‘why are they doing this to me?’ Now I know. They were being racist. There was nothing wrong with me. It was what was wrong with them.”

One of the worst incidents happened when she was 10. She was walking home with her little brother when a neighbour shot her in the chest with a birdgun — a shotgun.

The day before he had shouted at her: “I’ll shoot you, you dirty Gypsy.”

“I still have the marks,” she said. “For months I was scared to go out.

The persecution continued into adulthood.

“In Slovakia I had massive difficulties finding a job,” she said. I speak several languages but it was very difficult for me to find work and support the family because of racism. Slovakia is so racist.

“This is why I was worried for my family, my children. I thought ‘I don’t want to give them this kind of life, this whole struggle.’ That’s why I came to the UK.”

Her husband — now her ex-husband — came to Britain, and she followed in 2007 with their sons. In Britain she became involved in the Sinti Roma Holocaust Memorial Trust.

“It was because my family was murdered. I don’t know exactly how many because my family was large.”

She lives in east London, doing a variety of jobs, including on a community project. Among the languages she speaks are Hungarian, Slovakian, Czech, German, Romanian and English.

A short time ago she discovered on Facebook that Slovakian neonazi LSNS organisers were coming to London to spread their hate among the capital’s Slovakian community. The visit was to involve a Euro-MP and a national MP from the neonazi LSNS.

“They openly made an event saying they were going to come here with their political campaign and have discussions at a meeting at the Barbican,” she said.

“I thought, ‘why come here, to a country that is multicultural? Why are you coming here? For what?’ It gave me a big question mark.