The Day I am Free
“Every country must take their responsibility for their own romani inhabitants; nobody should have to flee to another country to ensure their human dignity….” Hans Caldaras (musician, Taikon’s cousin)
Today’s post is about a book titled, The Day I Am Free, which tells the story of Swedish-Roma Katarina Taikon in three parts.The first section contains her biography written by journalist Lawen Mohtadi in 2012. Mohtadi also examines the historical contexts, and sociopolitical and ideological background of the events of Taikon’s life and activism. For instance, she writes that “during the same period that the Swedish welfare society begins to take shape, another political current emerges: eugenics.” The second part includes the first volume of Taikon’s autobiographically based children’s book series, Katitzi, in which she writes about a girl’s struggle as part of an ethnic minority in Sweden. The third section includes an essay about the cultural impact of Katitzi by curator Maria Lind. The book also includes photos, book illustrations and book covers.
Most of us know that Sweden is a welfare state, a society that prioritizes environmental issues and recycling, civic engagement, free access to good quality education, child care and health services. Its people also boast one of the longest life expectancies in the world. The Swedes have also managed to balance work and free time better than other countries, and have pursued a policy of peace since World War I, and I think, have not engaged in direct military conflict since the early 19th century. Many of us are familiar with furniture or some other home product from IKEA. Sweden is also a beautiful country, and years ago I managed to visit Sweden and a bordering Finland town over the Christmas holidays.
Swedish films, artists and writers have exerted an influence on me since adolescence. I am also aware of Sweden through the lens and writings of Theodor Kallifatides, a Greek who has lived and written in Sweden since 1964, and explores themes of memory, identity, alienation, of belonging and of being an outsider, immigration and displacement, the complex process of integration and navigating cultural differences, the experience of writing in Greek and writing in Swedish. On leaving one’s homeland and on immigration he writes: “Emigration is a kind of partial suicide. You don’t die, but a great deal dies within you. Not least, the language,” and “Your home country makes you more of a foreigner than you feel yourself.”
However, there is no place on earth exempt from social ills, and Sweden too, has its stories and history of racism and discrimination against minorities and immigrants. I knew nothing about the history of the Roma people in Sweden and their struggles during a great part of the 20th century or Katarina Taikon until I came across the book: The Day I Am Free. There is nothing exceptional about Sweden’s treatment of Roma. According to Amnesty International these minorities have suffered systematic and widespread discrimination across Europe for centuries. In 2016, the European Commission coined the term antigypsyism to designate anti-Roma institutional and individual hostility, aggression, and exclusion. Katarina Taikon’s older sister, Rosa Taikon, states: “I am worried. Are we going back to the 1930 – and 40’s? We see Roma in the Balkans, where they may live with their children on toxic slag heaps…..”
Katarina Taikon, an actress and prolific writer, is considered a prominent Swedish human rights activist of the 20th century, often compared to Martin Luther King Jr. Her writing defined the Roma struggle for equal rights, and also, produced realistic and anti-racist narratives for children. She lived in Sweden in an era when the Roma minority was heavily discriminated against, excluded from education, housing and the rights of citizenship that the Swedish welfare state provided for its citizens. Taikon’s activities were aimed at securing the civil rights of Roma in Sweden. Through political activism, media campaigning and writing, she raised the issue of the living conditions of the Roma.
Taikon was born in 1932 in a camp in Sweden, the youngest of four children of Johan Taikon, a Kalderash Roma musician and silversmith, whose parents were Hungarian subjects and had come to Sweden from Russia at the turn of the 20th century, and ho had remained stateless all his life, and a non Roma Swedish woman, Agda Karlsson, whom Johan met while she was employed as a waitress and he as a violinist in the same restaurant. Agda became his second wife, and formed an almost ‘daughter-mother relationship’ with his first wife, known as mami Masha, who was at the time in her fifties. Masha had been a dancer at the Bolshoi Theatre in Russia and was not Roma either. Agda died at the age of 29 from tuberculosis leaving four young children behind. KatarinaTaikon and her siblings were close to mami Masha and when their mother passed away she supported them.
In the mid 30s Johan Taikon met Siv, a non Roma woman, who would become the children’s step mother, and mother to three new siblings. Masha was sent to live in another camp and Katarina was given to the Kreuters, a childless couple, who wanted to adopt her. Katarina’s life changed dramatically, she now lived in a warm house, had her own decorated bedroom, which looked like a toy store, dresses and any food she wanted. She lived with them for two years and then was turned over to child welfare services because they wanted to adopt her and her father had refused. She was seven when she was taken to an orphanage, and when a few weeks later her father came to retrieve her she refused to go with him, but eventually, she did return to her family, where despite her father’s warmth and understanding, she suffered beatings and emotional abuse from her step-mother.
Even though Johan Taikon had tried to enroll his children in school, he was always prevented from doing so, either by local authorities or other parents, who did not want Roma children in their schools. Katarina was denied education, and she attended school for a little while at the age of 10. It was only in her late twenties that she went back to school. At the age of fourteen Katarina was, like her older sister, Rosa, a few years earlier, forced to marry. Both sisters left these child-marriages. After a few months of being married Katarina ran away. She found shelter in a home for girls run by a humanitarian organization, where she was supported in finding work, saving a little money, and gaining financial independence.
In 1947 she was offerd a role by Arne Sucksdorff, a documentary filmmaker and Sweden’s first Oscar winner. He offered her the lead role in his short film, Departure, which portrays Roma life. Even though the film depicted their life in a romanticized way, the dialogues were spoken in the Romani language and the Roma were not portrayed in a negative context. It also opened the door to further artistic and public activity for her. During the next decade Taikon had various jobs for survival, but she increasingly performed in films and plays, often with her sister, Rosa, and began to move in artistic circles. In 1952, actor Per Oscarsson offered Katarina and Rosa accommodation in his large house, where they became acquainted with the Declaration of Human Rights for all people and the advocacy of the right to housing, employment and education, which would prove crucial for the Taikon sisters’ turning to activism and working to improve Roma life circumstances.
In the book, Mohtadi refers to friends and relatives that belonged to Taikon’s circle. She notes that “Katarina’s daily existence did not distinguish between work and pleasure, the personal and the political: the different spheres largely overlapped.” One person very close to Katarina was her eldest sister. Rosa Taikon was born in 1926 and was a mother figure for Katarina. Like her father she chose to become a silversmith, and since her first exhibition in 1966, her art has been shown in prestigious galleries throughout Sweden. Her work is a part of permanent exhibitions in various museums in Sweden and abroad. Along with her sister, she participated in political and social activities related to Roma rights and was awarded numerous prizes and merits, both for her artwork and her work in human rights. She died in 2017.
Hans Caldaras, a younger cousin of Roma ethnic background, was one of the many people who stayed in Taikon’s guest room for a while, when he was young and wanted to embark on a musical career. In his bio it is mentioned that he has done almost everything as an artist, concerts, musicals, theatre plays, festivals, many records and a variety of radio and television appearances. His repertoire is roma music with influences from improvised jazz, latin and gypsy swing. Caldaras mentions that Katarina and Bjorn introduced him to French films, and together they went to restaurants and bars, and he took care of the children when they were busy. He writes: “Political discussions, the roma question, Sweden geopolitics, were a constant in their living room.”
In 1958, Katarina met photographer, Bjorn Langhammer, who became her husband and partner in many artistic and political projects for over twenty years. That same year she, along with her sister Rosa and Björn, began a two-year course at a public college. With a basic education Katarina was able to continue her studies and she attended a business finance course. After her studies she took on the running of the Vips American Ice Cream Bar in Stockholm, which became a hub for many of her friends and acquaintances and her customers included many actors and artists. Katarina Taikon had her third child, Niki, in 1961, fathered by Björn Langhammar.
The following year her brother Paul was murdered, and a year later in1963 her first autobiographical book for adults, Gypsy Woman, was published, a great achievement if one considers that it was first book by a Romani author dealing with the living conditions of the Roma in Sweden. Mohtadi comments: “The book landed like a bomb in Swedish society….. Sweden took a leading role as a proponent of global equality and justice. The nation’s self-perception hinged on an idea of Sweden as a place free of racism, or, as it was sometimes termed, minority problems.” The book generated a public debate about the discrepancy between the Swedish welfare state and the segregation of the Roma population, and the need to do something about this.
A year later Taikon met Martin Luther King Jr., who had come to Scandinavia to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, and with her sister Rosa, launched, among other things, a literacy course for adult Roma. Because the Swedish educational authorities were not willing to fund further education for the Roma, the Roma Union organized a series of protests culminating on May 1, 1965. The protests were successful and a delegation led by Katarina Taikon was invited to talk to Prime Minister Tage Erlander. As a result, ten adult schools were opened in Sweden within a year, and the program was included in the national education system. The Union went on to publish its own magazine called We Live from 1965 to 1973, and Taikon published her second book titled We Are Gypsies. In 1964 Katarina was appointed as an honorary member of the Swedish Youth Peace Alliance.
In 1967, the Swedish authorities turned to Taikon for help concerning the status of Roma refugees from Poland and Italy. After an initial failure to allow the refugees to stay, a protest was organized that led to a new meeting with the minister at which it was decided that they would be allowed to stay; however, two years later, the Social Democratic government decided that a group of 47 French Roma would not be granted asylum. Although this decision would be reversed two years later, the deportation both disappointed and had an impact on Taikon’s stance on how to effect change in society.She decided to focus on working with the young, believing that they were the engine of change in Swedish society.
So, in the 1970s she started writing a semi-autobiographical series for children and adolescents centered on a young Roma girl called Katitzi.The series was hugely successful and became the most read children’s books in Sweden, after Astrid Lindgren’s Pippi Longstockin’s series. She drew on her own experiences and touched upon themes of injustice, ignorance, and exclusion, concerning the Roma community in Sweden. Maria Lind writes: “Katitzi manages, despite quite dreadful circumstances, to find her way to an acceptable existence and, in time, to self-actualization.”
Taikon’s work to bring about social changes brought her into contact both with the most marginalized, and many artists, activists and politicians, all the way up to the Prime Minister. Her life long struggle for human rights for the Roma, and her focus on access to education and decent housing was successful; however, she also became the target of attacks, and eventually, the cumulative effect of personal history and trauma, lack of rest and overwork led to exhaustion, depression, physical ailments and pain. She was also hospitalized for double pneumonia. Mohtad writes: “Demands had increased from all directions. Some were of her own making: she believed that she had an obligation to transform society and that people should not have to suffer and struggle to survive. Other denmands were external from people who asked for help, and whom she could not refuse…”
In 1981, a year after Taikon and Langhammer published the last book of the Katitzi series, they divorced. The following year, she suffered a heart attack whilst undergoing tests at a hospital and fell into a coma from which she never awoke. Langhammer cared for her in their home until his own death in 1986. Then her three children and her sister, Rosa, took care of her until she passed away in 1995 with her beloved sister, Rosa, at her side.
From 1975 the Katitzi stories had already begun to be adapted into other media with the publication of comics, the creation of a television series, followed by theatrical performances. In 2012 her biography, The Day I Am Free, was published by Mohtadi, and based on the book, Mohtadi and journalist Gellert Tamas made a 2015 documentary film: The Untold Story of a Roma Freedom Fighter. In 2019, the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture (ERIAC) in Stockholm organized an exhibition dedicated to Katitzi and her influence on Swedish society. Seven short documentary films dedicated to the book and its author were also produced, and Katitzi’s stories were republished.