Montreal Life Stories, from the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling

This week’s episode: “The Roma: From Then to Now,” in an interview with Gerhard Baumgartner.

Gerhard Baumgartner is an Austrian historian specializing in minority questions and particularly, the Roma genocide of World War II. He presented a talk on this subject, this past Monday, cosponsored by the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre, Montreal Life Stories, the Center for Oral History and Digital Storytelling, and the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies.

But what’s the subtext here? Could it have to do with a general fear from the provinces that our supposedly anti-federalist Conservative government might just be trying to centralize power in Ottawa? The Harper gov’t has mused that it might not need the provinces to approve senate reform even though it represents a fundamental change to the charter.