Switzerland
Until the 1970s, the Swiss government had a semi-official policy of institutionalizing Yeniche parents as "mentally ill" and having their children adopted by more "normal" Swiss citizens, in an effort to eliminate Yeniche culture. The name of this program was "Kinder der Landstraße" ("children of the highway"). In all, 590 children were taken from their parents and institutionalized in orphanages, mental institutions and even prisons.
Today 35,000 Jenische live in Switzerland, mostly concentrated around Graubünden. Only about 5,000 of them currently live the traditional traveller lifestyle.
Read more about this topic: Yeniche People
Famous quotes containing the word switzerland:
“I look upon Switzerland as an inferior sort of Scotland.”
—Sydney Smith (1771–1845)
“In a war everybody always knows all about Switzerland, in peace times it is just Switzerland but in war time it is the only country that everybody has confidence in, everybody.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed—they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock!”
—Orson Welles (1915–84)