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PAUL POLANSKY

is an American author and activist working for the rights of the Roma people (also called Gypsies). He has worked for the advancement of the Roma and acceptance of them throughout Eastern Europe and the Balkans. Today he heads the Kosovo Roma Refugee Foundation (KRRF), an NGO working with the afflicted residents of the UN Camps in north Kosovo. From July 1999 until September 2009 he was head of mission for the Society for Threatened Peoples in Kosovo and Serbia. Polansky has published twenty-seven books, including sixteen books of poetry. His book of poetry "Gypsy Taxi" (2007) was reviewed on BBC radio. Polansky's most controversial book "UN-Leaded Blood" described the inaction of UNMIK, as many children died from lead poisoning in the UN camps in north Mitrovica. Other books by Polanksy included a novel, "The Storm", and a collection of oral histories of Czech Roma Holocaust survivors, called Black Silence. His best-selling book was a collection of poems about boxing called Stray Dog. Polansky's penultimate book "Undefeated" (2009) is a collection of selected poems from 1991-2008. The book was published in Italy by Multimedia Edizioni and is in English and Italian.
Polansky's latest book Deadly Neglect (2010) names and shames those UN and Kosovo government officials, and NGOs, responsible for the 89 Roma (Gypsies) who have died to date in the Kosovo UN refugee camps.
On December 10, 2004, the City Council of Weimar unanimously awarded its "Human Rights Award" to Polansky. He was nominated for the award by Guenther Grass, recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature.
A documentary film, Gypsy Blood, produced by Polansky won best informative film at the 2005 Golden Wheel International Film Festival in Skopje, Republic of Macedonia.
Polansky's most collected work (2007/2008) is a three volume collection (1,553 pages) of oral histories of the Yugoslav Gypsies before, during and after World War II. The collection, "One Blood, One Flame" was a three-year project, filming interviews with 154 Gypsy survivors of WWII throughout 'former Yugoslavia'. Each volume contains a DVD with excerpts of the filmed interviews.
Polansky was closely involved in a further exposé of inaction regarding the continuing lead poisoning of Roma in Mitrovica. Dateline's UN's Toxic Shame by Amos Roberts, a scathing review of the UN's inaction on this scandal, aired in Australia on 26th April 2009.

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