The article outlines different types of leadership and representation in the communities of Polish Roma from the perspective of political sciences and historiography. The main bulk of the argument deals with the period of the last twenty-five years. The author claims this period to be crucial in the process of forming the modern leadership among the Roma and shaping Roma public life. The article presents the pivotal events, occurrences, and activities of particular persons that contributed to the contemporary shape of the public life of the Polish Roma. It is argued that the most important in this respect were the processes of building Roma NGOs and their subsequent development, influenced, among other factors, by different standpoints of Roma leaders regarding the goals of these organizations and the methods they employed. The author claims that these differences have been most vividly revealed as a result of paying out compensation for the Roma victims of the Third Reich. The divisions that came out at that time have also been followed by differences in the evaluation and the quality of the engagement of the Roma organizations and their leaders in the implementation of the governmental integration programs carried out in 2001–2013. Eventually, the author points out significant deficiencies in the existing studies of the last twenty-five years of the Roma public life in Poland and recommends an in-depth research on the issues raised in this article.
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