Gypsies Eastern Europe

Aranka Ponczok's dark face looks haunted and guilty as she signs with an "X" for a registered letter from the police. The mailman has tricked her into opening the door of her squatter's apartment by claiming to have a package. "It's a punishment," the 27-year-old Gypsy cries in protest, wincing from the envelope like a frightened child. She hands it to a visitor to read.

Aranka Ponczok's dark face looks haunted and guilty as she signs with an "X" for a registered letter from the police. The mailman has tricked her into opening the door of her squatter's apartment by claiming to have a package. "It's a punishment," the 27-year-old Gypsy cries in protest, wincing from the envelope like a frightened child. She hands it to a visitor to read.

Two members of a low-level organized crime ring were sentenced to a year in county jail Tuesday after admitting to stealing $3,000 from an elderly Ventura couple in a tree-trimming scam three months ago. The group includes two other defendants, one of whom was too ill to attend the hearing and a fourth who received a lesser sentence last month. They have been described as a band of gypsies from Eastern Europe who use a well-known scheme to commit residential burglaries. On Sept.

For decades, Communist governments tried to suppress the prejudice. Now it's bubbling up again, whispered in streets and scrawled on walls: "Gypsies go away." "Gypsies to the gas." "It's good the Germans killed you." "This is an everyday occurrence. If you don't hear it from the young boys, you'll hear it in a shop. If you don't hear it in a shop, you'll hear it in a medical clinic," said Ewa Andrasz, 42, an unemployed Roma woman living in Tarnow, in Poland's south.