Inviting everyone interested to see the display, museum director Sanjin Mihelic said very little was known about the fascinating and very tough history of the Roma. He said "quality knowledge" was a prerequisite for making the present and the future of the Roma in Croatia and Zagreb as good as possible.
Roma MP Veljko Kajtazi said his community in recent years had shown that a big change had taken place, "not just an evolution, but a revolution."
"From education to housing and employment, we have shown that the Roma community no longer wants to observe its national holidays under a bridge, on a bridge and in a pub, but in institutions. That's what we have been doing the past few years because we don't want existence with the majority population, but coexistence."
The Roma community has a rich culture of which the majority population knows very little, while the Roma know everything about the majority population, said Kajtazi.
"Not only do we speak the same language which we have learnt, we have also accepted the culture of the majority population, we have the same names, observe important dates together," he said, adding that the exhibition was an invitation to the majority population to acquaint themselves with their fellow citizens, the Roma, "who have been living here not 70, but more than 700 years."
The exhibition presents a timeline of Roma migrations - the first, from India to Byzantium and then in Europe; the second, from the mid-19th century until World War II and the genocide carried out by the Nazis; and the third, in the second half of the 20th century. The exhibition also shows the Roma community in present-day society, including the activity of the Croatian Roma Alliance Kali Sara.
Kali Sara president Suzana Krcmar thanked everyone who made the exhibition possible, saying among other things, "We are Roma and, actually, you are Roma too, because Roma means man."
Among those attending the opening were Zagreb mayor Milan Bandic, numerous MPs and political party envoys, and the president of the government's ethnic minority council, Aleksandar Tolnauer.
The exhibition can be seen until April 8.