Nadja Greku: Creating Connection

A Place of Belonging

When visitors enter the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture (ERIAC) in Belgrade, Nadju Greku often greets them with a snack and a question: “Tell me what you know about the Roma.” Some admit they know nothing; others repeat what they’ve heard about “gypsies.” Either way, she ushers them in and begins what she calls “cultural diplomacy on a micro level.”

Greku, a program manager, has built a career on transforming misperceptions into connection. “We’re a space not just of learning, but of unlearning,” she says. The Belgrade gallery is both archive and living room—a place where history, art, and identity meet. Here Roma and non-Roma can experience exhibitions that challenge stereotypes. The exhibition, Combing through Time: Disentangling the Hidden Histories of the Roma Genocide, currently on view, unearths stories of Roma resistance and courage—such as that of Hajrija Imeria Mihaljić, a Roma woman who saved a Jewish girl from a transit camp during the Holocaust. Her name now appears among the Righteous Among the Nations, commemorating her bravery.

“I was competing in history in high school and never heard about these stories,” says Greku. All she saw was a single line in a textbook: “Roma were among the victims.” Today, many visitors are hearing about the genocide for the first time. Others from the Serbian community share stories of relatives killed in Jasenovac, where Roma were also murdered.

“One of the most powerful moments for me is when young Roma cry during a guided tour,” Greku says. “It’s liberating—they can finally be themselves in a space where we talk about Roma and pride. It’s not about boosting ethno-nationalist ideas. It’s about giving someone a sense of worth and belonging because when they see how many Roma worked toward liberating the region from the Ustasha and Nazi regimes, they see that they deserve to be citizens of this region.”

Greku’s own story begins in the multicultural neighborhoods of 1990s Novi Sad. She describes her childhood as unusually charmed—amazing teachers, a feeling of safety. Being light-skinned helped, she acknowledges. Her cousin, the same age as her but darker-skinned, was bullied so badly he left school at 13. “No one ever came to ask why he wasn’t there,” she says. “No one cared.”

Raised by her aunt and grandmother—“strong, fierce women who showed up for me and made me believe I could do anything”—she found her first mentor in her aunt, a cleaner at the local high school. On weekends her aunt took Greku along to help scrape gum from under desks. “She’d buy me cherry pie and let me watch cartoons in the teachers’ room. I thought high school was a beautiful place.” Years later, Greku graduated from that same school with top marks.

After that it was one scholarship after another—the Roma Studies program at the Central European University, a master’s in international relations from the Vienna campus, a mentorship at the Regional Cooperation Council in Sarajevo. “Those experiences were transformative,” Greku says. “They gave me access.”

That sense of duty—to return knowledge to the community—guided her next step. Offered a position with European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture in Berlin, she asked instead to work in Belgrade. “I wanted to bring what I’d learned back home.”

Even with her degrees, prejudice lingers. At an employment office in Belgrade, a clerk once told her that while Roma are “lovely people who love dancing and freedom,” they never want to take the jobs the clerk finds for them. Greku says, “I studied in Austria and that’s the same racism Austrians use about Serbian migrants. But we didn’t come here to work—we’ve been living here a long time.” She isn’t bitter about the encounter. “It’s better she said it. We need to bring things to the surface.”

For Greku, Belgrade’s European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture is more than a workplace; it’s where she’s found dignity and purpose. “We’re not a typical NGO or embassy,” she says. “We’re a home for Roma passing through Belgrade—a place to ask, exchange, and connect. That human-centered approach is what the world needs more of.”