New web portal about the genocide of the Sinti and Roma
Irene Wachtel
At www.sintiundroma.org/en the extermination of the minority is addressed by showing numerous videos, interviews, photographs and documents. Furthermore, the website documents the history of survivors in post-war Germany, the success of the civil rights movement and the human rights situation in Europe after 1989.
“We deliberately decided to use the online platform as a contemporary way to communicate a still very important topic. The unprecedented Nazi genocide of the Sinti and Roma belongs to the age-long mutual history of this minority and the majority. A prerequisite, also, for this genocide was an antigypsyism that was deeply rooted in European history,” says Romani Rose, the Chairman of the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma.
With its new website , the Documentation and Cultural Centre of German Sinti and Roma aims to refute prejudices and hostilities on one hand and, on the other hand, to document the genocide of the Sinti and Roma: from the ostracism and disenfranchisement of the minority in the German Reich to the systematic extermination in occupied Europe. The inhuman perspective of the perpetrators is contrasted by the victims' testimonies.
Historical family pictures of Sinti and Roma provide an insight into the people’s daily lives and let them stand out as individuals. This self-documentation shows the individuality and personality of these people and provides an important counterpart to the “gypsy clichés” that remain very powerful today. They illustrate the destroyed lives and destinies behind the abstract documents of the bureaucratically organized extermination.
On the occasion of International Roma Day on April 8, 2018, the Documentation and Cultural Centre of German Sinti and Roma launched its new website "‘Racial Diagnosis: Gypsy‘. The Nazi Genocide of the Sinti and Roma and the Long Struggle for Recognition“.