ENCYCLOPAEDIA
OF THE GENOCIDE
OF SINTI AND ROMA
Documentation and Cultural Center of German Sinti und Roma in Heidelberg
“The aim of the Nazi state and its racial ideology was to annihilate the Sinti and Roma minority. Although important special studies have appeared in past decades, knowledge on this topic is still extremely fragmented,” explains project head Dr Karola Fings from the Research Centre on Antigypsyism.
The online portal gives access to specialist articles, which are not only ordered alphabetically but also allocated to different sections such as genocide sites, personal biographies or the aftermath. Besides photographs, the digital encyclopaedia also features an interactive map. It shows all the sites across Europe about which there is information, including concentration camps, but also places where massacres were carried out. A chronological list gives an overview of all relevant events from 1933 onward.
More than 90 scholars from 25 countries are contributing to the Encyclopaedia documenting the National Socialist genocide of the Sinti and Roma in Europe. The project, launched in summer 2020 for a planned five-year period, is receiving 1.6 million euros in funding from the Federal Foreign Office and has the backing of various cooperation partners and an academic advisory board.
The editorial of the project states: “The complexity of the project is shown by the fact that all of Europe needs to be covered, as all countries were affected by World War II, albeit in different ways, and this meant that Sinti and Roma in all those countries were affected in one way or another. Based on today’s map of Europe, there are 46 countries to be analysed. There is currently enough information on 33 countries to justify publishing articles on them in the Encyclopaedia.
The Encyclopaedia thus began with the certainty that such a complex project can only be realised in collaboration with authors who have themselves conducted research in public or family archives and/or published on the topic. For this reason, a total of 18 working groups on individual countries or groups of countries have been formed since the end of 2020. In the working groups, the Encyclopaedia team and the authors discuss the topics of the lemmas—as the articles in a reference work are called—that need to be written, and how many there should be. These conversations help to ensure that the European dimension of the Nazi genocide can be depicted in all its facets. Each text is published on the website as soon as it has been edited. As the Encyclopaedia is available in German and English, the resulting body of knowledge on and from the many different countries will be accessible to a wide international public for the first time.
Unlike a monograph, which usually strives for a comprehensive presentation and has to limit itself thematically, the format of an Encyclopaedia makes it possible to gradually assemble the body of knowledge into a larger overall picture. This also applies when—as in the case of the genocide of the Sinti and Roma in Europe—the state of research means that a piece of the mosaic is missing at one point or another. In the lemmas, we aim to be as explicit and precise as possible in making clear where there are still gaps in the research. As the online Encyclopaedia allows the existing lemmas to be updated or further lemmas to be published at any time, the current contents cannot and should not be regarded as fixed, but should be understood as a body of knowledge that is subject to constant review, re-writing and supplementation.”
The encyclopaedia is intended to comprise around 1,000 articles by the end of 2025 and constitute a milestone in research and educational activity. Published in both English and German, the encyclopaedia on the Nazi genocide − also known as “Sinti and Roma Holocaust” or “Samudaripen” – will first go online when presented on 5 March, and then be available to the public. It is technically based on Open Encyclopedia Systems and was implemented by the Center for Digital Systems (CeDiS) at FU Berlin.
The presentation in Berlin was opened with a greeting from Romani Rose, who is also the managing director of the Documentation and Cultural Center of German Sinti und Roma in Heidelberg, one of the cooperation partners.
The Research Centre on Antigypsyism was established at the Department of History at Heidelberg University as the first and so far only academic institution in Europe focusing on this subject. Since 2017 it has engaged in research into the causes, forms and consequences of antigypsyism in European societies, from the Middle Ages until the present day. The academic director is Prof. Dr Tanja Penter, a historian of eastern European history at Heidelberg University.
Hundreds of thousands of Sinti and Roma were persecuted and murdered under the National Socialist regime in Germany and Europe. The historical knowledge about this genocide is currently being compiled in a large-scale encyclopaedia under the leadership of the Research Centre on Antigypsyism at Heidelberg University. The first contributions to this unique resource are now available online. The new portal was presented to the public in Berlin on 5 March 2024