Romani communities suffered two paradoxically parallel processes . On the one hand , their suffering as a racialised group targeted for destruction during the war was rendered invisible ; on the other hand , they were forced to assimilate into the dominant culture . In this first respect , what happened with a children ’ s story , Ede and Unku , written in 1931 , is telling . It narrates the friendship between a working-class boy and a Romani girl . The book became compulsory school reading in East Germany from 1972 for its antifascist symbolism , bolstered by the author ’ s profile , John Heartfield ’ s photographs , and its inclusion in the infamous Nazi book burnings of 1933 . However , its use in schools overlooked the suffering of a group persecuted on racial grounds , even though the protagonist was a real Romani girl . Erna ( Unku in Romani ) Lauenburger , who was deported with her family to Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1943 and murdered a few months later . A 1981 film revisiting the story also failed to address the fate of the Romanies .
In general , post-war communist countries ’ dominant narratives of national unity , which erased the racial identity of victims to highlight the role of the heroic , suffering “ people ”, were accompanied in the case of the Romanies by policies aimed at their assimilation into mainstream society . The forms of these policies varied widely , from forced sedentarisation but with some provision of resources ( Bulgaria , the Soviet Union ) to more repressive measures such as property confiscation ( Poland ) or forced sterilisation ( Czechoslovakia ). Although in some cases there were opportunities for education and social mobility , the cost of forced cultural assimilation was high . Additionally , where local populations had collaborated with Nazi authorities during the war , the official discourse afterwards placed all responsibility for the Romani genocide on the German occupiers , as happened in Romania with the deportation of thousands of Romanies to Transnistria .
2 . Dr Robert Ritter in 1938 at Stein in der Pfalz , Germany | German Federal Archive – Digital image archive : R 165 Bild-059-026 . Bundesarchiv , Bild 146- 1991-014-09 / CC-BY-SA 3.0
3 . Craniometric studies and racial science : Eva Justin [?] and Dr . Adolf Würth measuring the head of a young Sinto , 1938 | German Federal Archive – Digital image archive . Bundesarchiv , Bild 146-1989-110-32 / CC-BY-SA 3.0
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