8 . Philomena Franz , the first narrator of the Roma genocide , with her memoir in hand , 2022 | Picture by David Navarro , as part of the author ’ s research project
to survivors and promoting political and civic engagement .
As part of an active programme promoted on both sides of the Atlantic by Jewish groups , academic studies on the genocide of the Jewish people developed especially from the foundational work of Raul Hilberg ( 1961 ). The history of the Jewish Holocaust grew in scale as the discourse of its uniqueness was affirmed . There were also prominent Jewish historians , such as Henry Friedlander and the aforementioned Sybil Milton , who advocated for a broader focus on victim groups and addressed the Romani case in their studies . It is regrettable that the censorship of meaning recently imposed by the intergovernmental organisation IHRA ( International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance ) in defining “ antisemitism ”, with the aim of excluding comparisons and discussions of other genocides , betrays the legacy of these scholars and Jewish Holocaust survivors such as Simone Veil . Veil , who was President of the European Parliament in 1979 , attended the protest organised by Romani activists at the Bergen-Belsen camp .
The academic study of the Romani genocide
also shows a significant delay compared to the Jewish case . We can compare the date of Hilberg ’ s foundational work in 1961 with that of the book that played a similar academic role in Romani studies : Michael Zimmermann ’ s Rassenutopie und Genozid . Die nationalsozialistische “ Lösung der Zigeunerfrage ” ( Racial Utopia and Genocide : The National Socialist “ Solution to the Gypsy Question ”), published in 1996 . Following this inspiration , it has only been since the early 21st century that research on the Romani Holocaust has begun to develop and organise into academic programmes , as shown by two key state-of-the-field publications coordinated by Anton Weiss-Wendt ( 2013 ) and Celia Donert and Eve Rosenhaft ( 2023 ).
However , although the research into these two genocides differs significantly in terms of timing and resources , the most radical difference lies in the realm of public knowledge — the body of information and representations we manage as citizens , which shapes our perception of social issues . While the Jewish Holocaust is a topic that cinema , literature , the media , memorials , and museums have long introduced into mainstream
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Observing Memories Issue 8