The suffering of the Roma and Sinti in World War II across Europe remains , even decades later , full of significant historiographical gaps , scientific inaccuracies , and memorial oversights . The knowledge about the crimes against the Roma and Sinti is still lacking , and research on the genocide of this group is insufficient and largely marginalized . Innocent and utterly defenseless victims are not equally represented in the culture of remembrance with respect to other victimized peoples .
One case in Croatia that we will present here illustrates this culture of oblivion . For a full 45 years , from 1977 to 2022 , the cemetery in Marija Gorica near Zagreb , Croatia ’ s capital , commemorated what was long-believed to be the suffering of Jewish victims at the hands of the Waffen SS in the nearby village of Hrastina . The truth , however , is somewhat different . It was , in fact , the last massacre of the Roma and perhaps the only crime against the Sinti in the Independent State of Croatia ( NDH ). Over 40 people – Roma and Sinti , including pregnant women and children – were killed in a single night . This horrific massacre took place on the night of April 24-25 , 1945 , just weeks before the country ’ s liberation from fascism . The members of the artistic circus troupe of the Winter brothers were murdered by the First Ustasha Defense Brigade , known as the Luburić Brigade ( named after their commander Vjekoslav Max Luburić ).
This circus group , as historians note , brought joy and song to villages and towns during the grim wartime years . Constantly fleeing from Nazis and their collaborators , this group of Roma and Sinti hid and fled abroad to escape the ravages of war . In Marija Gorica , they held several performances for the local villagers in April . The Ustashas noticed them and forced them to put on a show for them as well . On the abandoned estate of a partisan family in Hrastina , they were subjected to torture , rape , culminating in murder , and even desecration of the dead until the early hours .
This important discovery of the massacre of Roma and Sinti is the result of the research for a book published by the Jasenovac Memorial Site , The Massacre of Roma and Sinti in Hrastina in 1945 . The authors are Mario Šimunković , researcher , Đorđe Mihovilović , senior curator at the Jasenovac Memorial Museum , and Ivo Pejaković , the then-director of the same museum .
Đorđe Mihovilović spoke about the circumstances surrounding the creation of the book , as well as the importance of historical sources , including a large number of testimonies from locals provided to the State Commission . In an interview with the newspaper Novosti at the time of the publication of this article , he pointed out that the researchers ’ interest in this period in the Zaprešić
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Observing Memories Issue 8