Deep VIEW
History and memory of the Roma genocide under Nazism
Maria Sierra Professor of Contemporary History , University of Seville
“ We do not need a memory that shies away from the confrontation between victims and executioners , that eases consciences . We need a memory that walks through the carriages , that stands on the ramp , that sees the faces , that hears the screams ”, Ewald Hanstein , Auschwitz survivor ( Meine hunder Leben (‘ My Hundred Lives ’), 2005 , p . 156 )
More than half a million people were murdered by the Nazi regime and its collaborators simply for being considered “ Gypsies ” 1 . This number continues to rise as researchers uncover new mass graves on the Eastern Front of World War II . This means that more than two thirds of the Roma people who lived in Europe before 1933 were victims of a genocide that , in proportional terms , may have been even more devastating than that of the Jewish people during the Holocaust . The comparison is not just supported by numbers , but also by the intentions and methods used : treated under the Nuremberg Laws as an “ inferior race ”, the so-called “ Zigeuner ” were expelled from their jobs or recruited for forced labour , subjected to sterilisation and plunder , registered as criminals , and violently mistreated , if not outright tortured , under various so-called scientific study techniques . They were imprisoned in local jails or camps and deported to extermination camps and ghettos spread across the vast Nazi concentration camp network . Many fell into mass graves , shot by firing squads or subjected to other brutal methods , and
1 In this text , I use the word “ Gypsy ” (“ Zigeuner ” in German ) as a historical term , always in quotation marks . Its deeply pejorative nature in several languages is integral to its meaning . For this reason , although I employ it when referring to historical texts or concepts , in my own discourse as the author of these lines , I have opted for the term Roma ( Romani ), an endonym that emerged from the First International Romani Congress ( 1971 ). Sinti refers to the Romani minority historically established in German-speaking regions ; much like Gitano in Spain , these are self-referential terms used by these communities .
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Observing Memories Issue 8