Observing Memories Issue 8 December 2024 | Page 9

1 . Eva Justin interviewing Romani women and children in Racial Hygiene Unit photograph taken between 1936 and 1940 | German Federal Archive – Digital image archive : R 165 Bild-244- 72 . Bundesarchiv , R 165 Bild-244-72 / Unknown author / CC-BY-SA 3.0
eventually endured the “ death marches ” with the collapse of the Third Reich . Even Auschwitz , the symbol of the Holocaust as an industrial and bureaucratised system of human liquidation , holds a prominent place in the history of the Romani genocide : in 1942 , a “ Zigeuner-lager ” ( Gypsy camp ) was established there , envisioned by the Nazis as the “ final solution ” for this European minority .
The similarities with the much more well-known Jewish case are so numerous that it is not surprising that Jewish researchers were the first to detect the documentary traces of the mass murder of Romanies carried out by the Nazi regime . Written memoirs by Jewish survivors recall them as part of the racial “ scum ” of the camps ( a term used by Simon Lacks ). Raphael Lemkin himself , the man who coined the legal concept of ‘ genocide ’ after the war , included this group in his early reflections on the crimes of Nazism . It is true that there are also some differences between the two genocides : dates , legislative patterns , racial-scientific arguments and so on , but none as significant as the difference in their recognition and memory .
“ Persecuting the Survivors ”
This was the title of an article published in 1998 by Holocaust historian Sybil Milton , describing the fate of the Romani people after the war . The title is both expressive and accurate , given the extent to which the
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