Why has the Romani holocaust received so little attention?

[gullgal]

It is estimated that somewhere between 250,000 to 500,000 European Roma and Sinti people were systematically exterminated by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II. This amounts to between a quarter or a half of the entire population of Roma. They call it the devouring I believe. Yet it is rarely invoked and Roma peoole are heavily discriminated against, and there is little awareness of their historical trauma. I can't understand why. Certainly I only learnt it very late in life.

This is a good point

It’s a good point. They are always mentioned when the Holocaust are mentioned but I feel we don’t know as many of their stories as we do with the Jewish population, or hear about topics such as compensation.

It probably has a lot to do with levels of literacy, education and power, as well of course with the much lower numbers involved. People wore a Judenstern, and Nazi propaganda films were about Jews, not Romani. Kristallnacht targeted Jewish businesses. So even the original historical
acts were more prominently targeted at Jews.

There were also Jewish authors such as Primo Levi, who ensured the reality of the concentration camps was not forgotten. Famous movies such as Schindler’s List were about Jews. I guess there is a less powerful lobby organisation.

They probably didn’t own much property so the issues of restitution of homes and art is less prominent also.

Simon Wiesenthal did his best to ensure that the fact and extent of the persecution and murder of the Roma and Sinti during the Holocaust became more widely known and worked with people from those communities to do so and to campaign for their rights generally.

I think there may be a parallel with the complaints about black history not being taught - it just hasn’t been documented in the same way. If you compare the documented record-keeping of many African countries compared with the U.K., which had documented so much from the Domesday Book onwards, with all the church and parish records of births, marriages, deaths and local events there is just less to work with.

It's about who shouts the loudest....

What is?

Antisemitic

Is that your default answer if you don't like the response?

The fact that Romani holocaust received so little attention. Then there are the prists, both protestant & Catholic and don't forget the LGBT community.

Usually only mentioned as a side note.

They were definitely not missed out when we were taught in school. The memorial to them in Berlin is very moving. Though I could always do without the loud US tourists running around it and taking photos (I live there and on not a single occasion has it been the quiet place of respect and contemplation it should be!)

Hah
sure.
Good grief.

Colum McCann wrote a novel about the experience of a Roma woman in Eastern Europe shortly before (as a child who survived awful things), during and after WW2. It's based on the life story of a real woman.

No, I have never responded like this before. This has never been my response even once before let alone my default one.

You are yourself forgetting the disabled people - multiple times more in total than the groups you've mentioned put together, yet forgotten for the most part.

If you go to the Documentation Centre in Munich you can read the stories of individual people, like the little girl who's parents managed to rescue her the first time she was taken, and were then betrayed by their neighbours and she was killed.

Tens of thousands of children with disabilities were taken from their families and tied to beds in "wards" and allowed to starve to death - many died of untreated lung infections from being tied in one position for weeks, starved and kept in freezing unsanitary conditions.

Adults with disabilities were killed too, at least 250,000 children and adults.

Many healthy people with learning disabilities were restrained and then left to die slowly so that their deaths could be documented as natural.

It is antisemitic as it implies that the Jews didn't really suffer they just shouted the loudest.

Clearly others suffered and the Romani in particular but the Nazi policies clearly publically earmarked the Jews for extermination ( posters etc) which is one of the reasons it is remembered now.

I must look this up, I like Colum McCann

But what's that got to do with who shouts the loudest?

I think the difference is that the laws that made Jews wear star of David and stopped them going to the cinema didn't apply to other groups at the time.

And when looking at the holocaust it is logical to start there because it was before the camps and there is surviving literature from the time.

Disabled people often didn't get as far as the camps, as above children were taken supposedly for health care and then as described above they were starved.

Once people got to the camps the badges there indicated which group you had been part of to get you sent to the camps.

The figure I grew up hearing (as a then observant Jew at a Jewish school) was 6 million Jews and 6 millions others were murdered. I think there’s a lot of reasons why the Jews are mentioned first - the atrocities before the camps, the sheer scale of the propaganda machine, the amount of written records kept by those who died (Anne Frank etc) and the endless books by those who survived. The gay community lived in secrecy, the disabled community didn’t survive or couldn’t tell their own story, the Roma community was often illiterate, etc. I always knew the Holocaust wasn’t a one character tragedy even though of course my education and experience was focussed on Jews. Many of my friends had grandparents who survived, we had plenty as members at synagogue and a large number who visited our school at various points. Another difference I suppose as most survivors left Europe so brought their stories to the rest of the world.

So many Jewish people worked very hard to ensure the suffering of their people is not forgotten. Well done to them.
It’s unsettling to be reminded that history is passed on to us by those who make the effort to document it.
And it is necessary to keep the message alive. Even now there are holocaust deniers.
Agree that the Romani and other groups were and still are less able to mobilise and promote their causes. Where was the Romani Wiesenthal?

I think lots of people are well aware that there were several groups who were persecuted by the Nazis - Roma people, Communists, disabled people, homosexuals - but it was the Jews who were at the heart of the whole Nazi ideology. Hitler was driven by his hatred of Jews. Significantly more Jews were killed than any other persecuted group so I guess it's not surprising that most people associate the Holocaust with the systematic debasement and extermination of Jews across Europe.

I agree about those who have campaigned tirelessly to ensure that the deaths of Jewish people at the hands of the Nazis is not forgotten.

It is not just Roma victims that are often forgotten, the same can be said for gay men and lesbians who the Nazis killed. Though perhaps because of continuing hatred or worse towards gay men and lesbians in peace time, the focus of campaigners was more on the present.

I sat history O level in 1975. I knew that it wasn't just Jews who were sent to concentration camps. I have always known that they sent Romani, homosexuals, mentally ill, disabled people, communists and other people who didn't fit with the Nazi ideals to the camps.

I knew about that, I was taught it in school in the 90s but not the percentages involved. For instance, 100% of institutionalised disabled/mentally ill people were euthanised by the Nazis. This began immediately when they took power and they did not try to hide it, they didn't really need to as most western countries had a eugenics programme at the time and for many year after.

I think people are scarily ignorant about the holocaust, and given there are people out there who denied even happened, it now makes it more difficult to get into the nuance ie that it wasn’t only Jewish people who were systematically murdered