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.

On your lawn? Sure there were.

By everyone, I think you mean ‘other racists’.

You can call me an idealist all you like, but you are still a racist.

@AtchinTan Amazing posts. Thank you. I have learned something from this thread. I do know about the ‘others’ who were victims but thought maybe 1-2m in addition to the Jews. Really sobering to hear this information.

This is a thread about the Holocaust. Fuck sake even by the standard of the average mumsnet troll this is low.

I think turning up on a thread about remembering the holocaust to spout your racist opinions is appalling. I hope your children have other, kinder adults in their lives to shape their view of the world.

Yes exactly. Of all the threads to turn up and start spouting racism on.

I've always known (my family were German Jews). But you're right that the stories of Roma people under Nazism are largely untold. I think there are probably a number of reasons, but one is about what gets documented and by who. Remember that the Holocaust was generally neglected till the 60s, since when there has been an absolute explosion of literary output.

The Jewish Holocaust is an important and distinct story, and Jews as a group were highly literate (the people of the book). So more likely to write down what happened and more likely too to work in publishing or have contacts there. The Jewish community is strongly committed to remembering every life lost, so an extraordinary degree of documenting and archiving has gone on and this attracts and facilitates historians, film makers etc.

Roma people and the disabled are far less literate and have very little social capital. I wonder if the Roma have an oral storytelling tradition that will not pass easily to the mainstream? And gay survivors tended to keep quiet because homosexuality was. Illegal - many went straight from concentration camp to prison.

I'm just thinking out loud, and I may not be getting it right. I must say, though (somewhat defensively) that I often see the comment that 'everyone hears about the Jews but what about the others' in a way that implies the Jews have been greedy and swallowed up all the publicity. But Jews aren't responsible for telling other people's stories.

Everyone murdered by the Nazis is a victim whose story deserves to be told. I do think we should know more about Roma history, especially during this time. But I dont like the kind of shopping list approach where all the categories of victim are listed with the implication that they all faced the same fate for the same reasons. They actually faced slightly different fates for different reasons, and ALL those reasons need to be understood.

In the case of Jews, Hitler appointed them, Voldemort-style, as the ultimate and age-long enemy. He said that other social 'problems' - like communism and homosexuality and black people having rights and the breakdown of the traditional family - were masterminded by Jews. He drew on traditional antisemitism but dressed it up in race science and developed industrial methodology to annihilate an entire race. Gay men, Jehovahs witnesses, Roma, disabled people were symptoms of a society going wrong - but Jews were the reason it was going wrong.

I think that is also why the Holocaust is treated as a story about Jews and antisemitism primarily. Please note Im not saying the mass murder of Roma people was less important - but to Hitler, it was.

Of course you're not imagining it. And of course knowing it happened is very different to knowing any details about it. Let's be very blunt: there's little interest because so many people don't like gypsies, Roma or travellers. As seen on this thread. It's an ongoing issue and people want to find their victims 'pure' and relatable.

This is a very thoughtful comment. My starting the thread was definitely not intended as being to ask, why have Jews got all the attention? I am horrified by the entire Holocaust. My question was more about why the Roma are still so discriminated against, and why we don't recognize the deep roots of discrimination against them. But it has been sobering to see what reaction it has drawn out.

The Holocaust is a term that refers to the systematic murder of Jews by the nazi party. It doesn't include the many, many others murdered by them, that's why the wiki page doesn't include any of the others.

But I have come across many references to Romani Holocaust? And I believe the Nazis also wanted to totally eradicate them as a race, so it seems to make sense to me to use the term for what happened to them. Is there a reason not to use it?

My DD went to school with a few Russians. They were horrified about how we taught the holocaust. They viewed it as 6 million Russians, 6 million Jews and 6 million others. They could not not their heads around our lack vision/scale.

As I said earlier, history is fluid depending on where you live and who is speaking to you. Dismissing groups as other is unacceptable.

@gullgal , I’m surprised if people aren’t aware of what the nazi’s visited on the Roma. Has their population recovered? After all these many years the Jewish population has not recovered from the nazi genocide. It is a dark and ugly stain in history.

@Ketzele Please be aware that there where many disabled and Rom who where educated, as well as inevitably large percentages of them who where not. Despite a general pride in learning, there where also plenty of poor illiterate or low literacy Jews too, especially in some countries.

You are correct about Hitlers claim that Jews had caused the war, and drawing on Germany's long history of anti semitism. Long before WW2 Rom where referred to as the 'disgusting fleas upon the backs of the repugnant Jews.'

The Jews where blamed for many things, in particular inventing both Communism and Capitalism, plotting to take over the world, and creating decadent art, literature, music, and films. The big issue to Hitler with both, was "alien blood."

Hitler himself was less preoccupied with “The Final Solution of the Gypsy Question" as it was set it in motion in 1933 as soon as he came to power, and it was expected to be completed before the point he started looking at specifically extermination of the Jews, rather than the original plan of enslavement or forced exile.

As far back as 1899, the Bavarian police were instructed to report on every Rom family they could find. What ID papers they had, how many horses they had, where they had come from, where they were going and what measures had been taken against their existence, as well as recording photographs and family trees.

Prosecutors reported any Rom crime to Central Office along with birth, marriage and death certs. The acts of grazing animals, setting up camp, and making a fire where all criminal acts.

In 1905 700 copies of the records were published as a book; The Zigeuner Buch
Photographs and details of thousands of known Rom carried by police.
The system was taken up by other states. and then Austria - Hungary and Switzerland ordered copies.

When the Nazis came to power in 1933, there where the details of an immediate 19,000 Rom who they set about sterilizing. Again, initially it was death of the race, not the individual, who was to be used for the Reich.

The “The Final Solution of the Gypsy Question” and “The Final Solution of the Jewish Question” where drafted at different times with more (in the first case) and less (in the 2nd) precision. The end result and desire was exactly the same.

Having failed in the various plans and attempts to rid Germany of both Rom and Jew, evolving Nazi policy actually started with attempting to force emigration, planning massed forced exile, and when all other plans had by then failed, mass extermination; in 1936 (Roms) and 1941 (Jews)

1933 Mass forced sterilization of Rom began under Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases, after Rom were classified as automatically diseased by race.
1935,* *Nuremberg laws formally stripped German Rom and German Jews of citizenship, both as "racially inferior" and "alien blood" along with a load of other prohibitions for both. Neither race was yet scheduled for mass extermination.

But the mechanism for nightingale the Rom had started in1899.
Bavarian police were instructed to report on every Rom family they could find. What ID papers they had, how many horses they had, where they had come from, where they were going and what measures had been taken against them, as well as recording photographs and family trees.

Central Office required prosecutors to report any Rom crime along with birth, marriage and death certs. The acts of grazing animals, setting up camp, and making a fire, along with selling goods at market where all criminal acts.

In 1905 700 copies of the records were published as a book; The Zigeuner Buch
Photographs and details of all known Rom carried by police.
The system was taken up across Germany, then Austria - Hungary and Switzerland ordered copies.
By 1922 Rom had to carry special ID on them at all times. It included their photograph, fingerprints,personal details and those of their parents, spouse and children. If the card was taken by officials, they where committing a crime not carrying it and were sent to detention centers. many did not return.

When the Nazis came to power in 1933, there where the details of an immediate 19,000 Rom who they set about sterilizing and many where sent to Dachau for medical experimentation. At the time it held political prisoners for forced labor, some of them where also Jewish.
(Ordinary Jews where sent in 1938. Austrian deportees in Summer, then after Kristallnacht 11,000 from Germany. Most where released over the next few months after proving they had secured passage out of Germany. This was not an offer open to Rom)

Three years later in 1936 it had not been enough. “The Final Solution of the Gypsy Question” was drafted by Hans Pfundtner, Ministry of the Interior for the Reich.

At the same time prior to the 1936 Olympic games all Rom in the Berlin area where arrested and taken to Marzhan gypsy labor camp. It was also used by Stein for medical and racial experiments.
Conditions were very poor and many died. (Of the 1.200 who passed through it between then and it's liberation (large numbers who didn't die there went to Auschwitz) a total of 17 are known to have survived. 14 alive at the end and three who survived at other camps.)

Himmler wanted 'pure blood' Rom exempted for study. Adolf Würth of the Racial Hygiene Research Unit sought implementation of "The Final Solution of the Gypsy Question" in1937 which set the ball rolling for mass murders to start.
Himmler then launched his Decree to Resolve the Gypsy Question as Required by the Nature of Race in 1938, which turned the ball rolling into full scale liquidation.
World War II began nine months later. It was three years later that mass murder would be applied to the Jews.

In 1939 Hitler criticized the rest of the world for not taking in Jews that Germany wished to expel, and warned that consequences of war would include the "annihilation" of European Jews.
He didn't bother saying the rest of the world should take Rom. It was a foregone conclusion and a lot where already dead.

After the Polish invasion the plan was all Jews in the Reich would be exiled to areas under the Generalgouvernement and become an enslaved and useable servant work force.
The plan was abandoned when it was realised Poland was too small.
In 1940 the Madagascar Plan to deport all Jews to Madagascar was announced. It was a turning point in that it now sort to totally dispose of Jews.
The Germans lost the Battle of Britain soon after, ending that idea.

In June 1941 the Germans occupied the SU. Himmler was given direct responsibility by Hitler that all perceived threat to permanent German rule was to be eliminated. The decision to systematically uniformly murder all Jews, Rom and others specifically in the SU was taken, and the Einsatzgruppen was deployed along with regular army. Often helped by collaborators, the first systematic murder of the Jews was instigated.

A month later Goering authorized what had now been shortened to the "Final Solution" and by the end of 1941Jews where being sent to what would become extermination camps. The first Zyklon B experiment was children in Auschwitz in September 1941. Belzec and Chelmno were constructed and Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek and Auschwitz became mainly (ignoring satellite camps) for the purpose of extermination camps, early in 1942.

I'm just thinking out loud, and I may not be getting it right. I must say, though (somewhat defensively) that I often see the comment that 'everyone hears about the Jews but what about the others' in a way that implies the Jews have been greedy and swallowed up all the publicity. But Jews aren't responsible for telling other people's stories.

This is one of the many reasons there's a lot of caution about how we talk about the Porrajmos. US organizations have been very specific that the use of the word Holocaust describes the attempted annihilation of the Jews and no other.

We have had some quarrels with Jewish organizations as they have sought to tell their story.
The big ones being the choice to use German numbers, and records, and Gaudja and Jewish academics to arbitrarily decide how many of us died, rather than take the evidence of our people as to who was known dead, or permanently missing. The idea that we where not to be trusted even in the reporting of our own families deaths is pretty offensive.
To us this is as much an issue of Jews being different, (pre Israel) but still Gaudja than anything else.

The second was when survivors came forward to say 'that picture in your museum is my child, or cousin' etc, and named them. The refusal to properly identify them once known, and the idea that it didn't matter if they continued to be wrongly counted as 'an unknown Jewish child' forever, was incredibly painful to survivors, and felt like an eradication of the identities of the eradicated.

The third was the denial of Romany deaths that didn't take place in camps. Huge numbers where slaughtered where they where found or marched to.
The denial that Rom deaths in camps through starvation, disease, medical experimentation, over work, etc, counted as intentional extermination.
Active denial of specific Rom concentration camps, and denial of the the Rom section of Lodz and similar camps.

Fourth, the insistence against all the German evidence, that they where the only race selected for annihilation based on race was just baffling.

These attitudes are slowly changing over time, under the weight of both undeniable proof, and more modern outlooks. But the damage is done, and now it is being turned against the Jews.

Few Rom want part of it. We never saw it as to be placed on the shoulders of ordinary Jews. But it is a quarrel and weight of repercussions to be born by organizations representing them.

We understand why they did it the way they did, it is a question of vociferous survival. We have different concepts of what matters most and how to achieve survival, and know that they are correct, without land, eventually your race will be subsumed.
On the other hand, with such 'given or taken' land you will be under attack for ever. Both races are cursed.

We don't blame them for taking up the already present choice of the Gaudja to agree to place us in 'others' and refuse to look at the actual evidence of which races where to be exterminated based specifically on their blood as dangerous to the German race. There where quite simply two, whichever way round you turn things.
We have always said that the attempted annihilation of both will continue and come again and again for as long as we both survive.

The Jews have always said that they can prevent it happening to them again with acquisition of land and aligning themselves with the Gentiles.

All this does not mean that the often horrific deaths of those killed for being found to be black, disabled, homosexual, or political reasons etc, where lesser.

Why the distinction is so important is all the categories of people killed where killed as being undesirable to the German race.
But in all categories other than Jews and Rom, what race your Grandparents, or Great Grandparents where, wasn't a deciding factor on legally selecting you for death.
This distinction will also be important in the future.

Treated twice as harshly as the rules for determining who was Jewish by blood: Two of eight great-grandparents, even part-Rom, was too much “Hereditary diseased Gypsy blood.” Some who lived entirely Gaudja lives and would have been seen as such, by Rom also, found themselves stripped of everything, deported and usually killed.

Technically the exception was Sinti and Lalleri who both Himmler and Mengeles where fascinated by and wanted to use for research, for different reasons. Both vitsias tended to be what is referred to as high Romnipen adherence, which meant moire likely to have 'pure blood' lineages. Both they and the Lowara also have high incidences of twins, making them particularly desirable for medical experimentation.

Local officials in occupied countries where supposed to seek out these people and funnel them differently. The reality of situations. similar to the Jews, is what actually happened initially very much depended on the levels of racism and hatred in local communities and officials. It was all overruled in 1942 by Himmler's decree of "without exception to blood."

The laws of reparation mean that it is in everyone's interests to find ways of denying the Rom return of property. It is an important part of the need to continue the claim of 'inherent criminality' and Rom having a 'hereditary disease.'

It is often much harder for the Rom than the Jews to prove ownership of known still surviving confiscated property.
Such things as vineyards, farms, horse studs, car showrooms, cinemas, carnival equipment, instrument workshops etc, vardo's and even land, can be seen to have been long term legally registered as Rom property, when they where living often semi settled or settled, prior to later death or deportation.

The Jews in the same position where required to list their property (to be later seized by the Reich) which created recorded lists of seizures from the German records. This was partly to stop soldiers from helping themselves to 3rd Reich property.
Whereas the Rom, and those declared Rom by lineage, where assumed to have less of value to contribute to the Reich other than horses, and where simply killed or deported to camps to be disposed off, and the names on deeds struck through and replaced with German owners helping themselves.

A Rom has to do all the proving and once it is proved, will simply be accused of them or their predecessor having just sold their property to a German, and automatically found guilty by race, so denied the right of it's return.
(I am not saying the Jews haven't had to work hard in reclaiming theirs, but they don't face the same situation that makes it impossible)

@Icanthinkformyselfthanks No. Some races under the Rom umbrella where entirely annihilated and survivors too few to have not totally died out within a few years. Many, mine included, are the last of our vitsias. The diaspora to spread out to manage.The most educated Vitsias were the worst hit.

There are specific vitsias in certain countries rebuilding through bride fairs and similar. I attend them to sell my work. There is huge external opposition to them.

Many of those who managed to escape extermination had previously been sterilized and castrated, which isn't really talked about as it carries huge stigma and pain.
The lower end (every race has them before I get had a go at) who draw Gaudja into their ranks abandon Romnipen and distance themselves from being culturally Rom, so have the worst of all ends.

Those who marry Gaudja have children who are Posh Rats or mixed blood making them un-marriageable within culture, (but forcibly marked as 'Gyspy' by schools, health care etc, leading to lower outcomes.)

The English Romamitchal who escaped it all, have mainly developed their own weakened version of the language, mainly live on sites, or are in brick, and are being pushed to abandon core values and assimilate or die out. 'Deep Rom here are now reclusive, and the lower more visible end are assimilating with Irish Travelers.

It is also hard to explain how history has proved it right without people starting to be anti-semetic, or think we are.

Why would you not be able to explain anything without being antisemitic?

Read the exact words I wrote please. 🙏

I did not say I couldn't explain without being anti-semetic. I said I couldn't without others starting to be anti-semetic, or think that we are.

I thought it was more like 10mill Russians killed? A huge number, and they had to contend with Stalin's mass murder too.

Thank you, this is fascinating information. I was of course talking very much in general terms about literacy levels; I don't doubt that there were fine Roma writers, but overall I think my point is sound. Do you know of any good books on this topic you could recommend?