About the project
The project analysed recent research on the Nazis’ policy of mass murder of the Roma minority, with a view to establishing its scope and wider objectives. It is 15 years since Michael Zimmermann conducted a groundbreaking exposé of the Nazis’ genocide of Sinti and Roma people in his wide-ranging Rassenutopie und Genozid. Die nationalsozialistische “Lösung der Zigeunerfrage” [Racial Utopia and Genocide. The National Socialist “Solution to the Gypsy Question”]. Nevertheless, the popular academic debate about whether the Nazi regime implemented a systematic policy with respect to this minority that may, structurally, be compared with the policy it implemented against the Jews, shows no signs of abating. Based on new documentation from European and US archives, this publication supports Zimmermann’s conclusions. Parallels are drawn between the exclusionary policy applied to the Roma minority, which was enforced by national authorities, and the opportunity that was eventually offered by the Nazis to resolve the “Gypsy Question” once and for all. At the same time, a crucial break between the original discriminatory practice and the Nazis’ attempted extermination is underscored. Finally, the contributors emphasise the significance of the collective memory and the memory of the Nazi genocide on Roma communities in Europe today.
Results
The project’s subject matter was discussed at the conferences “Historical and Current Perspectives on Persecution of Sinti & Roma in Europe”, staged at the Norwegian Holocaust Center in September 2007; “Roma (Gypsies) in Ukraine During the Second World War: Current Research, Teaching, and Commemoration”, held in August 2008 in Kiev, and “Discrimination and Persecution of Roma, Sinti, and Travellers”, held in March 2009 in Stockholm.
An anthology of the conference proceedings was published by Berghahn Books in New York in 2012.
The anthology’s contents
The Nazi Genocide of the Gypsies: Reassessment and Commemoration
Anton Weiss-Wendt
1. Assimilation and Persecution: An Overview of Attitudes Toward Roma in France
Shannon L. Fogg
2. Ustaša Mass Violence Against Gypsies in Croatia, 1941–1942
Alexander Korb
3. Ethnic Cleansing or Crime Prevention? Deportation of Romanian Gypsies
Vladimir Solonari
4. Nazi Occupation Policies and the Mass Murder of the Roma in Ukraine
Mikhail Tyaglyy
5. The Nazi Mass Murder of Roma in Northwestern Russia: Operational Area of the Army Group North
Martin Holler
6. Genocidal Trajectory: Persecution of Gypsies in Austria, 1938–1945
Florian Freund
7. The Justice System of the Federal Republic of Germany and the Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies
Gilad Margalit
8. From Victim Hierarchies to Memorial Networks: Commemorating Sinti and Roma and Jews in Germany’s National Narrative
Nadine Blumer
9. The Aftermath of the Roma Holocaust From Implicit Memories to Commemoration
Sławomir Kapralski