The ethnic-cultural minority that calls itself Sinti and Roma has been at home in Europe since the Middle Ages. But the majority populations look upon the “gypsies”, as they were traditionally termed until recently, with suspicion and contempt. Clichés and prejudices have not only excluded and marginalized Sinti and Roma, but also exposed them to persecution and violence of unfathomable extent.

After eviction, deportation, forced relocation, torture and death penalties since the Middle Ages the 19th and 20th centuries saw state authorities introducing a large variety of checks and inspections in their self-proclaimed “fight against the gypsy pest”. Bavaria had a leading role in these procedures. After the transfer of power to the national socialists checks and persecutions were aggravated to measures of annihilation. The 1933 “Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases” meant forced sterilization for many Sinti and Roma. The “Racial Laws” of Nuremberg in 1935 withdrew their rights as citizens of Germany. Sinti and Roma were deemed “anti-social”, taken into “preventive detention” or “protective custody”, sentenced to forced labor and deported to concentration camps since 1936, and in increasing numbers 1938 in the course of the “Action against Shirkers”. The scientific research in the field of “racial hygiene” registered Sinti and Roma in the whole Reich and provided legitimacy to their deprivation of civil rights with the help of their pseudo-scientific racial criteria. In 1940 about 2,500 Sinti and Roma were deported to occupied Poland; they had to live in concentration camps and do forced labor, many died of hunger and diseases in the camps. In 1943 over 200,000 Sinti and Roma were deported to Auschwitz; there they were designated to die through “annihilation by forced labor” and lethal medical experiments; only very few of them survived. Overall up to half a million Sinti and Roma were murdered in the German Reich and in occupied countries in Eastern Europe.

In the Federal Republic of Germany it took about 40 years, well into the 1980s until it became common understanding that the Sinti and Roma had suffered their own holocaust. In the post war period the deprivation of rights was continued by re-establishing regular checks by the police, and the recognition as victims of NS persecution was denied. Only actions of protests by young Sinti in the 1980s made the history of suffering of this minority public. Nevertheless the hostile attitude towards this minority (referred to as “anti-gypsyism”) is still deeply rooted in the majority population.

Angela Bachmair
Translation: Wolfgang Poeppel