The shameful history of anti-Gypsism is forgotten - and repeated

By Thomas Hammarberg, Human Rights Commissioner, Council of Europe
Published Monday, 18 August, 2008 - 17:58

Today’s rhetoric against the Roma is very similar to the one used by Nazis and fascists before the mass killings started in the thirties and forties. This is shameful and dangerous says the Human Rights Commissioner of the Council of Europe

Only a few thousand Roma in Germany survived the Holocaust and the concentration camps. They faced enormous difficulties when trying to build up their lives again, having lost so many of their family members and relatives, and having had their properties destroyed or confiscated. Many of them had their health ruined. When some of them tried to obtain compensation, their claims were rejected for years.

For these survivors no justice came with the post-Hitler era. Significantly, the mass killing of the Roma people was not an issue at the Nürnberg trial. The genocide of the Roma – Samudaripe or Porrajmos – was hardly recognised in the public discourse.

This passive denial of the grim facts could not have been surprising to the Roma themselves, as for generations they had been treated as a people without history. The violations they had suffered were quickly forgotten, if even recognised.

Sadly, this same pattern is repeated even today.

That is why it is particularly valuable that the Council of Europe has produced a series of fact sheets on Roma History. These are intended for teachers, pupils, political and other decision makers and every one else interested in knowing the facts about what this people have gone through.

Readers of these fact sheets may learn about 500 years of shameful repression in Europe of the various Roma groups since their arrival following the long migration from India. The methods have varied between enslavement, enforced assimilation, expulsion, internment and mass killings.

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