Transcript gypsies_week5class1_.. - University of Colorado Boulder

ANTH 4020/5020
Roma communities today
Historical background, culture and
current issues
Week 5 Class 1:
The Romani Holocaust /
Roma under State socialism
Today‘s outline
1. Roma and Jews differences and
commonalities of Nazi policy? (Text
by M. Zimmerman)
2. How many victims?
3. Exercise: Reading Oral History –
Statement of a survivor
4. Commemoration of the Romani
Holocaust
5. Roma under socialist rule
Text (optional):
Zimmermann, Michael. 2006. ‘The National
Socialist Persecution of Jews and Gypsies:
Is a comparison possible?’, in Kenrick (ed.)
The Gypsies during the Second World War.
3 – The Final Chapter, Hatfield: University of
Hertfordshire press, pp. 135-149.
Comparing Nazi persecution
of Roma and Jews
Discussion:
• What’s the point in comparing?
• But also: Why is comparison
problematical?
What we should avoid:
• To utilize the crime investigations for
generating schematic analogies
• To seek to equate the fate suffered by the
Gypsies under Nazi rule with the mass murder
of the Jews in every respect
• To conclude that Roma always and everywhere
comprised the less endangered group
• On the basis of the problematic equation (with
Jews) delegitimize the commemoration of
murdered Roma
Shared features of
persecution (Zimmermann 2006)
1. Both Jews and Gypsies did not declare themselves as a
“nation” or “race” or even as unitary people
 image rather than identity of those persecuted
mattared
2. Classification of persons according to portion of
Jewish/Gypsy blood  Nuremberg Laws
3. Racist view of social questions
“Popular racism coupled with variants of racial
anthropology and race hygiene provided a discourse
that transported the traditional behaviour of distancing
and differentiation” (Zimmerman 2006, p. 137)
Shared features of
persecution (Zimmermann 2006)
4. Policy of extermination was not planned over the longer
term but would unfold under the conditions of the war
5. Mental strategies to deny and legitimize the murder
(deportations labelled as “resettlement” or “journey”)
6. Responsible bodies were “only” carrying out official
instructions, orders, denial of own responsibility
7. Effort to dehumanize the victims (mass murder as act of
mercy, more humane solution)
8. Justification of killing with anti-Semitic and anti-Gypsy
cliches (“useless mouths to feed, enemy spies,
partisans)
Differences in persecution
(Zimmermann 2006)
1. National Socialist racial policy had a hierarchical
structure:
Jews were the central threat, an arch-enemy to the
Aryans vs. Gypsies were a “nuisance”, thiefs, could not
endanger the German people as a whole
2. Different images of the enemy due to different history
Jews were formerly financially useful vs. Gypsies have
always been repressed and marginalized
Gypsies were not viewed as religious competitors
(Christians and heathens)
3. Part-Gypsy perceived as primary threat (close contact
with Non-Gypsies
Differences in persecution
(Zimmermann 2006)
4. Fixation on negative image of “Gypsies of mixed race”
 dual stigma as persons of alien race and asocial
 ethnically pure Gypsies should be protected
5. Gestapo persecuted Jews (extreme threat) vs. Criminal
police persecuted Gypsies (menace)
6. Strict definition of who was a Jew according to
Nuremberg Laws vs. no precise definition of “Gypsies of
mixed blood”
7. Imprecise definition of Gypsies made it possible for
local persecutors to interpret instructions on their own
8. Jews were persecuted in a more radical way vs.
Gypsies were not threatened with murder in all
occupied states
How many victims?
• Statistical inconsistencies & impossibilities
 characteristical for Gypsy studies
• Core of the „numbers problem“: insufficient &
unreliable census information regarding Gypsies
 „From a scholary point of view there is
simplyy no way to safely estimate the number of
the Holocaust‘s Romani victims“ (Barany 2002,
p. 107)
• Barany critisizes that „Authors who provide
„exact“ numbers often base these on second- or
third-hand sources, hearsay, and unreliable
estimates“. (p. 108).
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/media_nm.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005219&MediaId=359
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/media_nm.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005219&MediaId=359
(Barany 2002, p. 109)
Estimates 1.-5. partially documented &
explain methodology: 6.-12. lack
evidence.
"A group of Gypsy prisoners, awaiting instructions from their German
captors, sit in an open area near the fence in the Belzec concentration
camp.“
(Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Archive)
Oral History
Personal statement of a survivor
•Please read the statement of Mrs. Janos Rostas
• Answer the discussion questions together with
your neighbor
• Write down some notes (to share with the class)
• After 20 minutes we‘ll discuss the answers in the
plenum
Roma under state-socialism
• Those countries with highest share of Romani
population were under communist rule for 40
years
• (Since the end of the Habsburg rule) The
communists invented the most comprehensive
assimilation measures aimed at the Roma
• In spite of the same (communist) societal system
these measures did not take the same shape
everywhere
• The different form of the assimilation policies had
a huge impact on the situation of the Roma after
the breakdown of communism ... and continues
until today
Barany, Zoltan. 2002. The East European
Gypsies. Regime Change, Marginality, and
Ethnopolitics. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, pp. 112-153 (Ch. 4: The Roma under StateSocialism).
Short presentation by Grant
Commemoration of the Romani
Holocaust
• Approx. half a million Roma murdered by Nazi
Germany
• Long neglected by history: Only recently have Roma
begun to demand acceptance
among the victims of
’
the Nazi regime.
• Reasons for this neglect:
- overshadowed by Jewish Holocaust (numerically)
- (East European) Roma not organized well enough
to earlier claim recognition as victims of the Nazis
“Sites” of commemoration
of the Romani Holocaust
•United states holocaust memorial museum:
http://www.ushmm.org/
“The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has
extensive documentation pertaining to the National Socialist
persecution of the Roma.”
•For example: A symposium …