Abstract

Using the framework of genocide, this volume analyzes the patterns of persecution of the Roma in Nazi-dominated Europe. Detailed case studies of France, Austria, Romania, Croatia, Ukraine, and Russia generate a critical mass of evidence that indicates criminal intent on the part of the Nazi regime to destroy the Roma as a distinct group. Other chapters examine the failure of the West German State to deliver justice, the Romani collective memory of the genocide, and the current political and historical debates. As this revealing volume shows, however inconsistent or geographically limited, over time, the mass murder acquired a systematic character and came to include ever larger segments of the Romani population regardless of the social status of individual members of the community.

“The Nazi Genocide of the Roma brings together a valuable array of case studies that successfully challenge historical arguments minimizing the genocide of the Roma under the Nazis. The contributing scholars have shown not only how ethnicity informed criminality, but also how ambiguous policy against the Roma should not negate genocidal intent. This volume is a critical contribution to the field and should be required reading for any course on the Holocaust.” · History: Review of New Books

“One does not usually praise the introduction to a collection of essays, whose principal function is to provide thematic continuity to a diverse body of works. But in this particular case Weiss-Wendt's lengthy introduction goes beyond the norm, providing not only continuity but also giving the reader a very scholarly, in-depth overview of the evolution of Roma Holocaust studies…It is this introduction of fresh perspectives and new evidence that makes this book so important. Roma Holocaust studies has long suffered from a dearth of concrete evidence that more fully details the fate of this understudied group. Weiss-Wendt helps to fill this void by opening new pathways of research and discussion for this important dimension of the Holocaust.” · The Russian Review

“This volume is a substantial contribution to Roma and Sinti Genocide scholarship. Each of the essays in this collection adds both substantively and substantially to our expanding understanding of the murder of European Roma and Sinti during WWII. All of the pieces are thoughtful and learned, and encourage both deeper reflection and a reexamination of present understandings of a wide variety of elemental historical aspects related to the racial and political anti-Gypsy policies of the Third Reich.” · Dialogues on Historical Justice and Memory

“Nearly seventy years after the end of the Second World War and the liberation of Auschwitz and Belsen, new facts concerning the Nazi genocide of the Roma and Sinti are still emerging. This volume is particularly valuable in revealing the full horror of the German occupation of the Soviet Union and the activities of the Einsatzgruppen.”  ·  Donald Kenrick, author of Gypsies under the Swastika

“… [This volume] provides an excellent overview and analysis of many key and previously understudied aspects of this complex and difficult topic. It combines several innovative regional studies with essays on the issues of German postwar legal responses and developments with regard to commemoration. By assembling high quality chapters from many of the leading scholars in the field, Anton Weiss-Wendt has made a major contribution to our understanding of the diverse fates of the Roma in the Holocaust.” · Martin Dean, author of Collaboration in the Holocaust

Anton Weiss-Wendt is Senior Lecturer in the research department at the Center for the Study of the Holocaust and Religious Minorities in Oslo, Norway. He is the author of Murder Without Hatred: Estonians and the Holocaust (2009) and Small-Town Russia: Childhood Memories of the Final Soviet Decade (2010), and the editor of Eradicating Differences: The Treatment of Minorities in Nazi-Dominated Europe (2010) and Racial Science in Hitler’s New Europe, 1939-1945 (with Rory Yeomans, 2013).