Online-Module

Doc. 1: Picturing Roma and Sinti

Submitted by Constanze on Sat, 23/08/2014 - 19:43

1. Look at the picture gallery and try to work out who belongs to the Roma or Sinti and who doesn’t.

Worum geht es: 

Societal antiziganism and images of "gypsies" live on in people’s minds and government offices across Europe and are used to justify contemporary and future unequal treatment and exclusion of Roma and Sinti.

Anleitung: 

1. Look at the picture gallery and try to work out who belongs to the Roma or Sinti and who doesn’t.

2. Which pictorial elements are necessary to recognise Roma and Sinti as such? And which comes first: the clichés and stereotypes that shape our perception or the pictorial representation that provokes resentments and prejudices?

3. In the rubric "Sources" you will find background information on the people in the pictures.

Eckdaten: 

Captions and Sources of the photos

  • 1.  Spanish Romani woman, source: Austin A. Breed, Gitanos, National Geographic Magazine, March 1917. Source: WikiCommons.
  • 2.  A German Sinti family, © Documentation and Cultural Centre of German Sinti and Roma in Heidelberg.
  • 3.  Sinti basketmaker's family Winterstein from Würzburg, Germany, © Rita Prigmore
  • 13 members of the Winterstein family were deported to Auschwitz, amongst them six babies and little children. Only three adults came back. 
  • 4.  Roma during the pilgrimage at Saintes-Maries de la Mer, in the south of France. Source: Wiki Commons.
  • 5.  Joanna Talewicz-Kwiatkowska is a Polish Roma and the vice president of the Roma Community of Poland. Photo taken from http://czterystronybajek.blogspot.de/p/team.html.
  • 6.  Family members of the German Sinto Siegfried Franz (center first row, right next to him his wife and his son, left side: Jana Müller) became victims of the Nazi terror. At 1 February 2013 family Franz were guests of honor at the commemoration ceremony to remember the Sinti, who were expelled 75 years before from Dessau. Source: www.projektgegenpart.org.
  • 7.  The Roma girl Ceija Stojka (right), born 1933, survived as a child concentration camps Auschwitz Birkenau and Bergen Belsen, her sister Mitzi is on the left, the ethnic origin of the girls in the middle is unkown. Source: Ceija Stojka, Wir leben im Verborgenen. Erinnerungen einer Rom-Zigeunerin, Wien: Picvus Verlag 1988.
  • 8.  Roma Serbian boy in front of his home, in a Zigeuner-Unterbringungslager [temporary accomodation camp for Roma] in Serbia near Kosovo, photo taken by El capitan, summer 2003. Source: Wiki Commons.
  • 9.  Roma brothers Erich and Adolf Strauss from Germany, photo taken during a communion ceremony before their deportation to Auschwitz, where they were murdered ages of sixteen and seventeen, respectively. Source: Auschwitzhefte 7.
  • 10. Two Moldavian children: Anti-Gypsy propaganda. Title: Russia, ragged Sinti and Roma children in the mud. Original Caption: "Gypsy. Even in rainy weather and mud the little kids running around half naked. If they grew up, the wrinklies hang them their worn old rags around." ["Zigeuner. Selbst in Regenwetter und Schlamm laufen die kleinen Kinder halbnackt herum. Wenn sie grösser werden, hängen Ihnen die Alten ihre abgelegten Lumpen um."] PK 637, Film-Nr. 3475/6, Bildberichter Friedmann, Tiraspol [Sowjetunion] 6.4.1944, © Bundesarchiv 183-2004-0203-501, CC-BY-SA. 
  • 11. Roma boilermaker's family, photo taken in an atelier in Zalaegerszeg, before 1922, © Ethnographical Museum Budapest.
  • 12.  Pista Dankó (July 13, 1858 – March 19, 1903) was a Hungarian-born bandleader and composer belonging to the Romani people. He primarily worked in the folk music styles popular in Hungary in the 19th century, and is a rare example of a Rom that was born into poverty and then rose to relative fame and fortune. Source: Wiki Commons.
  • 13.  Otto Pankok and Sinti from Düsseldorf at the opening of his exhibition entitled “Zigeuner” [Gypsies] in the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, 1932. His art was defamed as "degenerate" by the Nazi regime. In the words of Romani Rose, Chair of the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma: "There is no other German artist whose work gives such an immediate reflection of the Nazi genocide of the Sinti and Roma." Source: Otto Pankok, Sinti Portraits 1931 to 1949, 2008.
  • 14.  Several Slovakian children work on the same picture: Jan Sajko has become widely known because of his extraordinary success in awaking the artistic talent of his primary school students. The paintings and drawing of Sajko’s students have been shown in exhibits around the world, and have won many awards. Jan Sajko is employed as an art teacher in the all-Roma public school in Jarovnice, the largest and very poor Romany settlement in Slovakia. 
  • 15.  Emil Christ in his soldier's uniform, with his cousine in the time of World War II: Although many Roma and Sinti served in the First World War as soldiers, the National Socialists excluded all Roma and Sinti from the Wehrmacht for reasons of „racial politics“. Emil Christ was deported with his wife and two children to Auschwitz, © Documentation and Cultural Centre of German Sinti and Roma in Heidelberg.
  • 16.  Bob Siebert Sextett playing at the opening of the radio station RIAS. Oscar Siebert, a German Sinto, who survived forced labour and the concentration camp Mauthausen, is playing guitar (on the right). Source: Oskar Siebert: „"Ich spielte um mein Leben". Von der illegalen Musikkapelle in Mauthausen zum Berliner Tanzorchester, ed. by Constanze Jaiser, Jacob David Pampuch, Berlin 2008.
  • 17.  Members of the "Association of Gypsies Musicians" in front of the Hungarian National Museum, 1930ies. © Ethnographical Museum Budapest (Collection Kovás).
  • 18.  Two Holocaust survivors, the Sinto Franz Rosenbach (middle) und the Sinto Mano Höllenreiner (right) in dialogue with youth, Auschwitz 2011, © Documentation and Cultural Centre of German Sinti and Roma in Heidelberg.
  • 19.  In Serbia and Kosovo there are in all ethnic groups, many families who had to return from Germany in recent years, amongst them Roma. Under the guidance of the artist Ana Adamović and the photographer Jetmir Idrizi 14 young people in Serbia and Kosovo took pictures which show where they live now and how they feel. Source: Dirk Auer, Blick zurück nach vorn, Goethe-Institut. Belgrad 2008, p. 39, photo taken in Kamenic by Jetzmir Idrizi.
  • 20.  Zoni Weisz born 1937 is a Sinto Holocaust survivor from the Netherlands. Due to a Dutch police officer and member of the Dutch resistance Zoni Weisz was rescued, whereas his family was murdered in  Auschwitz. The photo shows him at the German Federal Parliament on 27 January 2011, at the official Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony – for the first time a person from the Roma and Sinti people was invited to speak. Source: Exhibition "Frankfurt – Auschwitz", Bernd Rausch

Case study 6: Images of Roma – continuities of discrimination

Submitted by Constanze on Fri, 22/08/2014 - 19:44

The aim of the material provided here is to discuss how and why Roma and Sinti were and are continuously excluded from European societies. It suggests using the contrast between self images and public images as a starting point and finally addressing the question how adequate commemoration of the Roma victims of genocide can be ensured.

Worum geht es: 

The aim of the material provided here is to discuss how and why Roma and Sinti were and are continuously excluded from European societies. It suggests using the contrast between self images and public images as a starting point and finally addressing the question of how adequate commemoration of the Roma victims of genocide can be ensured.

Issues:

Antiziganism in European society and "gypsy pictures"
Compensation and continuation of discrimination
Commemoration of genocide on Roma and Sinti

Anleitung: 

1. How do you explain the continuation of persecution of and discrimination against Roma and Sinti?

2. How do you think it would be possible to guarantee a suitable memorial to the victims of the National Socialist genocide of Roma and Sinti?

Eckdaten: 

  • Romani Rose: Bürgerrechte für Sinti und Roma. Das Buch zum Rassismus in Deutschland. Heidelberg: Zentralrat Deutscher Sinti und Roma, 1987, p. 47 et seq.

  • Katrin Seybold: "Wir brauchen nicht aufzuschreiben, wer die Mörder an uns Sinte waren, wir wissen es". In Memoriam Melanie Spitta (2.6. 1946 – 27.8. 2005), in: Dachauer Hefte, 21. Jg. (2005), p. 197-216, quotes p. 198 and 213 et seq.

  • Daniel Strauß, "da muß man wahrhaft alle Humanität ausschalten ...". Zur Nachkriegsgeschichte der Sinti und Roma in Deutschland, in: "Zwischen Romantisierung und Rassismus". Sinti und Roma 600 Jahre in Deutschland, als Bausteine ausgearbeitet, ed. Landeszentrale für politische Bildung Baden-Württemberg, Stuttgart 1998.

  • Law in the Gesetz- und Verordnungsblatt für den Freistaat Bayern 1926, No. 17, 22th July 1926, pp. 359–361.

  • Michail Krausnick, Der Völkermord, der unterschlagen wurde – oder: Der Bericht des Hermann W. Ein chronologischer Abriß, in: "Zwischen Romantisierung und Rassismus". Sinti und Roma 600 Jahre in Deutschland, als Bausteine ausgearbeitet, hrsg von der Landeszentrale für politische Bildung Baden-Württemberg, Stuttgart 1998.

  • "Gesetz zum Schutze des deutschen Blutes und der deutschen Ehre" und „Reichsbürgergesetz“ vom 15.9.1935. In: Reichsgesetzblatt 1935, I, S. 1146 et seq.

  • Runderlaß des Reichsministers des Innern vom 3.1.1936 über die "Durchführung des Blutschutzgesetzes", nach Kurt Pätzold (ed.): Verfolgung, Vertreibung, Vernichtung. Dokumente des faschistischen Antisemitismus. Leipzig 1983, S. 121 et seq.

  • Runderlaß des Reichsführers SS und Chefs der Deutschen Polizei im Reichsministerium des Inneren vom 8.12.1938 über die "Bekämpfung der Zigeunerplage". In: Ministerialblatt des Reichs- und Preußischen Ministers des Inneren, Jg. 99, Nr. 51, pp. 2105–2110.

  • Harald Huber, Kommentar zu §1 BEG, in: Ingeborg Becker/Harald Huber/Otto Küster, Bundesentschädigungsgesetz. Bundesergänzungsgesetz zur Entschädigung für Opfer der nationalsozialistischen Verfolgung (BEG) vom 18. September 1953. Kommentar, Berlin/Frankfurt am Main 1955, pp. 48–50.

  • Judgement of the 4th Civil Senate of the Federal Court of Justice of 7 January 1956, quoted in: Tilman Zülch (Ed.), In Auschwitz vergast, bis heute verfolgt. Zur Situation der Roma (Zigeuner) in Deutschland und Europa, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1979, p. 169.

  • EGAM - European Grassroots Antiracist Movement 

  • Different articles from the Homepage of the Roma in the Czech Republic (by Jan Velinger, Marta Miklusakova, Ctibor Necas, Daniela Lazarova), 

  • Hate is no Solution, Prag, Czech Republic

  • Karl Stojka: Transcript of a newspaper interview of 1999, quoted from Erlebte Geschichte: Nationalsozialismus. Zeitzeugeninterviews und Unterrichtsvorschläge, digital CD-ROM for PC, Berlin: Cornelsen Verlag 2005.

  • Josef Müller: Das Kind Muscha, Berlin 2002.

  • Reinhard Florian: "Ich wollte nach Hause, nach Ostpreußen!" Das Überleben eines deutschen Sinto. Jana Mechelhoff-Herezi and Uwe Neumärker [eds]. Berlin 2012.

  • "Polizeilich zwangsentführt". Das Leben der Sintezza Lily van Angeren-Franz, von ihr selbst erzählt, aufgezeichnet von Henny Clemens und Dick Berts. Hans-Dieter Schmidt [ed.]. Hildesheim 2004 (Original Dutch edition, Amsterdam 1997), p. 130 et seq.

  • Otto Rosenberg, Video Testimony, Shoah Foundation.

  • Ceija Stojka, Wir leben im Verborgenen. Erinnerungen einer Rom-Zigeunerin, Wien: Picus Verlag 1988, pp 137-139.

Chapter 2: "An awareness of the past is crucial" – personal statements

Submitted by Constanze on Fri, 22/08/2014 - 16:11
Worum geht es: 

Which lessons can be drawn from the past? What are the links between Holocaust, remembrance, fundamental rights, and Europe? Roman Prodi, Robert Lemkin Andrzej Szczypiorski, Simone Veil, and Stéphane Hessel give some food for thought for building your own statement. 

Eckdaten: 

  • Roman Prodi, Speech/99/119, http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-99-119_en.htm

  • Raphael Lemkin, "Totally unofficial“, autobiography, Chapter VIII, p. 4, unpublished manuscript, undated, New York Public Library, Box 2: Bio- and autobiographical sketches of Lemkin, citation after Dominik J. Schaller and Jürgen Zimmerer, guest editors of the sepecial edition of the Journal of Genocide Research (2005), 7 (4), pp. 447–452.

  • Simone Veil's speech to the German Bundestag on 27 January 2007 (the entire speech in French). 

  • Stéphane Hessel, Time for Outrage, Kindle Edition 2011, S. 5.

Photos:

 

Chapter 2: Pogrom in Baden Baden, 1938

Submitted by Constanze on Thu, 21/08/2014 - 14:11

Worum geht es: 

After the invasion of Austria and the Sudetenland the Nazi regime felt free to act without having to take world opinion into consideration. To finally drive the Jews out of Germany, a pogrom was unleashed on 9 November 1938. In this – the so-called Crystal Night – thousands of Jews were deported to concentration camps – to put them under pressure to leave Germany …

Eckdaten: 

  • Stadtarchiv [City Archives] Baden-Baden.

Chapter 3: European efforts to maintain human dignity

Submitted by Constanze on Thu, 21/08/2014 - 14:04
Common values: The Charter of fundamental rights in the European Union
Worum geht es: 

Respect for and protection of physical and mental integrity, guarantee basic needs, the right to equality before the law and protection against discrimination, and the protection of personal identity are prerequisites for a positive understanding of a life in human dignity. The European Union tries to provide the framework for protecting these rights.

Eckdaten: 

 

Chapter 10: Gleichschaltung

Submitted by Nadja on Mon, 18/08/2014 - 16:45

Chapter 9: The night of the long knives

Submitted by Nadja on Mon, 18/08/2014 - 16:17

After political opposition had been violently suppressed, Hitler was still concerned about malcontent members of the Nazi movement. Already in 1934, he did not shy away from mass murder.

Doc. 9: Coming to Terms with "Crimes against humanity"

Submitted by Nadja on Tue, 12/08/2014 - 17:56
The Western Powers and debates in international law and politics
Worum geht es: 

In a recent article, Rainer Huhle, chairman of the Nürnberger Menschenrechtszentrum (center for human rights), analyses the development of the use of the term “crimes against humanity”.

Eckdaten: 

Doc. 11: Registrating the fingerprints of asylum seekers

Submitted by Nadja on Mon, 11/08/2014 - 17:44
Situation at the arrival
Worum geht es: 

In Lampedusa, as well as in other detention centres for migrants who illegally enter the European Union, the new arrivals are registered shortly afterwards by the police. The database Eurodac stores the fingerprints of asylum-seekers aged over 14. Since 2003 it has been used to help determine which member state is responsible for dealing with asylum applications. To address data protection concerns and help combat terrorism and serious crime, the Commission proposed in May 2012 to allow national police forces and Europol to compare fingerprints linked to criminal investigations with those contained in Eurodac. In April 2013, the European Parliament 's Civil Liberties Committee endorsed a legislative agreement on the Eurodac database of asylum applicants' and refugees' fingerprints, which now allows law enforcement authorities access to the database.

Eckdaten: 

Doc. 8: EU scandal: Commemoration of Roma on a pig farm

Submitted by Constanze on Mon, 11/08/2014 - 16:39
July 2014: EGAM holds the first European commemoration on the site of the Lety Roma concentration camp
Worum geht es: 

The "Lety camp" in the Czech Republic is one of the places in Europe where hundreds of Roma and Sinti perished, simply because of their ethnicity. The memorial is degraded by the existence of a pig farm on the site.

Eckdaten: 
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