An article which severely condemns the Cologne city administration for preventing the deportation of Roma who have committed crimes and are required to leave the country. The article’s author says tht this must not go unpunished.
Frieda Daniels, a 93-year-old former high-wire artist, shares her experiences during the genocide at the time of the Holocaust to educate younger generations about the atrocities faced by the Sinti and Roma community.
She and her family were persecuted by the Nazis, with an estimated 500,000 Sinti and Roma murdered during the genocide.
Now living in California, Frieda continues to travel and speak about her past, recently reflecting on her experiences during a visit to an exhibition in Heidelberg, Germany.
The exhibition “You Are All Our Children in One” opens at the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture in Berlin, exploring the ongoing impact of racial classification and forced sterilization on Roma and Sinti communities post-World War II.
Slovak artist Emília Rigová, who works under the pseudonym Bári Raklóri [Big (non-Romani) Girl], presents her work addressing the suppression of Roma identity through installations and performance art, including a piece on the forced sterilization of Roma women in Czechoslovakia.
Rigová shares her personal connection to the issue, revealing that her mother was sterilized without consent, which deeply affected her childhood and emotional world, highlighting the broader historical trauma faced by women in similar situations.
The exhibition “The Thread That Holds” by Romnja artist Luna De Rosa opens on July 22, 2026, at Halle 116, focusing on exclusion, discrimination, and anti-Roma stereotypes.
This is the first art exhibition in the newly created space, commemorating the Porajmos, the genocide of Sinti and Roma during the Nazi regime, which remains underrecognized.
The event includes a moderated discussion with the artist and musical accompaniment, and the exhibition runs from July 22 to October 4, 2026, with free admission during regular hours.
AfD politicians Norbert Emmerich and Enxhi Seli-Zacharias were filmed giving brooms to Sinti and Roma in Gelsenkirchen, instructing them to sweep the sidewalk. The video, which was shared on social media, has since been removed, and some Sinti and Roma reported feeling intimidated by the politicians.
Other political parties, including SPD, FDP, and Greens, condemned the video as inhumane.
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Historian Stefanie Schüler-Springorum discusses the ongoing discrimination and persecution in post-Nazi Germany, highlighting that groups such as Jews, Sinti, Roma, and homosexuals continued to face significant challenges and societal exclusion.
She emphasizes that while the end of the Nazi regime in 1945 marked a liberation for some, it did not equate to freedom for all, as many groups remained marginalized and subjected to ongoing discrimination.
Schüler-Springorum points out that remnants of these prejudices persist in contemporary German society, with issues of antisemitism, racism, and homophobia still prevalent, reflecting a deep-rooted notion of who is considered a “true German.”
In paralle, the German government has established an independent commission to address the injustices faced by Sinti and Roma in Germany and East Germany after 1945, implementing a key recommendation from the Independent Commission on Antiziganism.
The commission aims to comprehensively document the injustices, include unheard perspectives, and integrate the experiences of affected individuals and their descendants into German memory culture.
This initiative is part of a broader European movement towards state-led processes of historical reckoning, acknowledging Germany’s unique historical responsibility regarding the genocide of Sinti and Roma.
The Karlsruhe city council has named a square near Kapellenstraße as Familie-Reinhardt-Platz to honor the Sinti and Roma victims of the Nazis. There was consensus on the need for a memorial, but disagreement on the location, with some council members finding the chosen site inadequate.
The proposal was supported by multiple political parties, while the CDU suggested an alternative name and location for the memorial.
The 13th Djelem Djelem Arts and Culture Festival in Dortmund features the Roma Ball concert, celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Romano Than association, which advocates for the visibility and empowerment of Roma communities in the Ruhr area.
The concert aims to celebrate milestones, challenges overcome, and the solidarity networks built over the past decade, promoting an inclusive and open space for cultural exchange.
The band “Amen Roma” will perform, blending traditional Roma music with modern influences, symbolizing self-determination and community identity.
The German AfD party publicly humiliated Roma individuals in Gelsenkirchen by forcing them to clean the streets, which sparked a response from the art exhibition “Radikale Hoffnung” that addresses resistance against racism.
The exhibition features works by Roma artists, including Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, who highlights the struggles of Roma women against discrimination, and Selma Selman, who critiques societal exclusion through performance art. The exhibition emphasizes the importance of collective action and social justice, linking historical labor struggles to contemporary issues of marginalization and identity loss.
The article discusses the integration challenges faced by Romanian Roma in Germany, emphasizing the need for tailored public policies that address their specific vulnerabilities and circumstances. It highlights the differences between the historical Sinti community and recent Roma migrants from Eastern Europe, stressing the importance of recognizing these distinctions in policy-making. The author calls for collaborative efforts between Germany and Romania to enhance educational and mentoring programs, aiming for genuine inclusion and dignity for the Roma community.
Significantly more cases of discrimination, denigration, insults, and violence against Sinti and Roma have been registered with the Reporting and Information Center for Antigypsyism (MIA) in Rhineland-Palatinate. The number rose by 41 to 100 incidents last year. However, there is a high number of unreported cases, said MIA board member Christian Kling in Mainz.
According to this Bulgarian article, there are neighbourhoods in two small German towns entirely composed of Roma from Vidin, Bulgaria. Apparntly, neighbours are not so fond, and still according to the article, “quite a few of them, together with the Romanian Roma, are involved in some criminal scheme and often have problems with the local authorities”.
No comments, apart that some actual journalistic work would be nice …
The Romani youth group PowerPeng! from Berlin meets the Romani media platform TUKE.TV from Brno. Through short films and a performance, they engage in dialogue and discuss how young Roma in Germany and the Czech Republic keep the memory of Sinti and Roma alive through their media work, how they shape resistance against the far right, and how they can maintain their place in the public consciousness.
The Central Council of German Sinti and Roma intends to file criminal charges against the municipality of Teistungen in the Eichsfeld district. This was confirmed to this newsroom by the Council’s chairman, Romani Rose. The reason given was “deeply abhorrent and inhumane” statements in the municipality’s app.
Following an uproar surrounding a caravan camp in Ferna (Eichsfeld district), the municipality local app referred to “Gypsies” who were to be “gotten rid of.”
On May 16, 1940, police officers arrested approximately 1,000 Sinti and Roma in Hamburg and Northern Germany. At the memorial site at Hanoverian Station in Lohsepark in HafenCity, Roma and Sinti will commemorate the fact that their ancestors were deported to concentration camps by the National Socialists 86 years ago on Saturday. A wreath will be laid around 2 p.m. With this annual day of remembrance, they also want to remember the survivors who still have to live with the consequences of this injustice.
What contribution can art and culture make to remembering the genocide of the Roma and Sinti? This question will be addressed in the discussion in the context of the exhibition of the same name.
This collaborative event between the Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future (EVZ) and the Goethe-Institut brings together German and Czech stakeholders from civil society and the cultural sector, inviting them to reflect, discuss, and develop new perspectives for an inclusive and future-oriented culture of remembrance. The discussion takes place in conjunction with the photography exhibition of the same name, which will be on display on Kampa Island in Prague from May 27 to June 10.
Sinti and Roma experience brutal discrimination on the housing market, says Thomas Erbel from the Amaro Drom association. Even from neighbors. An Interview.
The Chairman of the German Central Council of Sinti and Roma, Romani Rose, pointed out that the National Socialists called on the population in 1933 not to buy from Jews and had police and SS troops march in front of Jewish businesses. He was criticising a letter by the Austrian police of the Burgenland warning the population about Sinti and Roma.
Rose appealed to Interior Minister Karner of the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) to initiate disciplinary proceedings against those responsible within the police force. He emphasized that the Council of Europe’s Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities entered into force in Austria in 1998. This obligates the state to counteract all forms of anti-Gypsyism. The Central Council stated that the Europe-wide rise of nationalist forces, which often base their political program on racism and incitement and have now become the strongest political force in Austria, is alarming.
The GoShorts program selected six short films that open up space for questions of power and empowerment – of collectives and individuals. Among them was Kismet by Novo Mesto director Žiga Virc, who received the RheinMain Award. It is the sotory of a 11 years old Romni.
Marcella Herzenberger is the chairwoman of the regional association of German Sinti and Roma in Swabia. In this role, she has been working for years to raise awareness about a very specific form of racism directed against Sinti and Roma. This racism manifests itself in deeply rooted prejudices, discrimination and exclusion, extending to structural disadvantages in education, employment, housing, and everyday life.
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