When Josef Maria Schneck died, he was only 13 years old. The boy was one of the 141 Sinti who were deported from Munich to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp 80 years ago, on March 13, 1943. The city of Munich honours the victims of this genocide with a day of remembrance.
3’200 people from Moldova will be expelled from Germany back into their home country at the end of the month. Most of them are Roma. These Roma protested over the weekend.
“We want to stay here. We don’t want to be deported and come back every three months,” said a young mother. Like most of those who gathered on Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz in Mitte on Saturday afternoon, the Romni comes from the Republic of Moldova. The woman with the microphone looked desperate: “They treat us like dogs.”
Bavaria is increasing its financial support for the State Association of German Sinti and Roma. Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) and head of the state association Erich Schneeberger signed a new version of the contract that had existed since 2018 on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the deportation of the Bavarian Sinti and Roma.
This provides for an expansion of cooperation and an increase in financial support from 434,700 euros to 662,300 euros.
With a special exhibition, the police headquarters and the Hanover region commemorate the deportation of Sinti and Roma by the National Socialists to the Auschwitz concentration camp. In the first weeks of March 1943, more than 700 Sinti and Roma, including many children, were transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau from what is now Lower Saxony alone.
On March 3rd, 1943, 80 years ago, German police arrested Sinti and Roma and deported them to concentration camps.
Several articles in the German press commemorated this day.
Sinti and Roma organisations as well as other victims associations are asking the members of the Hamburg Parliament to include not only the fight against anti-Semitism but also anti-Gypsyism as a state goal in the state constitution. “With the change in the preamble to the Hamburg Constitution, you will soon have the rare opportunity to take responsibility for the memory of National Socialist terror,” says a letter published on Monday by the Auschwitz Committee, National Association of Sinti in Hamburg, Rome and Cinti Union and the Association of Victims of the Nazi Regime – Association of Anti-Fascists to the MPs.
The Documentation and Cultural Centre of German Sinti and Roma, together with the Central Council, mourns the loss of Holocaust survivor Willi Kreutz, who died in Mannheim on February 11, 2023 at the age of 90. He was closely connected to both organizations and accompanied the delegations of the Central Council to the international commemoration ceremonies on the occasion of the International Holocaust Remembrance Day for Sinti and Roma on August 2 in the former Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp.
Willi Kreutz was born on July 6, 1932 in Düsseldorf. In the course of the May deportations of thousands of Sinti and Roma to the so-called General Government of Poland, his older sister, who later became a civil rights activist, Hildegard Lagrenne, was deported. A few months later Willi Kreutz and his parents followed her.
May he rest in peace.
While Sinti and Roma would like to conclude a state treaty with the German Federal Government, there is a disagreement within the minority as to which organisation should represent them in the negotiations. Why should there be only one?
Attacks against Sinti and Roma have increased in Germany. Last year, the authorities registered a total of 145 crimes against Sinti and Roma – the highest number in six years. This emerges from the response of the Federal Ministry of the Interior to a request from the left-wing faction.
Bad.
A portrait of Angela Kapler, a successful Sintiza and on the discrimination and prejudices she faced.
A new survey in Germany found out that young people know very little about the Nazi period and the Holocaust. For example, less than half of the respondents mentioned the sick and disabled as victims of persecution, and less than a third mentioned Sinti and/or Roma.
For the Memo Youth Study, approximately 3,500 young people aged 16 to 25 were surveyed online by the University of Bielefeld in September/October 2021, and 838 participants were re-tested in September 2022.
Its authors point out that despite insufficient knowledge of the facts, National Socialism and World War II are the main points of reference in the culture of remembrance for teenagers and young adults.
Thus, 63 percent of young adults, but on average only 53 percent across all age groups, reported being interested in events from the National Socialist era. In addition, around three-quarters of those aged 16 to 25 did not question the desirability of dealing with this period in German history.
Three years after the racist attack in Hanau, Minister of State for Culture Claudia Roth (Greens) spoke of a “shock for all of us” that is still having an effect today. The suffering of the victims and their grieving relatives must be given more attention in our remembrance, she demanded on Sunday – exactly three years after the attack. Other top politicians and the evangelical church also commemorated the victims.
Munich Archbishop Cardinal Reinhard Marx wants to conduct a review of the historical responsibility of the Catholic Church for the persecution of the Sinti and Rom during the Nazi. Marx visited the documentation and cultural centre of the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma.
The visit also dealt in particular with the role of the then Archbishop of Munich, Cardinal Michael Faulhaber (1869-1952) and his attitude towards Sinti and Roma.
For centuries, Sinti and Roma were excluded and persecuted in Germany. To this day, the fight for recognition is tough. This also includes a student association that wants to give Sinti/Roma and diversity at universities a voice.
Survivors of the Nazi genocide of Sinti and Roma are worse off than other groups when it comes to compensation. A commission set up by former Interior Minister Seehofer (CSU) is calling for compensation for this disadvantage. But the traffic light coalition does not want to implement it.
A Sinti centre in Elle, Germany, received a letter from the accident insurance. So far nothing really special. But the letter was addressed to the “Kindergarten in the social hotspot of Gypsy square”. Not really politically correct. No one know how this happened. And frankly, how did the letter arrive in the right place???
The Antiziganism research center at the University of Heidelberg has a new head: Prof. Dr. Tanja Penter. The Rector of the Ruperto Carola, Prof. Dr. Bernhard Eitel appointed the professor of Eastern European history as director at the beginning of the year. In this function she succeeds the Heidelberg contemporary historian Prof. Dr. Edgar Wolfram. The institution, which was established in 2017, investigates mechanisms of prejudice formation and practices of discrimination and persecution of Sinti and Roma in Europe from a historically comparative perspective.
The Documentation and Cultural Center of German Sinti and Roma is showing paintings by the Benedictine monk Lukas Ruegenberg until March 19. Together with numerous fellow campaigners, the 94-year-old supported families in the Roma settlement of Habeš in Slovakia. This resulted in impressive and colorful paintings. The public vernissage will take place on Wednesday, February 8th at 6 p.m.
The head of the council of the Evangelical Church in Germany, Anette Kurschus, acknowledged that her church was involved in the exclusion of Sinti and Roma during the National Socialist period. Kurschus said in Berlin that the Evangelical Church took many blamable actions. The church was involved in betraying people and handing them over to be destroyed. Kurschus also announced an increased commitment against today’s discrimination of the minority.
This is a historical event. When will the other denominations follow?
A reportage on the role of the churches in the rise of Nazism.
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