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The Holocaust was also against the gypsies

2020-11-24T14:12:02.111Z


A book by historian María Sierra traces the little-known Nazi genocide of the Roma people“We only had humiliation left, we no longer felt like human beings, we didn't know if we were men or women. Auschwitz was our hell. May there be no more chimneys like that ”. No matter how many times the testimonies of the survivors of the Nazi death camps, like this one by Philomena Franz, have been collected in books, films, television series or photographs, their story continues to chill. Howev


“We only had humiliation left, we no longer felt like human beings, we didn't know if we were men or women.

Auschwitz was our hell.

May there be no more chimneys like that ”.

No matter how many times the testimonies of the survivors of the Nazi death camps, like this one by Philomena Franz, have been collected in books, films, television series or photographs, their story continues to chill.

However, there is a part of the horror that has been little explained, perhaps because there has been no State that has claimed it as a victim, it is the

Gypsy Holocaust

, as María Sierra, professor of Contemporary History at the University of Seville, has titled her book .

PHOTO GALLERY: Images from the book 'Gypsy Holocaust'

Sierra (Seville, 56 years old), a specialist in the history of the gypsy people in Spain and Europe, explains by phone that “there is a lack of narration of the Roma genocide” which, according to the sources he has handled, ended the lives of some 500,000 people.

“75% of the Roma population in Europe had disappeared after Nazism.

The number of victims is likely to increase in the future because archives from the Soviet era are being opened ”.

It was not until long ago that “thanks to associations, some Jews, the parallel persecution of the Roma was found in the archives”.

In the first part of the book, published by Arzalia, Professor Sierra makes "a critical synthesis of what has been researched so far on this topic, which has been fragmentary and poorly funded."

For this researcher, "the persecution of the gypsy people resists comparison with the harshness suffered by the Jews, sometimes it was even worse, especially after the world war, because it was not recognized."

"So you have to rescue the testimonies of the horror of the people."

These are found in the second half of the book, as is the case of Philomena Franz, who recounted in her memoirs that she was sent to Auschwitz at the age of 21, from where she tried to escape several times, for which she was tortured and locked up.

At least he could tell, his sister was hanged for the same thing.

Sierra has maintained an epistolary relationship with Franz, the first Roma to publish her memoirs, which with almost 100 years has impressed her with her attitude.

"She says that, after Auschwitz, if he did not forgive, in some way, and opened up to positive feelings, that system would continue to punish him."

The analysis of emotions through the testimony of the survivors, of the different phases they suffered, is the approach provided by Sierra, who speaks, for example, of "the assimilation of horror as something habitual", as the words of Otto illustrate. Rosenberg, survivor from Bergen-Belsen: “Every afternoon a mountain of corpses two meters high.

A truck with a trailer would arrive and take them to the crematorium.

Before this type of scenes we no longer felt anything.

We had become insensitive beings ”.

Emotions that were followed over the years by anger or a feeling of guilt for surviving while other family members died.

"They are beings who suffered extraordinarily, but have had the ability to rise above it," adds Sierra, for whom studies like hers supposes "repairing the theft of the ability to feel that they had, of its cancellation through the loss of the dignity".

Gypsy Holocaust

dates back to the period in history when hatred for this people of Indo-European origin began, what its author calls “anti-Gypsyism”.

"The critical moment was the configuration of modern states, when sovereigns try to control populations."

From there, expulsions, persecutions followed… until the emergence of Nazism, which made use of “racial science, fundamental for its decisions.

Hitler's regime "first approved regulations to remove them from circulation and, in parallel, began sterilizations, in 1933."

"Then their rights were forbidden, their property was expropriated and they began to be held in German camps." In 1938, Berlin issued a key decree, with an unambiguous name:

To combat the gypsy plague

. The next turn of the screw comes "when the world war is spreading east, the mass shootings and the annihilation of prisoners begin, even the order that they be deported to Auschwitz. ”There, entire families were sent, with their children. Most of the children died of hunger, even When that moment came, they would not stop crying in the barracks, the survivors recall.

The organization in the camps was designed not to leave the prisoners even for a second of calm, "they lived in a permanent state of anguish", which continued after liberation, as Rosenberg said.

The English soldiers lined them up, he closed his eyes because he thought his end was coming, but the click he heard was that of a camera.

When the war ended, the suffering of the gypsies who had left the extermination camps alive did not end, as they were deprived of repairs and examinations.

"The prevailing theory was that they had not been persecuted for racial reasons, but for criminals," explains Sierra, who concludes: "Some prejudices that, I am afraid, have not disappeared even today."

The terminological question

Professor Sierra explains at the beginning of her book that she chose to use the term “gypsy” from the title, although the most internationally accepted way of referring to this people is “Roma”. That is how their representatives decided to call themselves at a congress in London in 1971. Sierra points out that other names, such as 'gypsy', in English; 'gitane', in French, or 'zigeuner', in German, are "names imposed from outside" and which have become negative labels. In Spain, however, this community has claimed the word "gypsy" as the most appropriate.

Source: elparis

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