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Markus Reinhardt (left) and Marko Knudsen: "Friendships didn't stop us from going to the concentration camp."
Photo: private;
Hannelore Costas
SPIEGEL:
Mr. Reinhardt, it is persistently a term in German usage that many people perceive as discriminatory.
Why are you using it so aggressively?
Reinhardt:
It's not just me who calls myself a gypsy ...
SPIEGEL:
You don't even paint quotation marks in the air!
Reinhardt:
No, why?
I belong to a large community here in the Rhineland and throughout North Rhine-Westphalia, the Sinti group, and I have to say: Most of them want to be called Gypsies, not Sinti and Roma.
There are so many tribes that the »Sinti and Roma« do not do them justice.
SPIEGEL:
Why not?
Reinhardt:
There are too many sub-groups that are not addressed here.
I've been around a lot and don't even know all the tribes myself.
"Most of the gypsies who survived the concentration camps kept calling themselves that."
Markus Reinhardt
SPIEGEL:
But does the swear word do everyone justice?
Reinhardt: It
wasn't a dirty word for our old people, on the contrary!
That was only taken negatively in the "Third Reich" ...
SPIEGEL:
Under National Socialism, the already derogatory term "pulling crooks" was given a false history of origin and the ethnic groups were tattooed with a "Z".
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