Roma refugees of the Balkan wars remain without any rights

The Society for Threatened Peoples welcomes the laying today of the foundation stone for a memorial to the genocide against the German and European Sinti and Roma. Our human rights organisation between 1979 and 1981 broke the silence on the subject of this genocide on the part of media, parties, trades-unions, churches and governments in Germany with a documentation (end of September 1979), a memorial ceremony in the former concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen (27.10.1979) and the only real world congress (16.-20.05.1981) of the Roma in Göttingen.

The President of the German section of the GfbV, Tilman Zülch, made the following statement:

"The Society for Threatened Peoples made the Nazi crimes against the "gipsies” public far beyond the frontiers of Germany, moved the Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and the President Carstens to recognize these crimes and to make an apology which was addressed to this ethnic group, established the proper names "Sinti and Roma” in Germany, achieved the repatriation of the East-Prussian, Silesian, Sudeten-German and Rhineland Sinti and Roma, whose German citizenship was after survival of the concentration camps and work-camps withdrawn, and secured for the victims a first, if rather modest, pension for victims of persecution. Gradually there grew up in the course of this GfbV human rights work a civil rights movement of those affected and a "Central Council of the Sinti and Roma in Germany”. Romani Rose, since then President of the Central Council, recalls in one of his many appraisals of the GfbV:

"Without the support of the Society for Threatened Peoples it would not have been possible to make publicly known the Holocaust against the Sinti and Roma which was for decades suppressed and denied in German society after the war.

Our joint memorial ceremony at the former concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen in the year 1979 was an important station for our civil rights movement. For the first time in the presence of political representatives like Simone Veil tribute was paid to our victims and a public discussion on the Nazi crimes against the Sinti and Roma was started, which contributed to the fact that the genocide was for the first time politically recognized in 1982 by the Chancellor Helmut Schmidt. None of this would have been possible without your personal hard work and so I should here like to express sincere thanks to you in the name of our people.”

Romani Rose, Chairperson of the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma to the Society for Threatened Peoples (addressed to the chairperson of the GfbV)

"We must all bear in mind”, said Zülch, "that it is only the Sinti and Roma who have always lived in the country who are protected, but not the refugees and expelled persons from the Balkan wars who are living amongst us. Among them are thousands of children who are not even allowed to serve an apprenticeship. None of them have any rights, they are discriminated and mostly without any residence or work permits. This is a disgrace for our country in the light of the dreadful past of Nazi persecution.”

Footnotes

1 "In Auschwitz vergast, bis heute verfolgt - zur Situation der Sinti und Roma in Deutschland und Europa" ("Gassed in Auschwitz, persecuted up to the present day – the situation of the Sinti and Roma in Germany and Europe”), published by Tilman Zülch with an introduction by Prof. Ernst Tugendhat, Rowohlt-Verlag, Reihe rororo Aktuell, Reinbek 1979. Excerpts from this documentation were included in the school text-books of all German provinces.

2 Memorial ceremony at the former concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen under the patronage of Simone Veil, President of the European Parliament with 2000 participants. Simone Veil had survived this concentration camp. The speakers included Heinz Galinski, Chairperson of the Central Council of the Jews in Germany

3 World Roma Congress (formally the third) under the patronage of Simon Wiesenthal and Indira Ghandi, represented by the chief editor of the leading Indian newspaper "National Herald”, New Delhi, with the National Ballet Company of the Bangra Dancers, participants including among many others Roma, Sinti, Ashkali, Gitanos, Bandjara (India), Gypsies, "Travellers) and Jenish people from 28 countries of North America, Europe and Asia.