Contingent solution for 10,000 Roma refugees living amongst us!

Moral consequences of Auschwitz: The Society for Threatened Peoples calls for a contingent solution for 10,000 Roma living amongst us!

"Attitude comes from remembering.

Now 65 years after the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp when Germany has developed a political attitude which is serious, accountable and reliable, the question arises whether the memory of Auschwitz has not long since grown into the larger dimension of a morally historical commitment to be found in all politics. … When a crime which refuses to disappear from the scene becomes a part of history the question is whether this calls for a special kind of policy-making…” ZEIT ONLINE, 27.01.2010, 11.56 by Hermann Rudolph.

"In the Third Reich we Jews were considered sub-humans. The gypsies are today not openly termed sub-humans, but this is how they are felt and treated.” Prof. Ernst Tugendhat, philosopher.

The Society for Threatened Peoples calls for a contingent solution for 10,000 Roma refugees living amongst us!

Taking up the appeal of Shimon Peres "Never again – never again racist teaching” the Society for Threatened Peoples one day after the Holocaust memorial day is drawing attention to the racist persecution of 10,000 Roma refugees and their German-speaking children who have only temporary permits of residence. It brings back the memory of the 21,000 people in the gypsy camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

"We see the systematic denigration and inhuman treatment of these Roma refugees by many German offices for foreigners, many courts and most of the ministers of the interior”, said the STP Chairperson of the German section of the STP, Tilman Zülch today in Göttingen. "Of the 150,000 members of the coloured community of the Roma 120,000 Roma were in 1999 after the NATO invasion under the eyes of the NATO and so also of German soldiers driven out of the country by liberated Albanians. Seventy of their 75 villages and estates were destroyed, Roma were mishandled, tortured, murdered or driven out.”

Now week by week children, women and men of the 10,000 Kosova Roma with only temporary residence permits are being deported often under cover of night. Often husbands are being separated from their wives, parents from children and children from their siblings. Children, sick persons and the elderly are being deported and these deportations are called voluntary return.

"Opportunities for treatment and care are being invented which simply do not exist for the members of this minority”, criticized Zülch. "For a decade they were prevented from working , their freedom of movement was restricted to one district and further training was forbidden. "

Deported persons vegetate on their return in temporary accommodation made of plastic or wood. They are confronted with an unemployment rate of 90% in Kosovo. It is only a matter of time before children or elderly people become ill or die in the present winter conditions.

"We call on German politicians to take these 10,000 members of the coloured minority of the Roma as a contingent in the spirit of working through our recent history in the same way as Germany has taken 200,000 Jewish citizens of the former Soviet Union as a consequence of the Holocaust and 2.5 million Russian Germans as a consequence of the Stalin-Hitler Pact and the genocide of the Soviet dictator”, said Zülch. "For this reason our human rights organization is calling for the right to permanent residence in Germany for the contingent of the 10,000 Roma as a consequence of the killing of hundreds of thousands of Sinti and Roma.”

It took almost 35 years before the suppression and persecution of the Sinti and Roma, which continued unnoticed in Western Germany, was publicized by the STP from 1979 to the middle of the eighties. It was the result of this pressure that Chancellor Schmidt and President Carstens were moved to recognize this part of the Holocaust and a first compensation with pensions was made. These moves were supported by people like Simon Wiesenthal, Indira Gandhi and Simone Weil. Then it was that the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma was founded.

Tilman Zülch will be glad to answer questions at politik@gfbv.de