115-604: With significant post-war activity The Romani Holocaust was the genocide of European Roma and Sinti people during World War II . Beginning in 1933 , Nazi Germany systematically persecuted the European Roma , Sinti and other peoples pejoratively labeled ' Gypsy ' through forcible internment and compulsory sterilization . German authorities summarily and arbitrarily subjected Romani people to incarceration , forced labor , deportation and mass murder in concentration and extermination camps . Under Adolf Hitler ,
230-435: A Kalderash Rom, from a number of suggestions which were given during an "informal conversation in 1993". The term is mostly used by activists and as a result, its usage is unknown to most Roma, including relatives of victims and survivors. Some Russian and Balkan Romani activists protest against the use of the word porajmos . In various dialects, porajmos is synonymous with poravipe which means "violation" and "rape",
345-504: A Polish court was the first legal verdict that mentioned the term, using Lemkin's original definition. According to the legal instrument used to prosecute defeated German leaders at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, atrocity crimes were only prosecutable by international justice if they were committed as part of an illegal war of aggression . The powers prosecuting the trial were unwilling to restrict
460-524: A degree he earned from the École pratique des hautes études . During his studies, Courthiade worked for several NGOs regarding education for Romani people in Albania. Subsequently, he worked as a political analyst and interpreter at the French Embassy in Albania for four years. In 1997, he became a lecturer at INALCO. In 2008, he was a key participant of Louis Mochet's film Rromani Soul . In 2019, he became
575-478: A failure. Lemkin's anti-colonial conception of genocide was transformed into one that favored colonial powers. Among the violence freed from the stigma of genocide included the destruction of political groups, which the Soviet Union is particularly blamed for blocking. Although Lemkin credited women's NGOs with securing the passage of the convention, the gendered violence of forced pregnancy, marriage, and divorce
690-460: A form of genocide. Pioneers of research into settler colonialism such as Patrick Wolfe spelled out the genocidal logic of settler projects, prompting a rethinking of colonialism. Many genocide scholars are concerned both with objective study of the topic, and obtaining insights that will help prevent future genocides. The definition of genocide generates controversy whenever a new case arises and debate erupts as to whether or not it qualifies as
805-524: A genocide. Sociologist Martin Shaw writes, “Few ideas are as important in public debate, but in few cases are the meaning and scope of a key idea less clearly agreed.” Some scholars and activists use the Genocide Convention definition. Others prefer narrower definitions that indicate genocide is rare in human history, reducing genocide to mass killing or distinguishing it from other types of violence by
920-418: A government's actions against its own citizens. In order to criminalize peacetime genocide, Lemkin brought his proposal to criminalize genocide to the newly established United Nations in 1946. Opposition to the convention was greater than Lemkin expected due to states' concerns that it would lead their own policies - including treatment of indigenous peoples , European colonialism , racial segregation in
1035-448: A group can be targeted before triggering the Genocide Convention. The two main approaches to intent are the purposive approach, where the perpetrator expressly wants to destroy the group, and the knowledge-based approach, where the perpetrator understands that destruction of the protected group will result from his actions. Intent is the most difficult aspect for prosecutors to prove; the perpetrators often claim that they merely sought
1150-409: A group's language, culture, or way of life —was part of Raphael Lemkin 's original concept, and its proponents in the 1940s argued that it, along with physical genocide, were two mechanisms aiming at the same goal: destruction of the targeted group. Because cultural genocide clearly applied to some colonial and assimilationist policies, several states with overseas colonies threatened to refuse to ratify
1265-583: A lesser or greater extent from the convention. The convention's definition of genocide was adopted verbatim by the ad hoc international criminal tribunals and by the Rome Statute that established the International Criminal Court (ICC). The crime of genocide also exists in customary international law and is therefore prohibited for non-signatories. During the Cold War , genocide remained at
SECTION 10
#17330849997351380-540: A nation or of an ethnic group" by means such as "the disintegration of [its] political and social institutions, of [its] culture , language , national feelings, religion , and [its] economic existence". During the struggle to ratify the Genocide Convention , powerful countries restricted Lemkin's definition to exclude their own actions from being classified as genocide, ultimately limiting it to any of five "acts committed with intent to destroy , in whole or in part,
1495-435: A nation or of an ethnic group" in which its members were not targeted as individuals, but rather as members of the group. The objectives of genocide "would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups". These were not separate crimes but different aspects of the same genocidal process. Lemkin's definition of nation
1610-435: A national, ethnical, racial or religious group". Genocide has occurred throughout human history , even during prehistoric times , but is particularly likely in situations of imperial expansion and power consolidation. Therefore, it is usually associated with colonial empires and settler colonies , as well as with both world wars and repressive governments in the twentieth century. The colloquial understanding of genocide
1725-507: A political or military enemy, thus excluding them from consideration. Most civilian killings in the twentieth century were not from genocide, which only applies to select cases. Alternative terms have been coined to describe processes left outside narrower definitions of genocide. Ethnic cleansing —the forced expulsion of a population from a given territory—has achieved widespread currency, although many scholars recognize that it frequently overlaps with genocide, even where Lemkin's definition
1840-405: A process of gradual radicalization , often escalating to genocide following resistance by those targeted. Genocide perpetrators often fear—usually irrationally—that if they do not commit atrocities, they will suffer a similar fate as they inflict on their victims. Despite perpetrators' utilitarian goals, ideological factors are necessary to explain why genocide seems to be a desirable solution to
1955-521: A single person being killed. Forced displacement is a common feature of many genocides, with the victims often transported to another location where their destruction is easier for the perpetrators. In some cases, victims are transported to sites where they are killed or deprived of the necessities of life. People are often killed by the displacement itself, as was the case for many Armenian genocide victims. Cultural destruction, such as that practised at Canadian boarding schools for indigenous children ,
2070-692: A specific region was often the focus of anti-Romani policy both in the German Empire and the Weimar Republic. Once settled, communities were concentrated and isolated in a single area of a town or city. This segregation facilitated state-run surveillance practices and 'crime prevention.' Following the passage of the Law for the Fight Against Gypsies, Vagrants, and the Workshy, public policy increasingly targeted
2185-748: A supplementary decree to the Nuremberg Laws was issued on 26 November 1935, classifying the Romani people (or Roma) as "enemies of the race-based state ", thereby placing them in the same category as the Jews . Thus, the fate of the Roma in Europe paralleled that of the Jews in the Holocaust . Historians estimate that between 250,000 and 500,000 Romani and Sinti were killed by Nazi Germans and their collaborators —25% to over 50% of
2300-526: A term which some Roma consider offensive. János Bársony and Ágnes Daróczi, pioneering organisers of the Romani civil rights movement in Hungary, prefer to use the term Pharrajimos , a Romani word which means "cutting up", "fragmentation", "destruction". They argue against the use of the term porrajmos , saying that it is marhime (unclean, untouchable): "[p]orrajmos is unpronounceable in the Roma community, and thus, it
2415-413: A value judgement as it is widely considered to be the epitome of human evil . In the past, violence that could be labeled genocide was sometimes celebrated —although it always had its critics. The idea that genocide sits on top of a hierarchy of atrocity crimes —that it is worse than crimes against humanity or war crimes —is controversial among scholars and it suggests that the protection of groups
SECTION 20
#17330849997352530-561: Is a doctrine that emerged around 2000, in the aftermath of several genocides around the world, that seeks to balance state sovereignty with the need for international intervention to prevent genocide. However, disagreements in the United Nations Security Council and lack of political will have hampered the implementation of this doctrine. Although military intervention to halt genocide has been credited with reducing violence in some cases, it remains deeply controversial and
2645-471: Is considered likely to occur, the accuracy of these predictions are not known and there is no scholarly consensus over evidence-based genocide prevention strategies. Intervention to prevent genocide has often been considered a failure because most countries prioritize business, trade, and diplomatic relationships: as a consequence, "the usual powerful actors continue to use violence against vulnerable populations with impunity". Responsibility to protect
2760-401: Is dependent on their position early in the demographic transition . Because genocide is often perceived as the "crime of crimes", it grabs attention more effectively than other violations of international law. Consequently, victims of atrocities often label their suffering genocide as an attempt to gain attention to their plight and attract foreign intervention. Although remembering genocide
2875-456: Is heavily influenced by the Holocaust as its archetype and is conceived as innocent victims targeted for their ethnic identity rather than for any political reason. Genocide is widely considered to be the epitome of human evil and often referred to as the "crime of crimes"; consequently, events are often denounced as genocide . Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin coined the term genocide between 1941 and 1943. Lemkin's coinage combined
2990-625: Is incapable of conveying the sufferings of the Roma". Balkan Romani activists prefer to use the term samudaripen ("mass killing"), first introduced by linguist Marcel Courthiade in the 1970s in Yugoslavia in the context of Auschwitz and Jasenovac. It is a neologism of sa (Romani for 'all') and mudaripen (murder). It can be translated as 'murder of all' or 'mass murder'. The International Romani Union now uses this term. Ian Hancock dismisses this word, arguing that it does not conform to Romani language morphology . Some Ruska Roma activists offer to use
3105-456: Is inherently connected to the modern state—thus to the rise of the West in the early modern era and its expansion outside Europe—and earlier conflicts cannot be described as genocide. Although all empires rely on violence, often extreme violence, to perpetuate their own existence, they also seek to preserve and rule the conquered rather than eradicate them. Although the desire to exploit populations
3220-725: Is known as the Hrastina Massacre and is perhaps the last mass murder of Sinti and Roma in Europe during World War II. In 1977, a statue was erected in the local cemetery, Marija Gorica, to honor the victims. In the Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia , the German occupiers and the Serbian collaborationist puppet government Government of National Salvation killed thousands of Romani in
3335-399: Is more important than of individuals. We have been reproached for making no distinction between the innocent Armenians and the guilty : but that was utterly impossible in view of the fact that those who are innocent today might be guilty tomorrow. The concern for the safety of Turkey simply had to silence all other concerns. The colloquial understanding of genocide is heavily influenced by
3450-503: Is not effective in inducing people to commit genocide and that for some perpetrators, the dehumanization of victims, and adoption of nationalist or other ideologies that justify the violence occurs after they begin to perpetrate atrocities often coinciding with escalation. Although genocide perpetrators have often been assumed to be male, the role of women in perpetrating genocide—although they were historically excluded from leadership—has also been explored. People's behavior changes under
3565-424: Is not used. Other terms ending in -cide have proliferated for the destruction of particular types of groupings: democide (people by a government), eliticide (the elite of a targeted group), ethnocide (ethnic groups), gendercide (gendered groupings), politicide (political groups), classicide (social classes), and urbicide (the destruction of a particular locality). The word genocide inherently carries
Romani Holocaust - Misplaced Pages Continue
3680-729: Is often dependent on controlling the victims at a specific location. Destruction of cultural objects, such as religious buildings, is common even when the primary method of genocide is not cultural. Cultural genocide, such as residential schools , is particularly common during settler-colonial consolidation. Men, particularly young adults, are disproportionately targeted for killing before other victims in order to stem resistance. Although diverse forms of sexual violence—ranging from rape, forced pregnancy, forced marriage, sexual slavery, mutilation, forced sterilization—can affect either males or females, women are more likely to face it. The combination of killing of men and sexual violence against women
3795-460: Is often intended to disrupt reproduction of the targeted group. Almost all genocides are brought to an end either by the military defeat of the perpetrators or the accomplishment of their aims. According to rational choice theory , it should be possible to intervene to prevent genocide by raising the costs of engaging in such violence relative to alternatives. Although there are a number of organizations that compile lists of states where genocide
3910-523: Is often perceived as a way to develop tolerance and respect for human rights, the charge of genocide often leads to increased cohesion among the targeted people—in some cases, it has been incorporated into national identity —and stokes enmity towards the group blamed for the crime, reducing the chance of reconciliation and increasing the risk of future occurrence of genocide. Some genocides are commemorated in memorials or museums. Marcel Courthiade Marcel Courthiade (2 August 1953 – 4 March 2021)
4025-430: Is poorly understood. The foot soldiers of genocide (as opposed to its organizers) are not demographically or psychologically aberrant. People who commit crimes during genocide are rarely true believers in the ideology behind genocide, although they are affected by it to some extent alongside other factors such as obedience, diffusion of responsibility , and conformity. Other evidence suggests that ideological propaganda
4140-427: Is usually illegal. Researcher Gregory H. Stanton found that calling crimes genocide rather than something else, such as ethnic cleansing, increased the chance of effective intervention. Perhaps for this reason, states are often reluctant to recognize crimes as genocide while they are taking place. Lemkin applied the concept of genocide to a wide variety of events throughout human history . He and other scholars date
4255-638: The Banjica concentration camp , Crveni Krst concentration camp and Topovske Šupe concentration camp along with Jews. In August 1942, Harald Turner reported to his superiors that "Serbia is the only country in which the Jewish question and the Gypsy question have been solved." Serbian Romani were parties to the unsuccessful class action suit against the Vatican Bank and others in the U.S. federal court in which they sought
4370-639: The Bosnian genocide , Rwandan genocide , and the Kosovo crisis , genocide studies exploded in the 1990s. In contrast to earlier researchers who took for granted the idea that liberal and democratic societies were less likely to commit genocide, revisionists associated with the International Network of Genocide Scholars emphasized how Western ideas led to genocide. The genocides of indigenous peoples as part of European colonialism were initially not recognized as
4485-566: The German military and police formations as well as by the Schutzstaffel (SS) task forces, and in armed resistance against the Nazi German occupation of Europe . The term porajmos (also porrajmos or pharrajimos —literally, "devouring" or "destruction" in some dialects of the Romani language ) was introduced by Ian Hancock in the early 1990s. Hancock chose to use the term, coined by
4600-567: The Greek word γένος ( genos , "race, people") with the Latin suffix -caedo ("act of killing"). He submitted the manuscript for his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe to the publisher in early 1942, and it was published in 1944 as the Holocaust was coming to light outside Europe. Lemkin's proposal was more ambitious than simply outlawing this type of mass slaughter. He also thought that
4715-503: The "Gypsy problem" and to coordinate efforts against Gypsies. Roma in the Weimar Republic were forbidden from entering public swimming pools, parks, and other recreational areas, and depicted throughout Germany and Europe as criminals and spies. The 1926 "Law for the Fight Against Gypsies, Vagrants and the Workshy" was enforced in Bavaria, and became the national norm by 1929. It stipulated that groups identifying as 'Gypsies' avoid all travel to
Romani Holocaust - Misplaced Pages Continue
4830-460: The "Law against Dangerous Habitual Criminals" of November 1933, the police arrested many Roma, along with others the Nazis viewed as "asocial"—prostitutes, beggars, homeless vagrants, and alcoholics—and imprisoned them in internment camps. After Hitler's rise to power, legislation against the Romani was increasingly based upon a rhetoric of racism. Policy originally based on the premise of "fighting crime"
4945-459: The 23,000 European Roma and Sinti sent there did not survive. In areas outside the reach of systematic registration, e.g., in the German-occupied areas of Eastern and Southeastern Europe, the Roma who were most threatened were those who, in the German judgment, were " vagabonds ", though some were actually refugees or displaced persons . Here, they were killed mainly in massacres perpetrated by
5060-689: The 700,000 Romani in Europe were murdered, including 15,000 (mainly from the Soviet Union) in Mauthausen in January–May 1945. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum cites scholars who estimate the number of Sinti and Roma murdered as between 220,000 and 500,000. Sybil Milton estimated the number of lives lost as "something between a half-million and a million-and-a-half". The governments of some Nazi German allies, namely Slovakia , Finland, Italy , Vichy France , Hungary , and Romania , also contributed to
5175-536: The Balkan states and the Soviet Union, the Einsatzgruppen , mobile killing squads, travelled from village to village massacring the inhabitants where they lived and typically leaving few to no records of the number of Roma killed in this way. In a few cases, significant documentary evidence of mass murder was generated. Timothy Snyder notes that in the Soviet Union alone there were 8,000 documented cases of Roma murdered by
5290-676: The Einsatzgruppen in their sweep east. In return for immunity from prosecution for war crimes , Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski stated at the Einsatzgruppen Trial that "the principal task of the Einsatzgruppen of the S.D. was the annihilation of the Jews, Gypsies, and Political commissars ". Roma in the Slovak Republic were killed by local collaborating auxiliaries. Notably, in Denmark and Greece, local populations did not participate in
5405-454: The Genocide Convention. Despite the promise of never again and the international effort to outlaw genocide, it has continued to occur repeatedly into the twenty-first century. In the aftermath of genocide, common occurrences are the attempt to prosecute perpetrators through the legal system and obtain recognition and reparations for survivors, as well as reflection of the events in scholarship and culture, such as genocide museums . Except in
5520-492: The Holocaust and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's online encyclopedia of the Holocaust. However, new findings and documents uncovered by research experts revealed that the Roma death toll was at least about 200,000 to 500,000 of the 1 or 2 million Roma in Europe, although there are numerous experts and scholars who give much higher number of Romani deaths, such as Ian Hancock , director of
5635-696: The Holocaust as its archetype and is conceived as innocent victims targeted because of racism rather than for any political reason. Genocide is not an end of itself, but a means to another end—often chosen by perpetrators after other options failed. Most are ultimately caused by its perpetrators perceiving an existential threat to their own existence, although this belief is usually exaggerated and can be entirely imagined. Particular threats to existing elites that have been correlated to genocide include both successful and attempted regime change via assassination, coups, revolutions, and civil wars . Most genocides were not planned long in advance, but emerged through
5750-459: The Holocaust, involved such large-scale logistics that it reinforced the impression that genocide was the result of civilization drifting off course and required both the "weapons and infrastructure of the modern state and the radical ambitions of the modern man". Scientific racism and nationalism were common ideological drivers of many twentieth century genocides. After the horrors of World War II , world leaders attempted to proscribe genocide via
5865-775: The Imperial Police Headquarters in Munich established the Information Services on Romani by the Security Police. Its purpose was to keep records (identification cards, fingerprints, photographs, etc.) and continuous surveillance on the Roma community. In 1904, Prussia adopted a resolution calling for regulation of Gypsy movement. In 1911, the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior organized a conference in Munich to discuss
SECTION 50
#17330849997355980-563: The Nazi plan to exterminate the Romani, but most of the Romani who resided in these countries survived, unlike those Romani who resided in Ustaše Croatia or those Romani who resided in areas which were directly ruled by Nazi Germany (such as occupied Poland). The Hungarian Arrow Cross government deported between 28,000 and 33,000 Romani out of a population that was estimated to be between 70,000 and 100,000. The Romani people were also persecuted by
6095-649: The Nazis and the Ustaše. As a result, the vast majority of the Roma who resided in Italy and its occupied territories managed to survive the war. In the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia , Romani internees were sent to the Lety and Hodonín concentration camps before they were transferred to Auschwitz-Birkenau for mass murder – by poison gas. What makes the Lety camp unique is the fact that it
6210-543: The Nazis' extermination. In May 1944 at Auschwitz, SS guards tried to liquidate the Gypsy Family Camp and were "met with unexpected resistance". When ordered to come out, they refused, having been warned and arming themselves with crude weapons: iron pipes, shovels and other tools. The SS chose not to confront the Roma directly and withdrew for several months. After transferring as many as 3,000 Roma who were capable of forced labor to Auschwitz I and other concentration camps,
6325-507: The Nuremberg laws to also apply to the Roma. Romani, like Jews, lost their right to vote on 7 March 1936. The Third Reich's government began persecuting the Romani as early as 1936 when they started to transfer the people to municipal internment camps on the outskirts of cities, a prelude to their deportation to concentration camps. A December 1937 decree on "crime prevention" provided the pretext for major roundups of Roma. Nine representatives of
6440-462: The Reich Department of Health) in 1936. Headed by Robert Ritter and his assistant Eva Justin , this unit was mandated to conduct an in-depth study of the "Gypsy question ( Zigeunerfrage )" and to provide data required for formulating a new Reich "Gypsy law". After extensive fieldwork in the spring of 1936, consisting of interviews and medical examinations to determine the racial classification of
6555-544: The Roma had originally been Aryan, over time, the Nazis said, they became mixed-race and so were classified as "non-Aryan" and of an "alien race". The Nuremberg race laws passed on 15 September 1935. The first Nuremberg Law, the "Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honor", forbade marriage and extramarital intercourse between Jews and Germans. The second Nuremberg law, "The Reich Citizenship Law", stripped Jews of their German citizenship. On 26 November 1935, Germany expanded
6670-466: The Roma living in Germany. In 1938, Himmler issued an order regarding the 'Gypsy question' which explicitly mentioned "race" which stated that it was "advisable to deal with the Gypsy question on the basis of race." The decree made it law to register all Roma (including Mischlinge – mixed race), as well as those people who "travel around in a Gypsy fashion" over the age of six. Although the Nazis believed that
6785-595: The Roma on the explicit basis of race. In 1927, Prussia passed a law that required all Roma to carry identity cards. Eight thousand Roma were processed this way and subjected to mandatory fingerprinting and photographing. Two years later, the focus became more explicit. In 1929, the German state of Hessen proposed the "Law for the Fight Against the Gypsy Menace". The same year, the Centre for the Fight Against Gypsies in Germany
6900-429: The Roma, the unit decided that most Romani, whom they had concluded were not of "pure Gypsy blood", posed a danger to German racial purity and should be deported or eliminated. No decision was made regarding the remainder (about 10 percent of the total Romani population of Europe), primarily Sinti and Lalleri tribes living in Germany. Several suggestions were made. Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler suggested deporting
7015-667: The Romani Archives and Documentation Center at the University of Texas at Austin , in his findings discovered that almost the entire Romani population was killed in Croatia , Estonia , Lithuania , Luxembourg , and the Netherlands . Rudolph Rummel , the late professor emeritus of political science at the University of Hawaii who spent his career assembling data on collective violence by governments toward their people (for which he coined
SECTION 60
#17330849997357130-458: The Romani community in Germany were asked to compile lists of "pure-blooded" Romanis to be saved from deportation. However, the Germans often ignored these lists, and some individuals identified on them were still sent to concentration camps. Notable internment and concentration camps include Dachau , Dieselstrasse, Marzahn (which evolved from a municipal internment camp) and Vennhausen. Initially,
7245-601: The Romani genocide . Within the Nazi German state, first persecution , then extermination , was aimed primarily at sedentary "Gypsy mongrels". In December 1942, Heinrich Himmler ordered the deportation of all Roma from the Greater Germanic Reich , and most were sent to the specially established Gypsy concentration camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau . Other Roma were deported there from the Nazi-occupied Western European territories . Approximately 21,000 of
7360-504: The Romani to a remote reservation , as the United States had done to Native Americans, where "pure Gypsies" could continue their nomadic lifestyle unhindered. According to him: The aim of measures taken by the State to defend the homogeneity of the German nation must be the physical separation of Gypsydom from the German nation, the prevention of miscegenation , and finally, the regulation of
7475-625: The Romani were herded into so-called ghettos , including the Warsaw Ghetto (April–June 1942), where they formed a distinct class in relation to the Jews. Ghetto diarist Emmanuel Ringelblum speculated that Romani were sent to the Warsaw Ghetto because the Germans wanted: ... to toss into the Ghetto everything that is characteristically dirty, shabby, bizarre, of which one ought to be frightened, and which anyway has to be destroyed. Initially, there
7590-510: The SS moved against the remaining 2,898 inmates on 2 August. The SS murdered nearly all of the remaining inmates, most of them ill, elderly men, women and children, in the gas chambers of Birkenau. At least 19,000 of the 23,000 Roma sent to Auschwitz were murdered there. The Society for Threatened Peoples estimates the Romani deaths at 277,100. Martin Gilbert estimates that a total of more than 220,000 of
7705-543: The United States , and Soviet nationalities policy - to be labeled genocide. Before the convention was passed, powerful countries (both Western powers and the Soviet Union) secured changes in an attempt to make the convention unenforceable and applicable to their geopolitical rivals ' actions but not their own. Few formerly colonized countries were represented and "most states had no interest in empowering their victims– past, present, and future". The result severely diluted Lemkin's original concept; he privately considered it
7820-426: The basis of biology. In addition to being a period in which racial pseudoscience was widely promoted, the end of the 19th century was a period of state-sponsored modernization in Germany. Industrial development altered many aspects of society. Most notably, the changes which occurred during this period caused the social norms of work and life to shift. For the Roma, this shift in the social norms of work and life led to
7935-487: The case of the Holocaust , few genocide victims receive any reparations despite the trend of requiring such reparations in international and municipal law. The perpetrators and their supporters often deny the genocide and reject responsibility for the harms suffered by victims. Efforts to achieve justice and reconciliation are common in postgenocide situations, but are necessarily incomplete and inadequate. The effects of genocide on societies are under-researched. Much of
8050-516: The convention unless it was excluded. Most genocide scholars believe that both cultural genocide and structural violence should be included in the definition of genocide, if committed with intent to destroy the targeted group. Although included in Lemkin's original concept and by some scholars, political groups were also excluded from the Genocide Convention. The result of this exclusion was that perpetrators of genocide could redefine their targets as being
8165-570: The country's Romani population, killing an estimated 25,000 and also deporting around 26,000. In May 1942, an Ustaše order was issued, according to it, the deportation of Muslim Roma who were residing in Bosnia and Herzegovina should stop. On April 24, 1945, Ustaše soldiers brutally murdered between 43 and 47 Sinti and Roma members of a traveling circus named "Braća Winter" as they temporarily settled in Kraj Donji on their way to Slovenia. The atrocity
8280-459: The course of events, and someone might choose to kill one genocide victim while saving another. Anthropologist Richard Rechtman writes that in circumstances where atrocities such as genocides are perpetrated, many people refuse to become perpetrators, which often entails great sacrifices such as risking their lives and fleeing their country. It is a common misconception that genocide necessarily involves mass killing; indeed, it may occur without
8395-557: The course of imperial expansion and power consolidation. Although genocide is typically organized around pre-existing identity boundaries, it has the outcome of strengthening them. Although many scholars have emphasized the role of ideology in genocide, there is little agreement in how ideology contributes to violent outcomes; others have cited rational explanations for atrocities. Genocides are usually driven by states and their agents, such as elites, political parties, bureaucracies, armed forces, and paramilitaries. Civilians are often
8510-533: The denial of their traditional way of life as craftsmen and artisans. János Bársony notes that "industrial development devalued their services as craftsmen, resulting in the disintegration of their communities and social marginalization." The developments of racial pseudoscience and modernization resulted in anti-Romani state interventions, carried out by both the German Empire and the Weimar Republic . In 1899,
8625-414: The enslavement or forced assimilation of women and children—often limited to a particular town or city rather than applied to a larger group—is a common feature of ancient warfare as described in written sources. The events that some scholars consider genocide in ancient and medieval times had more pragmatic than ideological motivations. As a result, some scholars such as Mark Levene argue that genocide
8740-403: The estimate of slightly fewer than 1 million Roma in Europe at the time. Later research cited by Ian Hancock estimated the death toll to be at about 1.5 million out of an estimated 2 million European Roma. In 1982, West Germany formally recognized that Nazi Germany had committed genocide against the Romani people. In 2011, Poland officially adopted 2 August as a day of commemoration of
8855-488: The first genocides to prehistoric times . Prior to the advent of civilizations consisting of sedentary farmers , humans lived in tribal societies, with intertribal warfare often ending with the obliteration of the defeated tribe, killing of adult males and integration of women and children into the victorious tribe. Genocide is mentioned in various ancient sources including the Hebrew Bible . The massacre of men and
8970-412: The following acts committed with intent to destroy , in whole or in part, a national , ethnical , racial or religious group, as such: A specific " intent to destroy " is the mens rea requirement of genocide. The issue of what it means to destroy a group "as such" and how to prove the required intent has been difficult for courts to resolve. The legal system has also struggled with how much of
9085-505: The hunt for Roma as they did elsewhere. Bulgaria and Finland, although allies of Germany, did not cooperate with the Porajmos, just as they did not cooperate with the anti-Jewish Shoah . On 16 December 1942, Himmler ordered that the Romani candidates for extermination should be transferred from ghettos to the extermination facilities of Auschwitz-Birkenau . On 15 November 1943, Himmler ordered that Romani and "part-Romanies" were to be put "on
9200-543: The identified security problem. Noncombatants are harmed because of the collective guilt ascribed to an entire people—defined according to race but targeted because of its supposed security threat. Other motives for genocide have included theft, land grabbing , and revenge. War is often described as the single most important enabler of genocide providing the weaponry, ideological justification, polarization between allies and enemies, and cover for carrying out extreme violence. A large proportion of genocides occurred under
9315-426: The innocence, helplessness, or defencelessness of its victims. Most genocides occur during wartime, and distinguishing genocide or genocidal war from non-genocidal warfare can be difficult. Likewise, genocide is distinguished from violent and coercive forms of rule that aim to change behavior rather than destroy groups. Some definitions include political or social groups as potential victims of genocide. Many of
9430-420: The law against genocide could promote more tolerant and pluralistic societies. His response to Nazi criminality was sharply different from that of another international law scholar, Hersch Lauterpacht , who argued that it was essential to protect individuals from atrocities, whether or not they were targeted as members of a group. According to Lemkin, the central definition of genocide was "the destruction of
9545-490: The leading agents when the genocide takes places in remote frontier areas. A common strategy is for state-sponsored atrocities to be carried out in secrecy by paramilitary groups, offering the benefit of plausible deniability while widening complicity in the atrocities. The leaders who organize genocide usually believe that their actions were justified and regret nothing. How ordinary people can become involved in extraordinary violence under circumstances of acute conflict
9660-427: The letter "Z" (meaning Zigeuner , German word for gypsy). Sybil Milton , a scholar of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, has speculated that Hitler was involved in the decision to deport all Romani to Auschwitz, as Himmler gave the order six days after meeting with Hitler. For that meeting, Himmler had prepared a report on the subject Führer: Aufstellung wer sind Zigeuner . On some occasions, the Roma attempted to resist
9775-580: The level of rhetoric because both superpowers (the United States and the Soviet Union) felt vulnerable to accusations of genocide, and were therefore unwilling to press charges against the other party. Despite political pressure to charge "Soviet genocide", the United States government refused to ratify the convention fearing countercharges . Authorities have been reluctant to prosecute the perpetrators of many genocides, although non-judicial commissions of inquiry have also been created by some states. The first conviction for genocide in an international court
9890-401: The more sociologically oriented definitions of genocide overlap that of the crime against humanity of extermination , which refers to large-scale killing or induced death as part of a systematic attack on a civilian population. Isolated or short-lived phenomena that resemble genocide can be termed genocidal violence . Cultural genocide or ethnocide—actions targeted at the reproduction of
10005-464: The national pattern of the victim with that of the perpetrator, was much broader than the five types enumerated in the Genocide Convention. Lemkin considered genocide to have occurred since the beginning of human history and dated the efforts to criminalize it to the Spanish critics of colonial excesses Francisco de Vitoria and Bartolomé de Las Casas . The 1946 judgement against Arthur Greiser issued by
10120-686: The puppet regimes that cooperated with the Third Reich during the war, especially by the notorious Ustaše regime in the Independent State of Croatia . Tens of thousands of Romani people were killed in the Jasenovac concentration camp , along with Serbs , Jews , and anti-fascist Muslims and Croats . Yad Vashem estimates that the Porajmos was most intense in Yugoslavia , where around 90,000 Romani were killed. The Ustaše government virtually annihilated
10235-562: The qualitative research on genocide has focused on the testimonies of victims, survivors, and other eyewitnesses. Studies of genocide survivors have examined rates of depression, anxiety, schizophrenia , suicide, post-traumatic stress disorder , and post-traumatic growth . While some have found negative results, others find no association with genocide survival. There are no consistent findings that children of genocide survivors have worse health than comparable individuals. Most societies are able to recover demographically from genocide, but this
10350-526: The region. Those already living in the area were to "be kept under control so that there [was] no longer anything to fear from them with regard to safety in the land." They were forbidden from "roam[ing] about or camp[ing] in bands", and those "unable to prove regular employment" risked being sent to forced labor for up to two years. Herbet Heuss notes that "[t]his Bavarian law became the model for other German states and even for neighbouring countries." The demand for Roma to give up their nomadic ways and settle in
10465-556: The removal of the group from a given territory, instead of destruction as such, or that the genocidal actions were collateral damage of military activity. Attempted genocide , conspiracy to commit genocide, incitement to genocide , and complicity in genocide are criminalized. The convention does not allow the retroactive prosecution of events that took place prior to 1951. Signatories are also required to prevent genocide and prosecute its perpetrators. Many countries have incorporated genocide into their municipal law , varying to
10580-412: The return of wartime loot. The Romanian government of Ion Antonescu did not systematically annihilate Roma who resided on its territory. Some resident Roma were deported to occupied Transnistria . Of the estimated 25,000 Romani inmates of these camps, around 11,000 (44%, or almost half) died. (See also the research of Michelle Kelso, presented in her film, Hidden Sorrows , based upon research amongst
10695-418: The same level as Jews and placed in concentration camps". The camp authorities housed Roma in a special compound that was called the "Gypsy family camp". Some 23,000 Roma, Sinti, and Lalleri were deported to Auschwitz altogether. In concentration camps such as Auschwitz, Roma wore brown or black triangular patches, the symbol for "asocials", or green ones, the symbol for professional criminals, and less frequently
10810-406: The settlers want to acquire land from indigenous people making genocide more likely than with classical colonialism. While the lack of law enforcement on the frontier ensured impunity for settler violence, the advance of state authority enabled settlers to consolidate their gains using the legal system. Genocide was committed on a large scale during both world wars . The prototypical genocide,
10925-580: The survivors and in archives.) In Fascist Italy, as well as in Slovenia and Montenegro, territories which were under Italian occupation, the majority of the Roma were forcibly rounded up and incarcerated in concentration camps, but generally, they were relatively well treated, especially in contrast to the Roma who resided in the parts of Europe which were occupied by Nazi Germany . Many of them were deported to Sardinia, with much of them being given Italian identity cards that put them out of reach of extermination by
11040-542: The term Kali Traš (" Black Fear"). Another alternative that has been used is Berša Bibahtale ("The Unhappy Years"). Lastly, adapted borrowings such as Holokosto , Holokausto , etc. are also used in the Romani language on some occasions. Linguistically, the term porajmos is composed of the verb root porrav - and the abstract-forming nominal ending - imos . This ending is of the Vlax Romani dialect, whereas other varieties generally use - ibe(n) or - ipe(n) . For
11155-518: The term democide ), estimated that, in total, 258,000 were killed by the Nazi regime in Europe, 36,000 in Romania under Ion Antonescu and 27,000 in Ustaše -controlled Croatia. Genocide Genocide is violence that targets individuals because of their membership of a group and aims at the destruction of a people. Raphael Lemkin , who first coined the term, defined genocide as "the destruction of
11270-532: The use of chemical weapons: "I will kill them all with chemical weapons! Who is going to say anything? The international community? Fuck them! The international community and those who listen to them." In the recordings, Al-Majid calls the Iraqi Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani "wicked and a pimp", and promises not to leave alive anyone who speaks the Kurdish language. The first head of state to be convicted of genocide
11385-460: The verb itself, the most commonly given meaning is "to open/stretch wide" or "to rip open", whereas the meaning "to open up the mouth, devour" occurs in fewer dialects. In the late 19th century, the emergence of scientific racism and Social Darwinism , linking social differences with racial differences, provided the German public with pseudoscientific justifications for prejudices against Jews and Roma . During this period, "the concept of race
11500-465: The way of life of pure and part-Gypsies. The necessary legal foundation can only be created through a Gypsy Law, which prevents further intermingling of blood, and which regulates all the most pressing questions which go together with the existences of Roma in the living space of the German nation. Himmler took special interest into the "Aryan" origins of the Romani and distinguished between "settled" (assimilated) and "unsettled" Romani. In May 1942 an order
11615-813: The winter of 1943–1944, 66 members of the Josef, Karoli, and Modis families were interned in Belgium and deported to the gypsy department in Auschwitz. Only four members of this group survived. In Crimea , the Muslim Roma were protected by the Crimean Tatars from assassination. However, it later served Stalin to deport the Crimean Muslim Romani along with the Crimean Tatars to Siberia, since they were registered as Tatars. The following figures are from The Columbia Guide to
11730-643: Was a French linguist and researcher. Courthiade studied medicine at the University of Clermont-Ferrand , which he abandoned to study Slavic languages , particularly Serbo-Croatian and Polish . He then studied at the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales (INALCO) in Paris, where he earned a diploma in Polish, Macedonian , and Albanian . He titled his doctoral thesis Phonologie des variétés dialectales de Rromani et diasystèmes graphiques de la langue Romani ,
11845-433: Was a disincentive to extermination, imperial rule could lead to genocide when resistance emerged. Ancient and medieval genocides were often committed by empires. Unlike traditional empires, settler colonialism —particularly associated with the settlement of Europeans outside of Europe—is characterized by militarized populations of settlers in remote areas beyond effective state control. Rather than labor or economic surplus,
11960-470: Was disagreement within the Nazi circles about how to solve the "Gypsy Question". In late 1939 and early 1940, Hans Frank , the General Governor of occupied Poland, refused to accept the 30,000 German and Austrian Roma which were to be deported to his territory. Heinrich Himmler "lobbied to save a handful of pure-blooded Roma", whom he believed to be an ancient Aryan people for his "ethnic reservation", but
12075-605: Was in 1998 for a perpetrator of the Rwandan genocide . On 25 January 2010, Iraqi official Ali Hassan al-Majid (1st cousin of Saddam Hussein ) was executed by hanging after being convicted of committing genocide by using chemical weapons against Iraq's Kurdish population during the 1997-1998 Al-Anfal campaign. Al-Majid was captured following the 2003 invasion of Iraq . During the trial, the Iraqi court heard tape-recorded conversations between al-Majid and senior Ba'ath party officials regarding
12190-461: Was in 2018 for the Cambodian genocide . Although it is widely recognized that punishment of the perpetrators cannot be of an order with their crimes, the trials often serve other purposes such as attempting to shape public perception of the past. The field of genocide studies emerged in the 1970s and 1980s, as social science began to consider the phenomenon of genocide. Due to the occurrence of
12305-487: Was issued according to which all "Gypsies" living in the Balkans were to be arrested. Although the Nazi regime never produced the "Gypsy Law" desired by Himmler, policies and decrees were passed which discriminated against the Romani people. Roma were classified as "asocial" and "criminals" by the Nazi regime. From 1933 on, Roma were placed in concentration camps . After 1937, the Nazis started to carry out racial examinations on
12420-696: Was left out. Additionally omitted was the forced migration of populations —which had been carried out by the Soviet Union and its satellites, condoned by the Western Allies, against millions of Germans from central and Eastern Europe . Two years after passing a resolution affirming the criminalization of genocide , the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Genocide Convention on 9 December 1948. It came into effect on 12 January 1951 after 20 countries ratified it without reservations . The convention defines genocide as: ... any of
12535-685: Was not subjected to mass killings by the Nazi occupiers; instead, it was simply classified as "asocial". Angus Fraser attributes this to "doubts over ethnic demarcations within the travelling population". The Romanis of Greece were taken hostage and prepared for deportation to Auschwitz, but they were saved by appeals from the Archbishop of Athens and the Greek Prime Minister. In 1934, 68 Romani, most of them Norwegian citizens, were denied entry into Norway, and they were also denied transit through Sweden and Denmark when they wanted to leave Germany. In
12650-455: Was opened. This body enforced restrictions on travel for undocumented Roma and "allowed for the arbitrary arrest and detention of gypsies as a means of crime prevention." For centuries, Romani tribes had been subject to antiziganist persecution and humiliation in Europe. They were stigmatized as habitual criminals, social misfits, and vagabonds . When Hitler came to national power in 1933, anti-Gypsy laws in Germany remained in effect. Under
12765-596: Was opposed by Martin Bormann , who favored deportation for all Roma. The debate ended in 1942 when Himmler signed the order to begin the mass deportations of Roma to Auschwitz concentration camp. During Operation Reinhard (1941–1943), an undetermined number of Roma were killed in the extermination camps, such as Treblinka . The Nazi persecution of Roma was not regionally consistent. In France, between 3,000 and 6,000 Roma were deported to German concentration camps as Dachau, Ravensbrück, Buchenwald, and other camps. Further east, in
12880-515: Was redirected to "fighting a people". Targeted groups were no longer determined on juridical grounds, but instead, were victims of racialized policy. The Department of Racial Hygiene and Population Biology began to experiment on Romani to determine criteria for their racial classification. The Nazis established the Racial Hygiene and Demographic Biology Research Unit ( Rassenhygienische und Bevölkerungsbiologische Forschungsstelle , Department L3 of
12995-652: Was staffed by Czech guards, who could be even more brutal than the Germans, as testified to in Paul Polansky's book Black Silence . The genocide was so thorough, that the vast majority of Romani who currently reside in the Czech Republic are actually the descendants of migrants who moved from Slovakia to what was then Czechoslovakia and would become the Czech Republic during the post-war years. Between 16,000 and 18,000 Romani from Nazi-occupied France were killed in German camps. The small Romani population in Denmark
13110-504: Was sufficiently broad to apply to nearly any type of human collectivity, even one based on a trivial characteristic. He saw genocide as an inherently colonial process, and in his later writings analyzed what he described as the colonial genocides occurring within European overseas territories as well as the Soviet and Nazi empires. Furthermore, his definition of genocidal acts, which was to replace
13225-408: Was systematically employed in order to explain social phenomena." Proponents of this approach attempted to validate the belief that races were not variations of a single species of man because they had distinctly different biological origins. Proponents of this approach established a purportedly scientifically-based racial hierarchy , which they believed defined certain minority groups as the other on
#734265