'Romani village to move to Berlin' ran one headline in Berlin daily BZ on
April 2, and the Berliner Morgenpost followed up with 'Romani children too much
to handle for Berlin teachers' the next day. Those were just two recent
headlines in German newspapers.
Such articles go on to describe aggressive
begging, welfare payments allegedly obtained under false pretences and mountains
of garbage. This kind of reporting has strengthened the distorted picture of a
minority group that has been disparaged in Europe for centuries.
According to polls conducted by conflict researcher Wilhelm Heitmeyer, some
44 percent of the German population believe that Sinti and Roma have a tendency
to criminal conduct. Four out of 10 say it is a problem for them to have Sinti
and Roma nearby. And yet, say Heitmeyer and other researchers, the respondents
are not likely to know any members of the minority they dislike so much.
That's typical for what scientists call
antiziganism, or anti-Romanyism. It is an attitude not based on individual
experience, says Berlin political scientist Markus End, but on projections by
the surrounding population. "You can have antiziganist beliefs without ever
having had any personal contact with people who you perceive as being ‘gypsies.'
" For centuries, Sinti and Roma have been stereotyped as homeless, lazy, or
criminal, clichés repeated by the media today.
Stereotyping in literature
European literature has been full of these
stereotypes ever since Romani groups first arrived on the continent some 600
years ago. For his book 'How Europe invented the Gypsies. A tale of fascination
and contempt,' literary scholar Klaus-Michael Bogdal analyzed source reports and
other literary evidence.
The book describes how, as nation states were forming, members of this
minority group were segregated, persecuted, chased away or killed. Authors
ranging from Cervantes, Shakespeare, and Goethe to modern writers like Günter
Grass would equip them with criminal tendencies or unrestrained savageness.
The reactions ranged from irrational fear to secret admiration. Even
seemingly positive attributes often attached to gypsies, such as the 'merry
gypsy lifestyle,' sexual freedom, or lively singing and dancing, only stress how
they differ from the surrounding population, says End.
And again, such characteristics bear little relation to reality. Positive
attributes will only strengthen antiziganist beliefs, End says, "as long as
nobody points out that Sinti can also be really good mathematicians."
"There are resentments in all sections of society, including public
institutions and authorities," says Iris Biesewinkel, head of the social
counselling service of Cologne-based organization Rom.
The club facilitates communication between Roma and the rest of society.
Biesewinkel gives an example of how deep antiziganism in Germany is by quoting a
young woman who told her: "Of course you can come and see how I'm doing in my
internship, but please don't tell them I'm a Romani. That would be the end of me
working with money there."
In order to be seen as a normal human being and to avoid discrimination, many
Romanis and Sinti will simply conceal the fact that they are members of that
minority group. This, says End, only strengthens stereotypes, because public
opinion is formed without seeing success stories of well-established Sinti and
Roma.
Racist slogans
Rom offers advice to EU citizens who have come to Germany from countries like
Romania or Bulgaria, and also former migrant workers and civil war refugees from
the former Yugoslavia.
But the club also helps those Sinti and
Roma who have lived in Germany as Germans for generations and who still feel
they're subject to discrimination. Sinti and Roma are officially acknowledged as
a minority group and are therefore legally protected by the state, but this does
little to shield them from discrimination.
In a representative poll, three out of four Sinti and Roma stated they were
subject to hostility on various occasions, either at work, in their
neighborhood, in restaurants or in other places.
The German government's anti-discrimination agency admits that "racist
slogans against Sinti and Roma are still common in Germany." Jugendschutz.net,
an initiative lobbying for the protection of children's rights online, has
analyzed antiziganism on the internet and found that often, platforms like
Facebook and YouTube are used to spread racist rants and murder threats.
German rightwing extremists actively agitate against Romanis online. Thomas
Hammarberg, the Council of Europe's Human Rights Commissioner, says he is
particularly worried about a neo-Nazi forum where members openly call for a
"special treatment" for Romanis. This term was used by the Nazis to conceal
their real intention of murdering minorities.
Forgotten holocaust
Nazi Germany paved the way for the
systematic persecution of the Romani early on: "Gypsies," like Jews, were
defined as being "of foreign race." In 1936, a "decree to fight the Gypsy
plague" was issued, and more and more cities adopted a policy of interning
entire families in "gypsy camps." The ‘Research Unit for Racial Hygiene' was
commissioned to compile comprehensive data about all Sinti and Roma in the
German Reich, with one goal: "the final solution of the Gypsy question."
On December 16, 1942, SS leader Heinrich Himmler issued the so-called
"Auschwitz Decree," ordering the transportation of European Sinti and Roma to
the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp.
Hundreds of thousands of Sinti and Roma were killed during Nazi rule in
Europe. They died in gas chambers; or they were shot dead, killed through forced
labor, miserable living conditions or medical experiments.
"This is a holocaust that has been forgotten," said Zoni Weisz,
representative of Dutch Sinti and Romani, in a speech delivered in January 2011
in the German parliament, the Bundestag, on the national Remembrance Day for the
victims of Nazi rule. Weisz himself managed to escape transportation to
Auschwitz, but he lost his entire family.
Persecution after 1945
In 1980, German Sinti went on hunger strike in former concentration camp
Dachau
After 1945, the survivors and families of
those killed spent years vainly calling for the recognition of their
persecution. German Sinti were liable to compensation in theory, says End, but
many experienced a second persecution in post-war Germany.
German law assumed that until the issuance of the ‘Auschwitz Decree',
persecution was not based on racist grounds. In some cases, former Nazi
officials – who had worked in the ‘unit for the gypsy question' – became
reviewers of their own acts of injustice.
They would then state that they had imprisoned somebody for their "antisocial
and criminal attitude." And so the victims didn't receive compensation. In fact,
they had to watch as the Nazi perpetrators continued to decide their fate. "A
fair amount of German Sinti have reported that their medical check-up was
carried out by their former tormentors," says End.
In 1980, Romani Rose was at the forefront of a group of German Sinti who went
on hunger strike on the premises of former concentration camp Dachau, calling
for official recognition of the genocide and for an end to the practice of using
Nazi ‘gypsy race' files by German police and other public institutions.
It was not until March 1982 that then-Chancellor Helmut Schmidt officially
recognised the racially motivated genocide of Sinti and Roma – too late for many
survivors who had died in the meantime. The Central Council of German Sinti and
Roma was founded just weeks before, and has since been fighting against
antiziganism under the leadership of Romani Rose.
Dangerous polemics against a minority
In
recent years, Romanis have largely appeared in the German media as so-called
‘tolerated' refugees from Kosovo, and immigrants from other EU member
states.
Since 1945, no reliable data has been compiled in Germany about the number of
Romani people living in the country, and yet, over and over again, there are
reports of ‘thousands of Romanis' having moved to or moving to Germany.
Biesewinkel is appalled at the xenophobic propaganda. "We are talking about
people and not about a faceless mob flocking here from Eastern Europe or the
Balkans, crushing us and dumping all their rubbish here," she said.
End feels reminded of the situation in the early 1990s in the eastern German
town of Rostock, when after weeks of debate and continuous reporting in the
media, the town saw riots and brutal arson attacks on an asylum seekers'
home.
A 16-year-old student, part of a group that had thrown petrol bombs into the
house, said during police questioning, "I wouldn't have cared if gypsies got
burnt alive. Vietnamese would have been different, but Sinti and Roma? – Who
cares?"
Her statement shocked literature expert Bogdal so much that he began
researching antiziganism in literature.
Police and the minority
In 1983, a demonstration was held outside the federal police
headquarters
Police reports play a major role in forming public opinion. In theory, German
police are not allowed to point out in their press releases that a certain
suspect or criminal belongs to a minority group.
But when End analyzed publicly available police reports, he found that in
reality this rule is often ignored. In December 2011, state prosecuters in
Stuttgart and the Ludwigsburg police wrote about the suspects in a case of
serial pickpocketing: "The Romani families belong to the ‘Kalderashi' group…
According to experts, the ‘Kalderashi' are regularly involved in thefts in times
of economic crises."
The report continued, "Family members regard carrying out acts of theft of
any kind as normal work that should even receive some form of recognition."
According to End, this is a particularly striking example of structural
discrimination. He has found that German police use code words to describe Sinti
and Roma.
"In the beginning, they used the term ‘traveller,' which became ‘mobile
ethnic minority.' Then they used ‘frequently changing place of residence,' or
they talk about ‘southeastern Europeans belonging to a minority group.' "
As early as 1983, the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma protested
against ethnic stigmatization outside the federal police headquarters (BKA), but
the problem hasn't been solved.
When a policewoman was killed in Heilbronn
in 2007, "Sinti and Roma were being publicly stigmatized as potential culprits
(‘from the Sinti-Roma milieu') by police and prosecution in a very general
manner and without the slightest piece of evidence," criticized Herbert Heuss
from the Central Council.
Investigation has since proven that the murder was carried out by members of
the rightwing extremist group the NSU. Even the slightest case of insinuation,
says Heuss, will immediately raise old stereotypes.
And yet, antiziganism is much less widespread in Germany than in many other
European countries, says Heuss. Private initiatives give him some additional
hope. In Berlin district of Neukölln, for instance, 300 people demonstrated
against antiziganism and racism in early March after a rightwing party had used
media reports about EU immigrants to agitate against Romanis. The slogans on
their protest banners read 'Welcome to Neukölln!' and 'Everybody deserves to be
respected.'
Author: Andrea Grunau / nh
Editor: Ben Knight
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