The past as a teacher for the present? Discursive connections between Nazi persecution of Roma and discrimination in the present

Abstract

This article unpacks how Roma people in Germany discuss Nazi persecution by bringing the concept of mnemonic role attributions (Williams) into conversation with testimonial injustice (Fricker) and postmemory (Hirsch). We analyse how Roma people invoke roles of perpetrator, victim and hero in narrations of collective memory in ways that forward political aims today. By highlighting not only Nazi persecution but also continuations of discrimination until today, some interviewees suggested that Germany’s historical responsibility should result in state support for them as victims today, as it has for Jewish people. Drawing on the ideas of ideal victims (Christie) and victim hierarchies (Jankowitz) we demonstrate that ongoing racialised stereotypes discursively undermine the blamelessness of Roma victimhood and create a hierarchy in which Roma suffering is not as deserving as Jewish suffering, weakening their political claims to protection and support. We draw on life history and thematic interview data of 53 Roma people in Germany, collected in a participatory action research approach with a Roma partner organisation.

Keywords

discrimination epistemic injustice memory mnemonic role attribute postmemory Roma victim hierarchies

Introduction

In the 1970s – now around half a century ago – Roma and Sinti activists in Germany built a civil rights movement that was founded on demands for recognition of their minority groups’ victimhood from Nazi persecution in the 1930s and 1940s. While Nazi extermination of Jews in the Shoah has become almost universally recognised and functions as the core of German collective memory as well as one of the anchor points of global, cosmopolitan memory (Levy and Sznaider, 2002), the memory of discrimination, violence and ultimately genocide against Roma and Sinti is less extensive. Moreover, racialised discrimination against Roma and Sinti people continued after 1945 and – although to a lesser degree – is still prevalent today. As such, in the civil rights movement then and now, Roma and Sinti activists sought to connect memory of Nazi persecution as an atrocious event in the past and an important historical moment to the continuing detrimental legacy of racialised stereotyping and legitimations for violence against Roma and Sinti living in Germany today.

Roma and Sinti activism for acknowledgement as equal victims of the Third Reich was therefore always also about recognition of their rights in the present moment, particularly as they continued (and continue) to face significant discrimination. In this article, we seek to investigate the extent to which reference to Nazi persecution is still a discursive strategy for Roma living in Germany today when discussing their life histories, as well as experiences of discrimination. As such, we pose the question: What significance does Nazi persecution hold for Roma living in Germany today and how is it discursively included in narrations of their life and experiences?

The article focuses on the significance and discursive means of inclusion of Nazi persecution in the context of Roma people talking about discrimination and resilience. The data stem from 105 life histories and thematic interviews conducted with 53 Roma people in North-Rhine Westphalia, Germany, collected using a participatory action research approach with a network of partner organisations advocating for the rights of Roma from Southeast Europe. We draw on the idea of mnemonic role attributions as categorisations of actors, their roles, their culpability and their suffering as they are remembered regarding a certain period of time (Williams, 2019, see also 2022) and connect it to established work on postmemory (Hirsch, 2008) to understand how Roma people negotiate their political claims through memory of the past. By doing so, we demonstrate both the relational nature of memory and postmemory and the importance of considering the contextual and contemporary politics in which the subsequent generations of the victims are embedded, in particular when they continue to be marginalised communities after the violent event has passed. In particular, we draw on ideas of testimonial injustice (Fricker, 2007) to highlight how Roma struggle to carve out space for their narratives and face different types of victim hierarchies. Thus, mnemonic role attributions of Roma victimhood and heroism contrasted with Nazi perpetrators are central to arguments made by Roma for increased state support and protection of Roma today. Our analysis highlights the significance of connecting past violence with present instances of discrimination, as we show how these role attributions are discursively connected to the present, in order to strengthen political claims for the urgency to protect and support Roma and juxtapose the purported lack of support with other victim groups. At the same time, this occurs in a context in which Roma face ongoing discrimination which also impacts their ability to be taken seriously with their claims based on the past, not least when their ancestors are constructed as blameworthy for their own suffering.

To pursue these points this article first discusses the power of attributing roles in the memory of violence and their use in hierarchisation of suffering before briefly providing an overview of Nazi persecution of Roma as well as a trajectory of their ongoing discrimination in Europe. After discussing our qualitative data collection and analysis methods in the context of a participant action research (PAR) design, we outline three mnemonic role attributions regarding Nazi persecution of Roma people and discuss how this feeds in to victim hierarchies and ongoing discrimination against Roma people today.

Remembering roles in post-violence societies

After mass violence, societies have to come to terms with their difficult pasts through collective memory. This collective memory becomes relevant for social and political action through the collective narratives that are created and what these mean for understandings of the current political landscape (Bernath, 2023; Mannergren et al., 2024; Manning, 2017; Wertsch and Billingsley, 2011). Collective memory thus goes beyond individuals’ recollections of the past to create a collectively significant narrative about what happened in the past and what it should then mean for the present. As such, collective memory is the product of complex social constructions (Halbwachs, 1992) with some elements of the past being foregrounded in narration while much is left out (Roudometof, 2002: 7). This memory of the violent past can be instrumentalised in (re-)defining political and group identities (Björkdahl and Mannergren Selimovic, 2016) and can be politically influential by affording legitimacy to some political actors over others in the present (Nyirubugara, 2013: 20). As such, there are always political struggles surrounding how the past should be remembered and political actors seek to control these narratives in order to gain political advantages in the present (Barahona de Brito et al., 2001; McDowell and Braniff, 2014; Wertsch and Billingsley, 2011). Within collective memory, it is important to consider whose stories and memories are audible, attending to silences and marginalisations just as much as to dominant or even hegemonic memories (Eastmond and Selimovic, 2012; Mannergren Selimovic, 2020; Winter, 2018), as these reveal much about power structures in the present.

Furthermore, memory is not static and can shift and change over time. This is of particular relevance over the course of decades and how memory can be passed on from one generation to another. Here, Marianne Hirsch’s (2008) concept of postmemory is particularly instructive. Postmemory can be understood as the intergenerational transmission of traumatic experiences to a generation after those who actually experienced the collective trauma. As such, stories, recollections and pictures constitute a memory of something not personally experienced, but one that can nonetheless deeply affect the next generation (Hirsch, 2008). Postmemory thus risks displacing the younger generations’ own experiences through the inherited trauma of their forebears (Hirsch, 2008), although it is unclear how this shifts with the third, fourth and fifth generations (Oksman, 2020). In this context, the relationship between testimony and trauma from past violence is complex, not least through the absences of many witnesses from an event like the Holocaust (Felman and Laub, 1992), compounded in postmemory. It is particularly within family spaces where this intergenerational inheritance of trauma can be found and ‘the extension and reproduction of the familial redistributes trauma and its negativity without necessarily weakening or ameliorating them’ (Thakkar, 2020: 138).

Within narratives of the violent past, Timothy Williams (2019, 2022, 2025) has argued that in seeking to understand how the past is remembered, what roles are attributed within this collective memory is key. Specifically, we draw on the concept of mnemonic role attributions as categorisations of actors, their roles, their culpability and their suffering as they are remembered regarding a certain period of time (Williams, 2019, 2022) This suggests that by attending to how the past’s protagonists, antagonists, saviours, etc. are constructed, we gain an understanding both of how the past is supposed to be viewed and morally interpreted and what this should mean for present day political actors and action. This is of particular relevance when considering postmemory where the traumatic memories of previous generations are inherited and continue to affect communities well beyond the lives of those involved in the violence imbuing the past with significance for today. Who is remembered as a perpetrator suggests culpability and blame wherefore association with them can delegitimise political actors today. By contrast, recognition of victimhood suggests innocence and the recognition of suffering, which can afford a moral superiority in the present. Political actors remembered as bystanders will frequently be associated with passivity and complicity (through their inaction), while other political actors can be remembered as heroes for overcoming security threats, ending violence, or overcoming evil, affording them considerable legitimacy for their past valour which may transfer into legitimacy in the present. Given the contested nature of collective memory, of course, these mnemonic role attributions are also politicised and conflicts frequently arise around how these roles are attributed in memory of the past.

In this article, we place a particular focus on victimhood. Victimhood is less about actual experienced harms and more about its recognition as a role or identity (Jacoby, 2015). The idea of postmemory is helpful in understanding the endurance of victim identities within communities beyond the generation that experienced the violence itself through tying the second and following generations into intergenerational transmissions of trauma. In this, narrations about victims often focus on their trauma, depoliticising and individualising collective experiences (Zolkos, 2013) and rendering victims passive and without agency (Druliolle and Brett, 2018: 7). Nonetheless, these attributions also allow victims to be seen as ‘blameless’ (McEvoy and McConnachie, 2012: 533) so that recognition as a victim can afford people moral legitimacy (Bonacker, 2013) and thus becomes a ‘desirable status’ (Basic, 2015: 26). As such, the role attribution of victim for past violence can have immense political utility today and afford legitimacy in the present.

Given the political gain the label can afford, there can be considerable competition between actors in who is afforded the attribution of the role. Here, victims try to portray themselves in particular ways attempting to position themselves as ‘ideal victims’, that is actors who ‘- when hit by crime–most readily are given the complete and legitimate status of being a victim’. Ideal victims are delineated by five factors: the victim’s vulnerability, the respectability of the project the victim was undertaking, the victim’s blamelessness for being in the victimising situation, perceptions of the perpetrator as ‘big and bad’, and the victim and perpetrator having no previous relationship (Christie, 1986; for empirical validation from psychology see Lewis et al., 2021). This notion of the ideal victim styles victimhood in a way that demonises the perpetrator and thereby prohibits acknowledgement of more complex experiences of violence (Baines, 2009; Bernath, 2016; Bouris, 2007; Jankowitz, 2018a; Jessee, 2017), and can lay the foundation for competitive claims around whose victimhood should be seen as more genuine, resulting in hierarchies of victimhood.

Criminologist Sarah Jankowitz (2018b) identifies four types of hierarchies that provide mechanisms for understanding differential acknowledgement of victimhood: moral hierarchies that adjudicate the innocence and blameworthiness of actors, elevating those who appear to be more ideal victims; hierarchies of attention that are informed by ‘the real or perceived focus on certain victims over others, often in the form of media or political attention, capacity or willingness to investigate and financial provisions’ (Jankowitz, 2018b: 227); pragmatic hierarchies that evaluate ‘the severity of victimization, particularly regarding the impact of conflict on individuals’ physical and psychological wellbeing’, to subsequently order victims according to their needs (Jankowitz, 2018b: 230); and intergroup hierarchies that prioritise and highlight suffering of victims from one’s own ingroup while portraying ethnic others as culpable and denying their suffering. These hierarchies are constructed and thus products of the social context in which they emerge, meaning that over time they may shift. Who is seen as more deserving of victimhood today may be trumped by another group in the future, or their claims can become more entrenched, marginalising other groups more. This is – as we will see below – particularly virulent when some groups are afforded extensive protections, while others’ victimhood may not even be recognised and harm against them continues.

Another useful way to critically think through varying acknowledgement of victimhood or legitimations of these hierarchies is Miranda Fricker’s (2007) concept of epistemic injustice. Of particular relevance to our research is her delineation of testimonial injustice which ‘occurs when prejudice causes a hearer to give a deflated level of credibility to a speaker’s words’ (Fricker, 2007: 1). She combines this with identity prejudice to explain how hearers may deflate the relevance afforded to somebody’s testimony solely due to their identity (Fricker, 2007: 4).

This article’s focus on Roma testimonies of Nazi persecution focuses on how they claim and position themselves regarding different mnemonic role attributions, which is distancing themselves from subject positions such as perpetrator and claiming victimhood. Here, we must understand the attribution of mnemonic roles as a strategy to engage with testimonial injustice as the hearer’s prejudiced view of Roma people may help to explain the difficulties Roma people face in getting their historic victimhood acknowledged in Germany and more broadly in Europe. Moreover, when Roma people narrate their historical experiences, they are speaking in the context of extant victim hierarchies that are based in dynamics of postmemory, which is victim hierarchies of the second and following generations’ inherited trauma. As such, the explicit construction of ideal victimhood in Roma testimonies may be precisely due to the epistemic injustice they face and the concomitant difficulties associated with the acknowledgement of their victim status.

Roma persecution in history and today

In collective memory of the Third Reich, Jewish victimhood is central, but the German racist state ideology also sought the extermination of other groups such as Sinti and Roma. This tied into centuries of exclusion and violence against Roma and Sinti throughout Europe in which many cities prohibited Roma and Sinti people from settling, outlawing them and forcing them into nomadic lifestyles to avoid discrimination and violence, thus undermining many opportunities for educational or vocational development within the group and compounding their exclusion (Crowe and Kolsti, 1991; Loveland and Popescu, 2016; Milton, 2000). As fascist intellectuals gained ground in German academic discourse at the beginning of the 20th century, racist constructions of Roma and Sinti people became pseudo-intellectualised and legitimised, denigrating them as a group. As the Nazis took power in Germany and then ultimately in much of Europe, many Roma and Sinti were interred in concentration camps and systematically murdered, with brutal scientific experiments being performed on some (Crowe and Kolsti, 1991; Lipphardt and Surdu, 2021; Reinhartz, 1999). This affected not only Roma and Sinti in Germany but throughout Europe.

After the end of Nazi persecution, racialised discrimination and stereotyping of Sinti and Roma people continued, also undercutting any attempt to remember the Nazi persecution as illegitimate. As such, Roma individuals and communities have continued to experience discriminatory practices and prejudiced sentiments throughout Europe (Agarin, 2014; End, 2018; Farkas, 2014). For example, there is pervasive discrimination and violence against Roma people in Southeast Europe with their exclusion from state-funded systems of healthcare, social security and education, stereotype-based discrimination in housing and labour markets, and the constant threat of violent assault. In Germany, there is a growing awareness of the specificities of discrimination that Sinti and Roma face and there have been some notable political improvements, such as the establishment of the Federal Anti-Discrimination Agency (Antidiskriminierungsstelle des Bundes), the appointment of a Federal Commissioner on Anti-Roma Discrimination (Beauftragten der Bundesregierung gegen Antiziganismus und für das Leben der Sinti und Roma in Deutschland) and the creation of federal and some state-level reporting offices for anti-Roma discrimination. Nonetheless, there are reports of ongoing discrimination in almost all parts of life in Germany and throughout Europe (Kende et al., 2021; Tileagă, 2006), most prominently in education and interactions with German state institutions in the context of migration or social security, but also present with regard to housing, work, healthcare and everyday encounters (Campbell and Williams, 2024; Giroud et al., 2021; Loveland and Popescu, 2016; Randjelović et al., 2022; Strauß, 2023). In fact, many Sinti and Roma organisations point to a rise in hatred and discrimination, a fact that is reiterated by the findings of the reporting offices for anti-Roma discrimination who noted a marked increase in ‘extreme’ cases of physical violence and discrimination. This trend is corroborated by the increased number of documented cases of discrimination against Roma and Sinti in Germany, which rose from 621 in 2022 to 1233 in 2023, with many cases likely remaining unreported (Melde- und Informationsstelle Antiziganismus, 2024). Thus, discrimination continues to be a common plight for Roma living in Germany in the present moment.

While experiences of discrimination faced by Sinti and Roma in Germany are similar, these communities themselves display significant in-fighting relating at least in part to intergroup hierarchies. Thus, we consistently employ the term Roma communities (plural) to signal the multiplicity within these ethnic and identity groups. The most historic and arguably most influential civil society organisation dedicated to combating discrimination of Sinti and Roma by emphasising their historic suffering in Germany is the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma. These lay claim to a long-standing residency in Germany, emphasising their autochthonous status in connection with their continuous discrimination including the persecution through the Nazi regime, to argue for their active inclusion in the German state and its responsibility to combat their discrimination (Gress, 2018; Pflock, 2018). In contrast, the participants in this research study emphasise their allochthonous status in Germany, which impacts the discrimination they face in Germany, which often relates also to their visa and citizenship status (see also Liebscher, 2020). They thus see themselves excluded from the efforts of German Sinti and Roma and their unique forms of discrimination overlooked. Arguments of historic responsibility due to Nazi crimes persecuted against Roma throughout Europe thus has a subtly different nature when employed by our interviewees. Their line of argumentation seeks to emphasise that despite their allochthonous nature, they can still lay claim to support and protection from Germans and the German state, as Roma and Sinti in Eastern Europe also experienced varying forms of Nazi persecution. It therefore serves a similar line of argumentation used by autochthonous Sinti and Roma, but additionally highlights the necessary inclusion of allochthonous Roma in the narrative of the German state’s historic responsibility to protect Roma.

Methods: PAR with Roma communities

This article draws on data from a PAR project with Roma communities from Germany’s largest federal state: North-Rhine Westphalia (see Campbell and Williams, 2024). PAR seeks to foreground people and communities being researched in the research process (see Kindon et al., 2007; MacDonald, 2012: 38) in an effort to reduce epistemic marginalisation and centre research on the experiences of those people affected by the research itself. We thus collaborated with the Roma organisation Landesrat der Roma NRW, in devising the project, implementing it and analysing the data. The project was thus a project with and for Roma people rather than just one about Roma people.

In the project, we trained 10 members of the Roma community to conduct life history and semi-structured interviews. First, they conducted life history interviews in Romani or German with 55 Roma people from a diverse background (gender, age, religion, skin colour, country of origin), selected by our community interviewers. Our sample was balanced in terms of gender (30 men; 25 women), age (ranging from 18 to 70 years, with an average age of 37) and religion (35 Muslim, 15 Christian and 5 atheist or agnostic) as well as countries of birth: Germany (19), North Macedonia (13), Bulgaria (9), Romania (3), Serbia (6) and Kosovo (5). Our participants’ migration histories can be categorised as belonging to three distinct migration trends from Southeast Europe to Germany: first, in the 1960s and 1970s, as children of refugees (13) or as children of so-called guest workers (Gastarbeiter), a migration policy to increase the labour force (3); second, in the 1990s, as many Roma fled the violence caused by the break-up of Yugoslavia (19); and, third, in the past two decades, in the context of increased labour migration made possible due to EU freedom of movement and visa agreements between the EU and some south-eastern European countries (Jonuz 2009; Neuburger and Hinrichs 2022) (20).

In the first interviews, participants were encouraged to narrate their own lives as it felt meaningful to them (Lanford et al., 2019: 460) and interviewers gave only a few prompts to allow the interviewee to take the lead in how their life histories unfolded, resulting in a multitude of different life stories. Having conducted initial analysis of these life histories, we developed an interview guide with our partners for the follow-up, semi-structured interviews that deepened topics that came up in interviews during the first round (and ensured all interviewees were then able to speak on these topics) as well as integrating relevant questions from our own expertise and the secondary literature, particularly regarding issues which were not broached that could be assumed to be silences in the life histories that may be worthwhile speaking about in the thematic interviews. The project’s focus was on discrimination and resilience experiences of Roma from Southeast Europe living in Germany, and this article draws on only a small fraction of the collected data, with no express questions on the topic being posed in the follow-up interview except two indirect questions relating to whether parents or grandparents had experienced similar discrimination in their lives as Roma than the interviewees. The data used in this article all emerged unprompted, in both interviews in the context of talking about previous generations. Both interviews were conducted between July and November 2023 and the interviews were then transcribed and translated (if necessary).¹ The authors of this article then employed qualitative content analysis (Kuckartz, 2023) to analyse the data, then fed our findings back to the community interviewers to integrate their insights and perspectives into the analysis process as much as possible.

Remembering the Nazi genocide

We now draw on this empirical data to discuss how in interviews Roma people discuss the past Nazi persecution and its meaning today. We establish three main ways in which the past is remembered. First, simply with Nazis as the perpetrators and Roma people as victims, appealing to the suffering they experienced and continuations of it since 1945, and considering that this should result in support by the German state due to its historical responsibility; second, we discuss references to how Roma people are constructed as blameworthy in their own persecution drawing on racialised stereotypes that continue to have currency in mainstream German society today; third, some Roma remember their ancestors as heroes for fighting against the Nazis, also resulting in political claims to support and participation, albeit with different connotations for political agency. It is worthwhile mentioning that the first and third mnemonic role attributions stem from the Roma community themselves, while the second – Roma as blameworthy – is a mnemonic role attribution that is discussed as prevalent in the majority population. However, given our data, this is obviously not empirically founded in actual majority population perspectives, but instead is a mnemonic role attribution that Roma people perceive to be held by others. These are importantly related to each other in that the Roma position themselves towards the perceived mnemonic role attribution of blameworthiness and it also shapes their own mnemonic role attributions and how they argue their victimhood and heroism.

Mnemonic role attribution 1: Roma victims, Nazi perpetrators

The first mnemonic role attribution discussed in the interviews vocalises most interviewees’ perception of the violent Nazi past by clearly attributing Roma people as victims and Nazis as perpetrators. When Roma people narrated their family histories these frequently included stories of Nazi persecution, rendering these historical events their own personal tales of suffering. While one interviewee described Nazi crimes and the persecution of their ancestors with significant detail in the life history interview, others only briefly alluded to their ancestors’ persecution but avoided detailed depictions of their suffering, although these narrations were highlighted for the central role that Nazi persecution plays for Roma individuals in explanations of their family histories. In particular, interviewees highlighted the long-term impact of these Nazi crimes on the family’s subsequent trajectory, such as family migration histories, name changes and so on. These narrations have a twofold impact: First, the injustice and suffering experienced by Roma at the hands of Nazis becomes personal, due to the intimate familial connection and personal stories of persecution that are told. Second, interviewees show that Nazi persecution of Roma people has an enduring impact on the families of those who survived and their descendants. Interviewees’ narratives thus extend victimhood from those who physically experienced Nazi persecution to their descendants who are alive to tell their stories in the present.

This mnemonic role attribution is diminished to a certain degree in public discourse. Some interviewees suggest that Roma (and Sinti) are only treated tangentially as victims of Nazi persecution, creating an emotional contention over victimhood claims and establishing a hierarchy of attention. Some interviewees express general grievances towards German society and therefore perceive a lack of attention to Roma victimhood in schools, educational sites and public discussions of Nazi crimes (see also Jonuz and Weiß, 2020: 67–69; Messerschmidt, 2016; Schreiber, 2016; Wenzel, 2018). A 46-year-old Roma man born in Germany remembers his school time vividly when recounting:

‘What I also noticed is that in history, we spent what felt like five years on this [Nazi] period. And we really talked a lot about Jews, a whole lot about Jews, right? In this history book, I think there were 100 pages just about Jews. And there was one section that mentioned that Roma and Sinti were also there and were murdered in the same way, where I also think, why? Why is there only one sentence?’²

This quote implies – and as was stated explicitly in other interviews – a sense that the marginalised treatment of Roma victimhood from Nazi persecution in German educational and public settings reflects more generally their continued marginalisation in German society. Not only the Nazi crimes themselves but the lack of attention to Nazi-era Roma suffering is suggestive of the ongoing discrimination and marginalisation of Roma in present-day German society. This ties into the ‘second persecution’ (Zweite Verfolgung) as Roma and Sinti activists have labelled the German state’s continued discrimination of Roma and Sinti victims after 1945 by not acknowledging the crimes committed against them and refusing reparations (Lagrene, 2018; Opfermann, 2021). This policy only changed due to pressure by the Roma Civil Rights Movement in the 1970s (Engbring-Romang, 2018; Gress, 2018). Interestingly, the terminology of ‘second persecution’ is not used by the interviewees themselves, most likely because their family histories are in South(Eastern) Europe and therefore were not eligible for potential reparations, even if the fundamental sentiment of non-recognition of Roma victimhood, regardless of where the Nazi crimes were persecuted, is similarly seen as a continuation into the present of Roma marginalisation and discrimination.

While the Civil Rights Movement of the 1970s was based around autochthonous Sinti and Roma in Germany, Roma activists who have migrated to Germany since similarly use Roma victimhood of Nazi persecution as a political tool in Germany. In these instances, they specifically make claims towards the German state due to its historic responsibility to them as victims of Nazi persecution. Mostly, their political aim is to improve the rights of immigrant Roma in terms of asylum, residential status and citizenship in Germany. Thus, interviewees emphasise the fact that not only German Sinti and Roma were murdered and persecuted by the Nazis, but also Roma in Eastern Europe, which was territorially integrated into the Third Reich. This reference to historical facts marks an attempt to actively include Roma of Eastern Europe into the now acknowledged victimhood status of German Sinti and Roma, pointing to Germany’s historical responsibility towards them. In referring to Germany’s historical responsibility, these interviewees are implicitly or explicitly alluding to Germany’s strong commitment to combatting antisemitism and ensuring Jewish security that is seen as a core to today’s German national identity (German Staatsräson). Given these appeals to German historical responsibility that should serve to protect them today, too, the argument follows that Roma fleeing Eastern Europe due to life-threatening discrimination and violence, should be able to find refuge and receive the right to remain in Germany, although interviewed activists lament that this is not yet the case. Discussing large demonstrations in the early 2000s (so-called Bleiberechtsdemonstrationen: right-to-stay demonstrations) that sought to end the deportation of Roma who had fled the wars surrounding Yugoslavia’s disintegration in the 1990s, a 33-year-old Roma woman born in Germany comments: ‘For me it was also about the historic responsibility in the comparison. What would have happened if a group of Israelis were demonstrating for a right to remain in Germany, because they are being repressed there in their countries?’³ This quote highlights both the way in which the victimhood category plays a central role in activist claims to their rights in Germany, and how the lack of attention and acknowledgement of this victimhood is deemed to reflect a continued marginalisation of Roma compared with Jewish people, and more specifically particularly Roma from Eastern Europe. This instance reveals how these claims are also made directly to the current German state, because it is responsible for German migration policy. By drawing on the Nazi persecution of Roma throughout Europe, the interviewee is therefore calling on the German state to fulfil its historic responsibility and protect Roma living in other countries by providing them the right to remain in Germany.

As Christie outlines, ideal victims also rely on an inarguably evil perpetrator. The perpetrator who is the counterpart to Roma victimhood is clearly the Nazi criminal. Interestingly, this perpetrator figure is discursively connected by some interviewees to more recent or current experiences of discrimination. This opens up the space for parallels and continuities to emerge between Nazi crimes and present marginalisation and violence, wherein interviewees depict themselves as victims and the majority population in Germany as perpetrators of microaggressions, discursive and structural violence, and in some cases of physical violence in the form of attacks on asylum homes or being beaten up. Interviewees refer to these continuities and related fears of persecution to explain that they conceal their Roma identities in public to protect themselves (see Campbell and Williams, 2025). An 18-year-old Roma woman explains:

‘So, when I was younger, if someone asked me, I would say, yes, I’m Roma. I just said it. But then, as I got older and experienced discrimination, learned the derogatory terms, gained more knowledge about the Nazi era – as a child, you don’t just have that! And when I saw how much my mother was also dealing with it. Yes, it changed for me. And then I didn’t always tell everyone, hey, I’m Roma’.⁴

This interviewee’s gradual understanding of the discriminatory experiences she saw her mother go through and the historical persecution of Roma directly impacted her decision to conceal her Roma identity. The majority population is therefore understood as a possible and actual perpetrator from whom she must protect herself as a potential victim.

The connections between National Socialist and present-day Germany are made explicit when discussing the continued use of anti-Roma discursive violence and fears surrounding right-wing extremists both politically and in terms of physical violence and threats. Thus, interviewees discuss the continued prevalence of racist language in German society to draw direct connections between Nazi and current discourses and use the established parallels to both explain why it must be seen as a form of discrimination and their strong negative emotional reaction to its usage. These connections between past and present perpetrators against Roma victims in Germany are made explicit when interviewees discuss experiences of physical violence or intimidation, as those initiating violence are almost always labelled ‘Nazis’. Several interviewees, for example, recount experiences of threats of physical violence or actual attacks on asylum homes in the 1990s, with those issuing the threats or attacking them always being called ‘Nazis’. Similarly, political fears surrounding the rise of right-wing politics and parties are explained through connections to National Socialism. A 40-year-old Roma man born in North Macedonia explains how these perceived continuities impact his sense of belonging and fear in Germany:

‘So my home is where I feel at home and that is currently Germany. Ah, but I would like to add something. If the AfD comes to power, I don’t know if I’ll have to change my perspective. [. . .] So it could be that we then say together, we’ll pack our bags and go somewhere. [. . .] Ultimately, history repeats itself.’⁵

The quote shows how the rise of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), a right-wing political party in Germany known for its exclusionary, anti-migrant and racist sentiments, is seen as the start of National Socialist persecution of Roma repeating in Germany. Evidently, not only the category of Roma victimhood is extended from the past to the present, but also that of their Nazi perpetrators, legitimising and explaining their fears as well as their continued need of protection. On one hand, this historic responsibility is seen as laying with the German state in its role as protector of Roma, regardless of whether they are autochthonous or allochthonous. On the other hand, this is addressed more generally at the German public, which is seen as harbouring and upholding racist sentiments, discriminating and directing violence against Roma, and not acknowledging Roma victimhood of Nazi persecution.

Mnemonic role attribution 2: Roma as blameworthy

Next, we turn to a mnemonic role attribution that suggests that Roma were in some way blameworthy for their own persecution by the Nazis, an attribution that many interviewers described as common and experienced as emotionally detrimental. Some interviewees criticised that non-Roma Germans have a reductive perspective of Roma people, only recognising Roma identities through their attribution as victims in history textbooks, even though they are there mentioned only tangentially, while at the same time lamenting the frequent recurrence to stereotypes. Interviewees describe this process as taking place in the media, educational settings and products and everyday discourses. A 46-year-old Roma man explains how he believes Roma are perceived and depicted:

‘Either victims or perpetrators. So, victims of National Socialism, perpetrators as thieves, caravans, places not being cleaned up. Just read today in some Zurich newspaper: Traveling Roma again left a caravan park area littered. So that is always, somehow, either victim or perpetrator’.⁶

This quote demonstrates how reducing Roma to their victimhood excludes knowledge about Romani cultures and histories, so that any depiction beyond this can only refer to the otherwise also broadly perceived negative stereotypes, although these two categorisations are not discursively linked among non-Roma Germans. In this interviewee’s descriptions of the ways in which Roma are seen as perpetrators, he lists multiple negative stereotypes about Roma, including that they are ‘thieves’, live in caravans, and lead to ‘places not being cleaned up’. Importantly, these are all characteristics that were deemed innate traits of Roma and Sinti by Nazi pseudo-scientific race sciences espoused around the infamous scholar Robert Ritter. Indeed, the Nazi Reseach Centre for Racial Hygiene (Rassenhygienische Forschungsstelle) determined that Roma and Sinti were biologically predetermined to be ‘a-social’, a term which referred to a nomadic lifestyle, lack of integration into the labour market, and criminality (Sparing, 2014). This categorisation as a-social legitimated the persecution of Roma and Sinti as criminal-preventive measures (Sparing, 2014). The continued representation of Roma according to these racialised stereotypes therefore makes them non-ideal victims, according to Christie’s description of the ideal victim. As such, these representations denigrate and homogenise Roma as an ethnic group and reiterate racialised knowledge, thus disavowing their victimhood category in relation to their persecution by the Nazis.

Continuities in racialised knowledge systems are not only carried in repetitions of stereotypes in media representations and in everyday discourses, but at times even in history textbooks used in German schools, augmented by the brevity of any discussion of Roma at all. A 40-year-old Roma man born in North Macedonia thus remembers being hit by this realisation as a teenager after reading a multitude of history books about the topic to learn about his own identity as a Roma: ‘The assertion [is] that Sinti and Roma were persecuted in the name of criminal prevention, was also a form of mainstream [thought] as it sadly still is.’⁷ Evidently, the uncritical reproduction of racialised legitimations for Roma persecution by the Nazis in history books repeats, spreads and provides legitimacy for ongoing pseudo-scientific knowledge and thus also trivialises genocidal crimes and implies that Roma were somehow blameworthy for their own suffering (and possibly deserving of further persecution).

Similarly, some interviewees experienced the active disavowal of Roma being victims of Nazi persecution, which caused a sense of continued discrimination and personal emotional distress. In one instance, a 46-year-old Roma man recounts confronting the discrimination his son experienced in a sports club, including the use of the Z-word⁸ against him. In a meeting convened to discuss the allegation of anti-Roma discrimination against his son, he was himself confronted with discriminatory statements, the worst of which to him were genocide denialist claims.⁹ These claims were not contested by the others at the meeting, resulting in the situation originally designed to resolve an act of discrimination exacerbating marginalisation and discrimination, demonstrating how racialised knowledge systems continue to exist as speakable ideas, highlighting for this interviewee how difficult he finds it to successfully confront anti-Roma discrimination. The denial of Roma people’s victimhood status, both through genocide denialist claims and related continuities in racialised knowledge and biological determinist belief systems, as well as the endurance of racialised stereotypes is understood by interviewees to contribute to the continued marginalisation and discrimination of Roma in Germany.

Mnemonic role attribution 3: Roma as Heroes

Third and finally, several interviewees called for a re-shaping of the image of Roma beyond the category of victims to highlight their agency and empowerment throughout history. For this, interviewees employed the mnemonic role attribution of Roma as heroes, claiming that Roma have always been more than just victims, as they have also always fought against their discrimination and more specifically were always involved in the fight against fascist regimes. The most common example in interviews was Roma involvement in the partisan movements in Eastern Europe against the Nazi regime. This is particularly relevant for our sample, as their family histories tie them to Eastern Europe, where Nazi crimes against Roma are frequently overlooked in German historical accounts of National Socialism. In this way, interviewees are able to reiterate their family’s inclusion in understandings of Nazi persecution of Roma, while expanding the mnemonic role attributions applied to Roma from solely victims to heroes, seeking to elicit more positive attitudes and call for celebration and honouring.

Just as the previous mnemonic role attributions regarding Nazi persecution are discursively tied into continuities from the past to the present, this is similarly suggested when speaking of Roma heroism. A 47-year-old Roma woman states:

‘That has been the case throughout history, even during the Second World War, with the partisans. We Roma weren’t always just victims, [. . .] I’m not therefore a "victim." We also fought, you know, and we supported and did things. But [. . .] it was never appreciated [. . .] we were never militant as a group, [. . .] we never demanded anything, never fought for anything, never asked for anything . . . using violence, right? [. . .] I always say, it’s a bit laughed at, but we should have a European right to stay. Then these problems we have, being forced into migration movements for centuries, over and over again, wouldn’t exist like they do’.¹⁰

This quote demonstrates that not only the category of victim is used for making political claims, but also the role attribution of heroism is employed to call for policy change. Similar to perceptions of a lack of attention of Roma victimhood, this Roma woman argues that their role as heroes was ‘never appreciated’ disempowering Roma both in the past and present. While victimhood is argued to provide Germany with a specific historical responsibility to protect Roma, inclusion into the narrative of heroes fighting against National Socialism is used to argue for the need to acknowledge the important role Roma communities and individuals played in establishing and protecting a democratic Europe. The quote concludes that such acknowledgement should come in the form of political rights, such as the right to stay in Europe and could contribute to mitigating continuations in Roma suffering through their forced migration from contexts ripe with discrimination and violence.

Discussion

Three main themes have become evident throughout the discussion of Roma memory of the Nazi genocide and in the mnemonic role attributions that we identified our interviewees employing. First, Roma people use mnemonic role attributions, especially ideas surrounding ideal victimhood and heroism, in discussing the past and its connection to the present for political purposes in the present. Second, our interviewees perceive that in much of German society Roma people continue to be racially essentialised and perceived in relation to anti-Roma stereotypes, which perpetuates racialised knowledge and establishes Roma as blameworthy for their own persecution by the Nazis in the past, and implicitly for their discrimination in the present. And, finally, the prevalence of claims that Roma victimhood has received too little attention in Germany, which is seen to reflect ongoing marginalisation of Roma communities, and is strategically employed to call for more German state support and protection of Roma.

Interviewees referred to Roma people as victims of Nazi persecution in the hope that their references this role as victims would connote ideas of being deserving of reparations and state support in the present. To this end, they highlighted the victimhood of Roma communities through relating historical facts of Nazi persecution and their personal family histories, at the same time demonstrating not only persecution in the Nazi past, but pointing to the long-term negative consequences this persecution has had on Roma communities in the present. For example, demonstrations in the early 2000s advocating for the right to remain were able to mobilise Roma communities and put pressure on the German state by insisting on that this right was rooted in history and that the implications of historic responsibility embedded them within their history as victims (see also Rostas et al., 2022). This shows the potential of insisting on the right to one’s own history and its recognition by the public, both for the mobilisation and political message of Roma civil society organisation. Notably, however, the demonstrations of the early 2000s were the only instance mentioned by our interviewees. Moreover, our data on Roma communities can help enrich debates on postmemory by pointing to how important, of course, the inherited trauma of the past can be for following generations, but that it also interacts with ongoing experiences. Contrary to Hirsch’s (2008) fear that postmemory may displace the personal experiences of following generations, we would argue that it is precisely an interaction between the inherited trauma of their forebears (postmemory) and the ongoing experience of discrimination that constitute the relevance of memory for the present. By arguing for the ongoing relevance of Nazi persecution in the current moment, the interviewees discursively established continuities in victimhood to argue for more state support to protect Roma. Some interviewees discursively established continuities in past and present discrimination and marginalisation of Roma by Nazis in order to highlight the severity of present anti-Roma discrimination and the urgency of state support in combatting it. Due to the legitimacy provided to the mnemonic role attribution of Roma as victims of Nazi persecution, claims of continued victimhood provide a strong political tool to argue for increased state support against current discrimination faced by Roma in Germany.

There is a tension here though, which can be uncovered by drawing on Christie’s framework of ideal victimhood. Interviewees highlighted the vulnerability of Roma in the face of Nazi violence, and the related image of the ‘big and bad’ Nazi perpetrator, although constantly also struggling both with the more dominant presence of Jewish victimhood and the ‘tainted’ nature of Roma victimhood when their blamelessness is questioned through continuations of stereotypes. Here, it is of relevance that the second mnemonic role attribution is perceived as being dominant in the majority population and thus shapes how Roma people feel the need to present more convincing arguments for their victimhood and appeal to ideal victimhood and their communities’ innocence. Many interviewees lamented that Roma are in some ways seen as blameworthy for their own victimhood under Nazism and their continued discrimination in the present, undermining their status as ideal victims and making it harder to secure political capital through historical references. This blameworthiness is ascribed to the negative racialised stereotypes attached to Roma, which for the Roma interviewees themselves demonstrates a continuation of racialised knowledge and discrimination from the Third Reich into the present.

What Jankowitz (2018a, 2018b) has described as a hierarchy of attention lies at the heart of political claims made by many interviewees in terms of protection and refuge, they argue they should rightfully receive from the German state as other groups do. Interviewees therefore frequently discuss the lack of attention the Nazi persecution of Roma has received in educational material, culture, media and everyday discourses, in contrast to the persecution of Jews by the Nazis in the Shoah and resulting support and protection that Jews receive today. Fricker’s (2007) discussion of testimonial injustice deepens this further, showing how our interviewees’ status as Roma individuals – and the prejudices they face for this identity that are connected to racialised tropes that also justified Nazi persecution – means that their narratives and claims are rendered less credible than others’. By laying claim to the victimhood category, interviewees can then relate and legitimately contrast their lack of protection and support by the German state to that provided to Jews. In seeking an equal recognition of victimhood, the Roma interviewees are not arguing for less support for Jews, but rather for equal political support of Roma people and communities in Germany. The need for this becomes evident in the previously outlined argument for continuities between the persecution of Roma by the Nazis and their current discrimination in Germany. Here, however, the idea of ideal victims – and the tainted nature of Roma victimhood who are in some instances seen as blameworthy or at least not blameless in their experienced persecution – intersects with and reinforces this victim hierarchy, explaining why Roma people’s appeals for more support due to Germany’s historical responsibility do not necessarily lead to fruition.

The mnemonic role attribution of Roma as heroes in the fight against Nazism and fascism more generally was also used as a political tool by some interviewees, albeit less prominently. While highlighting Roma victimhood in past and present constructs Roma as vulnerable and in need of support, the category of Roma heroism seeks a more agency-driven approach. Where this role attribution was used by interviewees, they sought to move beyond understandings of Roma as solely being victims to demonstrate the agency of Roma and emphasise the positive impact this has had in the past and thus could – if given the opportunity – also have in the present. This line of argumentation implies that groups who acted as heroes should be acknowledged as such through being given political support. This claim is elevated by suggesting that Roma are ideal heroes, never using violence to demand their rights but only for the common good, thereby indicating that they are a peaceful, democratic ethnic minority that has never posed a threat and adheres to European political principles. Inclusion in the category of heroes against National Socialism therefore functions as a call for acknowledgement of past Roma agency and for more support of present and future Roma empowerment, through the provision of political rights in Europe. These descriptions are in turn used to argue for a political shift towards empowerment, whereby Roma must be given more voice and agency within political processes to achieve positive improvements for Roma in Germany.

Conclusion

This article has shown that the way in which Roma people remember the Nazi persecution of Roma in the past – as analysed through mnemonic role attributions – provides Roma with migration histories with discursive tools in the present. These can thus argue for the urgency to combat anti-Roma discrimination and provide state support for Roma living in and fleeing to Germany. Seeking to portray Roma as ideal victims can be understood as a bid for legitimacy in seeking German state support for Roma, in particular when continuities are argued to exist between Nazi persecution and present discrimination of Roma, interlacing inherited trauma of postmemory with experienced trauma of ongoing discrimination. It is therefore particularly relevant to many interviewees to delegitimise racialised discourses prevalent in Germany that they perceive to depict Roma as criminal or deviant, and thus blameworthy for their own past and present persecution (tainting their victimhood); indeed, Roma seek to demonstrate that such racialised knowledge represents a continuity between Nazism and the present. The mnemonic role attribution of Roma as heroes is used to argue for a different type of state support that acknowledges Roma agency and the positive impact that empowerment can have for German society as a whole. These themes coalesce and legitimise the argument that the Nazi persecution of Roma is not adequately acknowledged in Germany, constituting part of the epistemic and testimonial injustice that they suffer in not being deemed credible. Despite this lack of recognition, interviewees highlighted that Roma people deserve equal protection and state support to Jews in the face of their suffering under Nazi Germany, both demonstrating the presence of a victim hierarchy and how it could be overcome.

Beyond its empirical contribution to a more nuanced understanding of Roma perspectives on the Holocaust and its intersection with discrimination today, this article highlights the utility of thinking about mnemonic role attributions as relational constructions of the past that interact with ongoing forms of marginalisation and discrimination. In doing this, the article makes three broader contributions to the literature. First, we embed the idea of mnemonic role attributions within broader discussions of the relational nature of memory, showing how these are very much shaped not only by identities and experiences of the individuals and groups themselves but also by ideas that others have about the group. Here Roma interviewees actively responded to perceptions of Roma blameworthiness for their own persecution and sought to construct mnemonic role attributions that addressed perceived discrepancies in victim hierarchies. Second, the article highlights the importance of postmemory, which is transmitted memories of horrific violence, within families in the generation and characterisation of mnemonic role attributions; more specifically we showed how postmemory functions for communities who remain marginalised after violence, highlighting the importance of social context and contemporaneous political dynamics (including ongoing discrimination) to understanding the impact of postmemory on individuals and groups. Third, the article explores the relationship between memory and epistemic and testimonial injustice, demonstrating that marginalised actors may seek to use memory to negotiate current conditions better even if their testimonies are deemed less credible.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by Germany’s Antidiskriminierungsstelle des Bundes.

Ethical considerations

The Ethics Review Committee at the University of the Bundeswehr Munich approved our interviews on October 17, 2023. Respondents gave written consent for review and signature before starting interviews.

Consent to participate

The Ethics Review Committee at the University of the Bundeswehr Munich approved our interviews on October 17, 2023. Respondents gave written consent to participate in the study for review and signature before starting interviews.

Consent for publication

The Ethics Review Committee at the University of the Bundeswehr Munich approved our interviews on October 17, 2023. Respondents gave written consent for the publication of their transcribed interviews for review and signature before starting interviews.

ORCID iDs

Timothy Williams

Kirsty Campbell

Data availability

Those interviews where informed written consent was given for the publication of the interviews in a web-archive have been stored and made digitally available on the following webpage:

Notes

Author biographies

Timothy Williams is a Junior Professor of Insecurity and Social Order and Chairman of the interdisciplinary research centre RISK at the University of the Bundeswehr Munich, as well as Vice President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars. Timothy is the author of the books The Complexity of Evil. Perpetration and Genocide (2021, Rutgers UP), Memory Politics after Mass Violence. Attributing Roles in the Memoryscape (2025, Bristol UP) and co-author of Peace and the Politics of Memory (with Johanna Mannergren, Annika Björkdahl, Susanne Buckley-Zistel and Stefanie Kappler, 2024, Manchester UP). His research focuses on discrimination and resilience, the politics of memory and physical and digital violence.

Kirsty Campbell holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of the Bundeswehr Munich, where she researched the role of German women in the perpetration of colonial violence. Most recently, she participated in the participative action research project DiREKt-Roma, which examined experiences of discrimination and resilience strategies among Roma communities in Germany. Her research focuses on discrimination and resilience, feminist and postcolonial theory and peace and conflict studies.

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