The Nazi genocide of the Roma: Reassessment and commemoration ed. by Anton Weiss-Wendt (review)

As I write this review, a leading Hungarian weekly carries the headline ‘The ever forgettable Roma Holocaust’ that points, with deliberate irony, to the ongoing politics of memory in this country that denies the local Roma a place in their own and their country’s history. This book, if used as widely as it should be (though it has no Hungarian chapter), could provide one foundation stone for a new politics of education and commemoration.

Altogether, this is certainly the most important single publication in the English language on the fate of Romany communities in Europe during World War Two since the arrival of Guenter Lewy’s brilliant if deeply problematic investigation. The volume, which is dedicated to the memory of the professional historian who did more than anyone to establish this as a credible field of study, Michael Zimmerman, establishes that there is now a whole new, young generation of scholars who are advancing research in all those areas that Zimmerman had left for further consideration: Austria, the southern front, the Eastern Front and the Axis allies like Romania. Even in the absence of any chapter on the Reich proper – one wonders if Fings or Sparing could not have been included – it will provide both an essential reference text for historians and a very useful set of essays for teachers at all levels of the education system.

A useful synoptic essay by the editor introduces the volume, framing the discussion as to whether Romany communities suffered a ‘persecution’ (as Lewy argued) or a ‘genocide’ in terms of recent work outside of the context of World War Two (Rwanda and elsewhere). Weiss-Wendt provides a measured but clear discussion of issues around ‘intent’ (was there a ‘clear policy’ or ‘intention’ to annihilate – Bauer) and ‘knowledge’ (as in the ICTY trials of Srebrenica indictees like General Krstic).

Interestingly, Weiss-Wendt has chosen to put Shannon L. Fogg’s perceptive study “Assimilation and Persecution: An overview of attitudes towards Gypsies in France” at the front of the volume. Fogg provides a very useful summary of earlier research as well as setting up a great contrast with all that follows, for whereas the French case illustrates overwhelming continuity in treatment of ‘nomads’ by the various French states, everything that follows demonstrates the genocidal trajectory of Nazi policy.

Florian Freund’s excellent essay on Austria provides some material that will be novel to readers of German familiar with his and Gerhard Baumgartner’s reports for the Austrian government Historiketkommission in 2004. In particular, he offers an interesting discussion of evolving discriminatory practices through the nineteenth century and immediately after World War One when the accession of the Burgenland to Austria vastly increased the number of ‘Gypsy’ citizens. He also provides crucial evidence of the interpretation of the Auschwitz decree, demonstrating once again the particular fanaticism of the Austrian Nazis in this matter.

One of the outstanding features of the volume is two essays on Croatia and Romania that seriously advance English-language material and argumentation. Alexander Korb manages to provide both a plausible account of the fate of Muslim Roma within Ustasa controlled lands (protected in part by Sarajevan authorities) and a detailed examination of the horrors of Jasenovac concentration camp. Though this chapter might have benefitted from some of the new oral testimonies collected in the French documentary supervised by Henriette Asseo – Mémoires tsiganes: l’autre genocide – it stands as by far the most solid introduction in English to this under-explored field. Vladimir Solonari’s essay on Romania asks if Antonescu’s policies amounted to ‘ethnic cleansing’ or the ‘crime prevention’ program that Viorel Achim identified. Solonari, like Freund, provides essential background and in effect dismisses the idea that Antonescu’s deportation decrees emerged out of the blue, as Achim had it. Whether it is a ‘certainty’ that General Antonescu shared the eugenicist views current...