The main issues arising from the encounter between Roma people and surrounding European society since the time of their arrival in Medieval Europe until today are discussed in this work. The history of their persecution and genocide during the Nazi era, in particular, is central to the present volume. Significantly, some authors sought to emphasize the continuing history of prejudice and persecution, which reached a peak during the Nazi era and persisted after the war. Current questions of social integration in Europe, as well as that of ethnic definition and the construction of ethnic-national identity constitute another principal pillar of the book. The complexity of issues involved, such as collective memory, myth-making and social constructionism, trigger intense debate among researchers dealing with Romani studies.
Dr. Roni Stauber is a Senior Research Fellow at the Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and teaches at the Department of Jewish History, Tel Aviv University. He is the author of studies related to antisemitism and the Holocaust and to the memory of the Holocaust and its ongoing social and national impact
Dr. Raphael Vago is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of History, and Senior Research Fellow at the Stephen Roth Institute and the Cummings Center for Russian and East European Studies, Tel Aviv University. He was a member of the International Commission of Historians on the Holocaust in Romania.
Acknowledgments
Foreword (Yehuda Bauer)
Introduction (Roni Stauber and Raphael Vago)
Religious Minorities, Vagabonds and Gypsies in Early Modern Europe (Shulamith Shahar)
The Campaign against the Restless: Criminal Biology and the Stigmatization of the Gypsies, 1890−1960 (Peter Widmann)
Jews, Gypsies and Soviet Prisoners of War: Comparing Nazi Persecutions (Michael Zimmermann)
Nazi and Postwar Policy against Roma and Sinti in Austria (Erika Thurner)
Story, History and Memory: A Case Study of the Roma at the Komarom Camp in Hungary (Katalin Katz)
Romanian Public Reaction to the Deportation of Gypsies to Transnistria (Viorel Achim)
Gypsies in Germany – German Gypsies? Identity and Politics of Sinti and Roma in Germany (Gilad Margalit and Yaron Matras)
The Politics of Memory – Jews and Roma Commemorate Their Tragedy (Roni Stauber and Raphael Vago)
Human Rights and Roma Policy Formation in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary (Eva Sobotka)
Central European Roma Policy: National Minority Elites, National States and the EU (Pál Tamás)
Notes on Contributors
