Porajmos

The term “ Porajmos ” (or Porrajmos , literally “to devour”) indicates persecutions towards the Tziganes during the Second world war, of which the proportions were such as the majority of the authors regard them as constitutive of Génocide.

Persecutions of the Third Reich of 1933 with 1945

Of 1933 with 1936 the Tziganes are interned with Dachau and Buchenwald for “unsociability”.

Starting from 1936, the Tziganes were persecuted for racial reasons by the mode Nazi and his allies in all the Europe.

The Nazi S racialement regarded the Tziganes as “lower”, and the destiny of those was, in many points, parallel with that of the Juif S. the Tziganes underwent the internment, the forced labor and much was assassinated. They were also subjected to the deportation in the Death camps.

In the zones of the Europe occupied by the Germans, the destiny of the Tziganes varied from one country to another, according to the local circumstances. The Nazi S generally interned the Tziganes and then off-set them in Germany or Poland to subject them to the forced labor or to assassinate them. Many Tziganes of Poland, of the Netherlands, Hungary, Italy, Yugoslavia and Albania were cut down or off-set in the Death camps and exterminated.

In France, the authorities had taken restrictive measures against the Tziganes before even the German occupation of the country. The Vichy government organized their internment in family camps like Jargeau, Montreuil-Bellay or Saliers. The French Tziganes were however not off-set except those of the departments of North and the Pas-de-Calais attached to the military Government of Brussels.

One does not know exactly the number of Tziganes killed during Porajmos. Although exact figures or percentages cannot be checked, the historians estimate that the Germans and their allies would have exterminated from 25 to 50% of all the European Tziganes. On approximately a million Tziganes living in Europe before the war, at least 220.000 would thus have been killed.

After the Second world war

In France, the Tziganes were not off-set then not killed with the camps of Auschwitz as in the other countries occupied by Germany, but interned in camps of French internments (and in a partial way, for lack of census of this population). A part of them transfer their release only beyond the armistice (until 1946) because the French authorities of the release, like those of Vichy, wished the sédentariser. They is besides why, the camps of nomads were family camps, where the families were gathered and the provided education for children.

After the war, discrimination against the Tziganes did not cease, the Federal Republic of Germany decided that all the measurements taken against the Tziganes before 1943 were a legitimate policy of the State and did not require repairs. The imprisonment, sterilization and even the deportation were regarded as a legitimate policy.

The German chancellor Helmut Kohl formally recognized the reality of the Génocide of the Tziganes in 1982. But on this date, the majority of the victims likely to touch repairs in accordance with the German law had already died.

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