Sinti and Roma people from across Europe gathered at the Holocaust memorial at Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland on Wednesday to remember the murder of an estimated 500,000 men, women and children by Nazi Germany during the Second World War.
Wednesday marks the international day of remembrance for Sinti and Roma victims of the Holocaust.
On August 2, 1944, the last remaining 4,300 Sinti and Roma people being held in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp were killed.
Prejudices continue against Roma and Sinti in Europe
German Culture and Media Minister Claudia Roth, from the Green party, remarked that “anti-Romani prejudices and sentiments in our society are still far too widespread.”
She pointed to how “up to half a million Sinti and Roma were violently killed in Nazi Germany,” adding that discrimination against Sinti and Roma did not begin in 1933 “and did not simply end in 1945.”
According to a poll cited by the Catholic news agency KNA, four out of 10 Sinti and Roma people have experienced discrimination in the past four years.
European Parliament Vice-President Nicola Beer, who hails from Germany, said that “these shocking numbers stand in contradiction to our European basic values and our understanding of equality for all.”
EU calls for more work to be done against anti-Romani prejudice
The European Commission released a statement from Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Vice President Vera Jourova and Commissioner for Equality Helena Dalli.
“Europe has a duty to protect its minorities from racism and discrimination,” the statement said.
“As the number of survivors and witnesses of these horrors dwindles, it is our duty, now more than ever, to continue their remembrance and pass on their testimonies.”
“Together, we must counter and eliminate antigypsyism in all its forms!” the Commission said.
A report from the European Commission looking into how well different EU member states had incorporated strategic frameworks to promote equality, participation and diversity for Roma and Sinti people said that many countries had not yet fully implemented the measures.
Twelve member states, including Germany and Austria, had only partially included measures to tackle anti-Romani prejudices, while another six had only included “the minimum commitments to a very limited extent.”
I’m slightly confused here because Google is telling me that Sinti are Romani.
Sinti are a subgroup of Romani mostly in Germany and Central Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinti
"The Sinti migrated to Germany in the early 15th century … [in]1899, the police kept a central register on Sinti, Roma, and Yenish peoples
That’s why I’m confused about why the article talks about the two as if they were separate and not one being a subset of the other.
I think that they are different based on their history:
"“Roma” (or Sinto, Manouche, Kalo, Romanichal) and “Gypsy” (or nomad, Gitano, Bohemien, Sarrasin, Heiden etc.) are not the same thing and they are not synonyms. These terms refer to the same people but viewed and designated differently.
“Roma” is the word (ethnonym) that the Roma use to describe themselves: it is the term for the members of that specific people and it is Romani for “man”. “Gypsy” is a derogatory, disparaging term – for many an insult — used by the majority population to define the Roma people."
https://rm.coe.int/factsheets-on-romani-culture-1-7-romani-group-names/1680aac36b
"There is no agreement among scholars regarding the origin of the ethnonym Sinti (also called Sinte). A popular etymology among the Sinti is that their self-appellation is based on the Pakistani province of ‘Sindh’.
Such explanation indicate that the Sinti were already before the migration to Europe distinct from the Roma, a fact which supports the Sinti in underlining their separate iden- tity. Nevertheless, there is no doubt about that the ethnonym Sinti cannot be of Indic origin, since the word ‘Sinti’ is inflected as Eu- ropean loanwords (see the below table).
It however remains unclear from which contact language was the word Sinti borrowed and what was its original meaning. Based on historical sources, Matras (1999) assumes that the ethnonym Sinti turned up at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries and was used as a name of a particular Romani group among the German Roma.
The original endonym of the group was Kale, a Romani group name which is widespread also in other Western and Norther European coun- tries. The new group name Sinti seems to completely replace the older name Kale in the beginning of the 20th century."
It’s the typical German term (DW being German media). The German wiki has a page dedicated to the combined term “Sinti und Roma” itself.
From this and other articles on the German wiki, it seems like the Sinti came to Germany first and want to be differentiated from other Roma that mostly came in the 1960s. (I’m really no expert on this, so please correct me if I’m wrong).
