The Porajmos. A critical analysis of Sinti and Roma egodocuments

Abstract or Introduction

This paper is about the Porajmos and analyzes Sinti and Roma egodocuments.

This thesis highlights the importance of analyzing the genocide of the Sinti and Roma by investigating the memoirs of Sinti and Roma. To do so, it analyzes several memoirs: Otto Rosenbergs, Zoni Weisz, Hugo Höllenreiners, Zilli Schmidts, Florian Reinhards and lastly, the memoir in which the fates of three families, the Mettbachs, Höllenreiners, and Schönberger are discussed.

Why those memoirs were chosen and how much those survivors contribute to the memory of the Sinti and Roma persecution are further elaborated in this thesis. The goal of this work is to recover the fate of the Sinti and Roma in its own right, as seen through the memories of some of the victims, without creating a hierarchy of the suffering of the different victims of the Second World War.

Many researchers already concentrate their topics around a comparison between the Sinti and Roma and Jewish persecutions. In a certain sense, it is even sometimes inevitable to not compare them, especially because the Sinti and Roma talk about the Jewish and other victims in their memoirs. The genocide of the Sinti and Roma is nowadays well documented, yet it is still interesting to combine the two aspects, which will be the legal political facts and the personal experiences, feelings, and thoughts.

Furthermore, it examines the development of their postwar memory since, for decades, they were the forgotten victims of World War Two. So, following research questions are answered:
1. What light can egodocuments shed on lived experiences during the Second World War?
2. What role did egodocuments play in the post-war construction of the memory of the Sinti and Roma genocide?

So, the goal is to show what those memoirs add to the scholarly debate. Egodocuments are therefore at the center of this whole thesis, to establish a chronological structure of the war but also its aftermath.