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The Central Council of German Sinti and Roma (German: Zentralrat Deutscher Sinti und Roma) is a German Romani rights group based in Heidelberg, Germany. It is headed by Romani Rose, who lost 13 members of his close family in the Romani Holocaust. The organization is a member of the Federal Union of European Nationalities. [1]
The Central Council was founded in 1982. It is the union of the umbrella organisations of the four national autochthonous minorities which belong to the German nation and have always been resident and here: The Domowina of the Sorbs, the Friesian Council, the South Schleswig Association of the Danish minority and the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma. Along with delegates of minorities from the United States, Mexico, Argentina, Japan, India, Sri Lanka, France and the Netherlands Rose is also a member of the management committee of the International Movement Against Discrimination and Racism (IMADR) founded in Tokyo in 1988.
Since June 1979 to be more exact, Romani Rose has led the work for the civil rights of German Sinti and Roma before the eyes of the German as well as the international public; he has also fought for their protection from racism and discrimination and for compensation for the survivors of the Holocaust, at the same time announcing the magnitude and the historical importance of the genocide of 500,000 Sinti and Roma in National Socialist occupied Europe. In May 1995, in cooperation with the member organisations of the Central Council, Rose achieved recognition for German Sinti and Roma as a national minority in Germany with their own minority language, connected with their goal of equal participation in social and political life.
The first important steps of this civil rights work include: [2]
In the following years the Central Council drew attention to its demands again and again in the form of protests, press conferences, and events, each under the management of Rose. Examples of such are:
1) The protest action organised by Rose by 220 Sinti and Roma on 28 January 1983 (to the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the seizing of power by the Nazis) at the Federal Bureau of Criminal Investigation against the racially discriminating publications and criminal investigation department learning materials on Sinti and Roma with formulations taken from NS literature;
2) The action with 400 Sinti and Roma KZ survivors in Bonn on 20 November 1986 in connection with Rose's comments in front of a Federal press conference to the first 525 cases of withheld payments of compensation under the Federal Compensation Law, handed over at the office of the Chancellor;
3) The until now unique memorial Mass initiated by Rose, given by the Bishop Anton Schlembach in the Speyer cathedral on 13 March 1988, the 45th anniversary of the deportation of 23,000 European Sinti and Roma to Auschwitz. On Rose's invitation, 1,500 Sinti and Roma from all over Germany and personalities such as the then President of the Upper House Bernhard Vogel and the then President of the Lower House Prof. Rita Süssmuth came to the Mass;
4) The demonstration by 250 Sinti and Roma Holocaust survivors, led by Rose, at the Federal Ministry of Finance for the following through of equal payment of compensation for forced work to the ca. 1,800 KZ survivors represented by the Central Council to that end in the years 2002 to 2006;
5) Public meetings, gaining signatures on petitions (with 2,124 German Sinti and Roma, among which were 1,520 KZ survivors), other actions and many press appointments since 1989 demanding the erection of the Holocaust memorial for murdered Sinti and Roma on the position between the Reichstag and the Brandenburg Gate agreed to for 1994.
The two and a half decades of non-stop engagement for the compensation of KZ victims gained fundamental significance for the embodiment of the civil rights work in the whole minority. In the course of 20 years since 1985 the office in Heidelberg – which was sponsored by the Federal government since August 1982 and since the year 2000 by the state Minister for Culture and Media – the Central Council, under the crucial leadership of Rose, brought about a significant change to the earlier discriminatory procedure of compensation for 3,200 Sinti and Roma Holocaust survivors.
The Romani Holocaust was the planned effort by Nazi Germany and its World War II allies and collaborators to commit ethnic cleansing and eventually genocide against European Roma and Sinti peoples during the Holocaust era.
The Sinti are a subgroup of Romani people. They are found mostly in Germany, France and Italy and Central Europe, numbering some 200,000 people. They were traditionally itinerant, but today only a small percentage of Sinti remain unsettled. In earlier times, they frequently lived on the outskirts of communities.
Robert Ritter was a German racial scientist doctor of psychology and medicine, with a background in child psychiatry and the biology of criminality. In 1936, Ritter was appointed head of the Racial Hygiene and Demographic Biology Research Unit of Nazi Germany's Criminal Police, to establish the genealogical histories of the German "Gypsies", both Roma and Sinti, and became the "architect of the experiments Roma and Sinti were subjected to." His pseudo-scientific "research" in classifying these populations of Germany aided the Nazi government in their systematic persecution toward a goal of "racial purity".
Ceija Stojka was an Austrian Romani writer, painter, activist, and musician, and survivor of the Holocaust.
Romani Rose is a Romany activist and head of the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma. He lost 13 relatives in the Holocaust.
Eva Justin was a German anthropologist who was active during the Nazi era. She specialised in scientific racism. Her work contributed to the Nazi crimes against the Sinti and Roma peoples.
Tilman Zülch was a German human rights activist. He was the founder and general secretary of the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP).
The Documentation and Cultural Centre of German Sinti and Roma was established in Heidelberg, Germany, in the early 1990s, as a memorial to Sinti and Roma people who were killed by the National Socialists Party. After several years of extension work collecting stories from the victims, conducting research, and conversion, the building complex was ceremonially opened to the public on 16 March 1997, and was supported by the attendance of many Roma and Sinti survivors. It is the world's first permanent exhibition on the genocide perpetrated upon the Sinti and Roma by the Nazis. The documentation Centre has three levels and covers an area of almost 700 square meters, and traces the history and stories of the persecution of the Sinti and Roma under National Socialism. The institution is overseen by Central Council of German Sinti and Roma, supported by the city of Heidelberg, and is the beneficiary of special funds from the German Federal Government and the land of Baden-Württemberg.
The European Civil Rights Prize of the Sinti and Roma was founded in November 2007 in Heidelberg by the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma, the Documentation and Cultural Centre of German Sinti and Roma and the Manfred Lautenschläger Foundation. The international prize is endowed with 15,000 Euro by the Foundation. It was awarded for the first time in December 2008.
Hugo Adolf Höllenreiner was a Sinti survivor of the Porajmos during the Nazi dictatorship.
The Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Victims of National Socialism is a memorial in Berlin, Germany. The monument is dedicated to the memory of the 220,000 – 500,000 people murdered in the Porajmos – the Nazi genocide of the European Sinti and Roma peoples. It was designed by Dani Karavan and was officially opened on 24 October 2012 by German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the presence of President Joachim Gauck.
Jonathan Mack is a German human rights activist, educador and scholar. Mack has a diploma in political sciences of the Free University Berlin, and currently works as political advisor at the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma.
Otto Rosenberg, was a Holocaust survivor, author of A Gypsy in Auschwitz (1999), activist, and founder of Sinti Union of Berlin and Organization for German Sinti and Roma. He was detained in Berlin-Marzahn in 1939. He was born in East Prussia and raised in Berlin.
The Roma Holocaust Memorial Day is a memorial day that commemorates the victims of the Romani genocide (Porajmos), which resulted in the murder of an estimated 220,000–500,000 Romani people by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II. The date of 2 August was chosen for the memorial because on the night of 2–3 August 1944, 2,897 Roma, mostly women, children and elderly people, were killed in the Gypsy family camp (Zigeunerfamilienlager) at Auschwitz concentration camp. Some countries have chosen to commemorate the genocide on different dates.
Lily Franz (1924–2011), born Adele Franz, married as Lily van Angeren, published as Lily van Angeren-Franz) was a Sintezza writer. She was arrested with her family in 1943 and taken to Auschwitz concentration camp as part of the Romani Holocaust. Franz survived the camp, testifying against a SS officer. She lived in the Netherlands and published a memoir.
Elisabeth Guttenberger was a German Holocaust survivor and human rights activist. Of Sinti origin, she survived the Romani Holocaust and testified at the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials after having been interned at the Gypsy family camp.
Philomena Franz was a Sinti writer and activist from Germany, who was a survivor of the Romani Holocaust, having been imprisoned in Auschwitz. She later published works that recounted her experiences and was recognised as a significant voice in Romani literature.
Melanie Spitta was a German Sinti film-maker.
Anita Awosusi is a German writer, musician, documentary filmmaker and human rights activist. Herself a Sinti woman, she has been active in campaigns for the rights of the Sinti and Romani people. Since the 1990s, she has published works on the history of the Romani Holocaust, on the music and on stereotyped representations of Sinti and Roma.
Petra Gelbart is a musicologist, musician, music therapist and human rights defender. Born in former Czechoslovakia, she has lived in the United States since 1988. Mainly active for the human rights of Romani people, she was a curator of the music section for the RomArchive in Berlin, Germany. Active in several Romani organizations since 2000, Gelbart is known both for her research, public speaking and musical performances focusing on the remembrance of the Romani genocide in Europe.
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