The Romani, colloquially known as the Roma, are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group and traditionally nomadic itinerants. They live in Europe and Anatolia, and have diaspora populations located worldwide with significant concentrations in the Americas.
The Romani Holocaust or the Romani genocide—also known as the Porajmos, the Pharrajimos meaning the hard times, and the Samudaripen —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 inverted black triangle was an identification badge used in Nazi concentration camps to mark prisoners designated asozial ("asocial") and arbeitsscheu ("work-shy"). The Roma and Sinti people were considered asocial and tagged with the black triangle. The designation also included alcoholics, beggars, homeless people, lesbians, nomads, prostitutes, and violators of laws prohibiting sexual relations between Aryans and Jews. Women also deemed to be anti-social included nonconformists.
Bohemian Romani or Bohemian Romany is a dialect of Romani formerly spoken by the Romani people of Bohemia, the western part of today's Czech Republic. It became extinct after World War II, due to extermination of most of its speakers in Nazi concentration camps.
Romani people, traditionally Țigani, constitute one of Romania's largest minorities. According to the 2011 census, their number was 621,573 people or 3.3% of the total population, being the second-largest ethnic minority in Romania after Hungarians. There are different estimates about the size of the total population of people with Romani ancestry in Romania, varying from 4.6 per cent to over 10 percent of the population, because many people of Romani descent do not declare themselves Romani. For example, the Council of Europe estimates that approximately 1.85 million Roma live in Romania, a figure equivalent to 8.32% of the population.
The Romani people, also referred to as Roma, Sinti or Kale, depending on the sub-group, are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group which primarily lives in Europe. The Romani may have migrated from what is the modern Indian state of Rajasthan, migrating to the northwest around 250 BCE. Their subsequent westward migration, possibly in waves, is now believed to have occurred beginning in about 500 CE. It has also been suggested that emigration from India may have taken place in the context of the raids by Mahmud of Ghazni. As these soldiers were defeated, they were moved west with their families into the Byzantine Empire. The author Ralph Lilley Turner theorised a central Indian origin of Romani followed by a migration to Northwest India as it shares a number of ancient isoglosses with Central Indo-Aryan languages in relation to realization of some sounds of Old Indo-Aryan. This is lent further credence by its sharing exactly the same pattern of northwestern languages such as Kashmiri and Shina through the adoption of oblique enclitic pronouns as person markers. The overall morphology suggests that Romani participated in some of the significant developments leading toward the emergence of New Indo-Aryan languages, thus indicating that the proto-Romani did not leave the Indian subcontinent until late in the second half of the first millennium.
Romani people in Bulgaria constitute Europe's densest gypsy minority. The Romani people in Bulgaria may speak Bulgarian, Turkish or Romani, depending on the region.
Human rights in Spain are set out in the 1978 Spanish constitution. Sections 6 and 7 guarantees the right to create and operate political parties and trade unions so long as they respect the Constitution and the law.
Anti-Romani sentiment is a form of bigotry which consists of hostility, prejudice, discrimination, racism and xenophobia which is specifically directed at Romani people. Non-Romani itinerant groups in Europe such as the Yenish, Irish and Highland Travellers are frequently given the name "gypsy" and as a result, they are frequently confused with the Romani people. As a result, sentiments which were originally directed at the Romani people are also directed at other traveler groups and they are frequently referred to as "antigypsy" sentiments.
Romani people are an ethnic minority in the Czech Republic, currently making up 2–3% of the population. Originally migrants from North Western India sometime between the 6th and 11th centuries, they have long had a presence in the region. Since the creation of Czechoslovakia in 1918, the Romani population have experienced considerable hardship, having been a main target of Nazi extermination programs during World War II, and the subject of forced relocation, sterilisation, and other radical social policies during the Communist era. In the successor state, the Czech Republic, challenges remain for the Romani population with respect to education and poverty, and there are frequent tensions with the white majority population over issues including crime and integration.
The Roma people have several distinct populations, the largest being the Roma and the Iberian Calé or Caló, who reached Anatolia and the Balkans in the early 12th century, from a migration out of the Indian subcontinent beginning about 1st century – 2nd century AD. They settled in the areas of present-day Turkey, Greece, Serbia, Romania, Croatia, Moldova, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Hungary, Albania, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Czech Republic, Slovenia and Slovakia, by order of volume, and Spain. From the Balkans, they migrated throughout Europe and, in the nineteenth and later centuries, to the Americas. The Roma population in the United States is estimated at more than one million.
Romani people in France, generally known in spoken French as gitans, tsiganes or manouches, are an ethnic group that originated in Northern India. The exact number of Romani people in France is unknown; estimates vary from 500,000 to 1,200,000.
Polska Roma are the largest and one of the oldest ethnolinguistic sub group of Romani people living in Poland. Some Polska Roma also live in North America, Switzerland, Sweden, Great Britain and countries of the European Union. The term "Polska Roma" is both an ethnonym of the group and a term used in the academic literature. As such it is distinct from the terms "Polish Roma" or "Roma in Poland" which better denote the broader Roma population in Poland. Polish ethnographer Jerzy Ficowski, writing in the 1950s and 1960s used the term "Polish Lowlander Gypsies" to refer to the same group, though this terminology is no longer in widespread use.
The Romani people are also known by a variety of other names; in English as gypsies or gipsies, and Roma; in Greek as γύφτοι (gíftoi) or τσιγγάνοι (tsiggánoi), in Central and Eastern Europe as Tsingani ; in France as gitans besides the dated terms bohémiens and manouches; in Italy as rom and sinti besides the dated terms zingari, zigani, and gitani; in Spain as gitanos; and in Portugal as ciganos.
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 Romani are an ethnic group that has lived in Austria since the Middle Ages. According to the 2001 census, there were 6,273 Romani speakers in Austria, or less than 0.1% of the population. Estimations count between 10,000 and 25,000. A more recent estimation count between 40,000 and 50,000 Romani people or about 0.5%. Most indigenous Romani people in Austria belong to the Burgenland-Roma group in East-Austria. The majority live in the state of Burgenland, in the city of Oberwart and in villages next to the District of Oberwart. The Burgenland-Roma speak the Vlax Romani language.
There are around 204,958 Romani people in Russia according to the 2010 national census. In the mid-1920s Romani people in Russia were classified as a national minority of Indian origin and policies in Russia were developed to assimilate them. In the 1930s many Roma from Russia were deported to Siberia. Russian Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev decreed that Roma must be settled in 1956. There was a cultural revival in the last decades of the Soviet Union when the Moscow Romani theatre was established in Russia.
During World War II, some individuals and groups helped Romani people and others escape the Porajmos conducted by Nazi Germany.
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.
