“Many of the perpetrators responsible for the genocide of the Sinti and Roma were able to pursue careers in the public service and the private sector without any obstacles. The deportations to the extermination camps were justified as ‘crime prevention’, and this way of thinking found its way into the rulings of even the highest German courts. In scholarly research as well, and at the sites of the persecution—the memorials—, the genocide of the Sinti and Roma remained a marginal topic, worth a footnote at most.
This only gradually began to change after the persecution survivors became politically organized and founded a civil rights movement to call attention to their cause. The first international rally to commemorate the genocide of 500,000 Roma and Sinti in Europe took place at the former Bergen-Belsen concentration camp on 27 October 1979.
The
