How Jews and Roma document their genocides

What is it about?

Jewish and Romani (Gypsy) accounts of Nazi genocide are connected in multiple, asymmetrical ways. Holocaust archives contain largely testimonies of Jews’ impressions of Romani suffering and when Romani survivors did speak about their own experiences these testimonies were commonly stored in archives dedicated to the Jewish Holocaust. This is thus a unique case, when one minority controls much of the memories of another. Bridging Holocaust history and memory studies, this article traces the peculiar character of these entangled narratives to the Nazi era when Roma and Jews suffered next to but not with each other. An example from early 1950s Belgium shows how attempts to give Jewish Holocaust survivors a voice could reinforce the silencing of Roma.

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