Recognition of the Roma Genocide

 Recognition, official texts

The Austrian legal system does not provide legal recognition of historical facts, although the denial of the Holocaust is a criminal offence under the “Law prohibiting the Reactivation of National Socialism”. Although Austria has not officially recognised the Holocaust or the Samudaripen – in Austria referred to as the Holocaust of the Roma – through any legislative act, the Samudaripen or the Holocaust of the Roma is recognised as an integral part of the Holocaust as such. In 2004, the official commemoration organised by the Austrian Parliament on the occasion of the Holocaust, on 5 May – the Austrian Holocaust Day – , was dedicated exclusively to the Roma Genocide.

 Data (camps locations, Remembrance places, measures etc.)

The Camp Lackenbach in Austria (1941-1945) was the largest “Zigeunerlager” (concentration camp for Roma) within the borders of Austria. About 2 000 out of its 4 000 inmates were murdered in Łódź (in German, Litzmannstadt) and Chełmno (in German, Kulmhof) in Poland; another 1,000 in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Smaller “Zigeunerlager” (“Gypsy Camps”) were located in Weyer, Salzburg and Vienna. Out of 12 000 Austrian Roma, between 9000 and 10 000 perished during the Holocaust.

According to Dokumentationsarchiv des Österreichischen Widerstandes (DÖW, Documentation centre of the Austrian Resistance), approximately 9500 Austrian “Gypsies” fell victim to National Socialism. The official data collected on the number of the surviving Gypsies after 1945 are similarly problematic as those of the interwar period because of the arbitrariness of the stigmatisation. In a document from Burgenland dated 7 February 1952 there is a reference that in 1948, under the pretext to register all victims of NS-terror, a census of all Gypsies residing in Burgenland had taken place. The police counted 870 Gypsies of whom 636 had survived various concentration camps. Liberation, however, did not put an end to discrimination and harassment by the authorities for Roma and Sinti. The regional government of Lower Austria, for instance, informed warningly about an imminent new “Gypsy scourge” on 28 June 1945. Also the “Gypsy registration” required since 1888 was continued until the late 1950s. The remark by the Department for Public Security of September 1948 that Gypsies would frequently pretend to have been former concentration camp inmates, denied the survivors the status of victim of National Socialism.

In Lackenbach a memorial was inaugurated by President Dr Rudolf Kirchschläger in 1984 to commemorate the interned and deported Roma and Sinti. On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the construction of the camp the first commemoration ceremony was organized in 1990. Since then a commemoration ceremony takes place annually in November.

A memorial was inaugurated in Salzburg in 1995 (Ignaz-Rieder-Kai), with the inscription: "In Salzburg fell more than 300 Gypsies, victims of the Nazi racial policies. Imprisoned from 1940 to 1943 under inhumane conditions in the Gypsy camp of Salzburg, they were deported in the spring of 1943 to the Auschwitz extermination camp. As a reminder and admonition. The township Salzburg - Zoltan Pap ".

Another memorial was built in 2009 in the "Zigeunerlager Maxglan", on the grounds of the former camp at Salzburg.

In Vienna, a central memorial at Aspangbahnhof, the station from which over 47 000 people were deported to concentration camps, was opened in 2017. For Roma the memorial at Aspangbahnhof has a special meaning as nearly all eastern Austrian Roma were deported from here, mostly to the Lager Łódź in Poland.

 Specialised institution, commission, research centre etc., dealing with this issue

The Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance (DÖW) was founded in 1963 by former members of the Austrian Resistance, victims of NS-persecution, and committed scholars from the sciences and humanities. It collects and archives relevant source materials on the Nazi era and Nazi crimes, and in particular the Holocaust. It holds a permanent exhibition in the Altes Rathaus (Old Town Hall), in Vienna.

The Institute for Holocaust Education of the Austrian Federal Ministry for Education, Science and Research, commonly referred to as _erinnern.at_, dedicates itself to the transfer of historical and methodological-didactical knowledge and its today’s reflection.

The Viennese NGO Romano-Centro is the organiser of many commemoration events in Vienna and curated museum exhibitions covering, among others, the Roma Genocide.

The Austrian Service Abroad, an NGO that seconds Holocaust Memorial Servants to Genocide Commemoration sites worldwide, dedicates some of its activities to the Roma Genocide. In 2013, the NGO awarded its annual prize for merits in Holocaust remembrance and research, the Austrian Holocaust Memorial Award, to the Bavarian Sinto Hugo Höllenrainer.

 Official initiatives (campaigns, actions, projects, commemoration days, museums)

The Documentation and Information Centre of Austrian Roma (Kulturverein Österreichischer Roma) has a special exhibition on this topic, as does the permanent exhibition of the DöW (Dokumentationsarchiv des österreichischen Widerstandes - Documentation Centre of the Austrian Resistance) in Vienna. The Mauthausen Memorial has a special monument dedicated to the Roma Victims of the Genocide. There are special monuments in Salzburg, Weyer, and Lackenbach/Burgenland. “The Roma Base Project” at the University of Graz has been a major research centre for Roma history in Austria for many years and was a major contributor to the “Factsheets on Roma History” published by the Council of Europe, which contain a very detailed account of the fate of Europe’s Roma populations between 1938 and 1945. The topic of the Roma Genocide is an integral part of Holocaust commemorative activities in Austria – such as “Letter to the Stars” or the teacher training programs on the topic.

The Ministry of Education (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Frauen - BMBF) is in charge of the teaching of the Roma Genocide. They have set up a project called "Nationalsozialismus und Holocaust: Gedächtnis und Gegenwart" (National Socialism and Holocaust: Memory and Future) which integrates contemporary witnesses in the classroom. This programme is yet not compulsory but is one of the offerings of the the civil education in Austria. This project is led by association Erinnern.at, which is a network emanating from the BMBF. They have developed a pedagogical website dedicated to the Roma Genocide “Das Schicksal der europäischen Roma und Sinti während des Holocaust” (The fate of European Roma and Sinti), together with Anne Frank House (The Netherlands) and Mémorial de la Shoah (France). It is currently available in English, German and French. It brought together professional historians, Roma and Sinti representatives and educators in order to develop a mutually accepted version of instruction and information materials for teachers, students and other interested persons concerning the largely forgotten fate of the European Roma and Sinti during the Holocaust.

In November 2012 and November 2013, Erinnern.at organized, in cooperation with Anne Frank House (The Netherlands) and the Museum of Romani Culture (Czech Republic), the International Conference on teaching material on the Roma Genocide. There were three target groups represented at the meetings: educational experts working at institutes related to the history of the Holocaust and/or the Roma Genocide, teacher trainers that are working at universities or teacher training colleges, and educational authorities. The expertise of these different groups of experts contributed significantly to the development of the teaching material and of the implementation process. The project aimed to create a network of educators and policy makers from across Europe to generally support teaching about the Roma Genocide in the institutions and countries that are part of the project, and in particular to further implement the teaching materials "The Fate of the European Roma and Sinti during the Holocaust".

The NGO Romano Centro organised a temporary multimedia exhibition entitled “Romane Thana” (“Places of the Roma”) in 2015 at Wien Museum and in 2017 at Vorarlberg Museum. “Romane Thana” explores the history of Roma in Austria and offers teaching material on Roma and the Roma Genocide online.

Since 2012, the National Roma Contact Point at the Austrian Federal Ministry organises Dialogue platforms with the Roma civil society on specific subjects. On 2 June 2017 the Dialogue Platform was dedicated entirely to Memorial and Commemoration work.