The United Kingdom declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939, in immediate reaction to the German invasion of Poland. By this time, British authorities and the general public were broadly aware of the accelerating persecution of German Jews, and the principal legal measures against Roma were also reported in the press. However, it is difficult to assess how much attention was paid to the information or how far knowledge spread. Responses to the situation of European Roma were filtered through attitudes to British ‘Gypsies’. In wartime, the press occasionally reported on deportations and massacres, and British government and intelligence had access to some information about Auschwitz-Birkenau, but there is no evidence of official response. It was mainly in the context of the liberation of the concentration camps and post-war trials under British jurisdiction that British actors were confronted with and acknowledged the persecution. British institutions and individuals contributed to the early documentation of the genocide. Commemoration developed relatively late.
Roma (Gypsies and Travellers) in Britain
According to one contemporary estimate, there were about 45,000 Roma in England at the outbreak of World War II, making up the majority of Roma in Britain (England, Scotland and Wales).1Harvey, ‘Wartime Work of English Gypsies’. The presence of people ‘ex parva Egipto’ is first recorded in Scotland in 1504 and in England there is a record of ‘Gypsions’ from 1513/14.2Tcherenkov/Laederich 93f. By the twentieth century, the Romani population included Romanes-speaking Welsh Kale and English and Scottish Travellers. Some Travellers (the Romanichal, or Romany Gypsies) still used a form of Romanes (Anglo-Romani) in daily life, and others did not use the language but shared lifestyle and cultural practices with the Romanichal. A further group, non-Romani Irish Travellers, had begun to arrive in Britain around 1850, and there was a handful of mainly Kalderash families from Continental Europe who had settled there since the 1910s.3Kenrick, ‘Foreign Gypsies and British immigration law after 1945’.
In the twenty-first century members of these groups continue to use both ‘Gypsy’ and ‘Traveller’ to identify themselves, and in this text ‘Gypsies and Travellers’ is used except where a clear distinction is made in the sources. From the point of view of the majority society and the political authorities in the early twentieth century, what defined ‘Gypsies’ was not ethnicity but itinerancy and caravan-dwelling. These were in turn associated with particular economic activities: horse dealing, peddling, fortune telling, working in metal and ceramics, basket weaving and occasional begging and musical performance. Gypsies and Travellers also regularly worked as seasonal agricultural labourers.4Reid, ‘Scottish Gypsies/Travellers and the folklorists’; Bakker, ‘The genesis of Anglo-Romani’.
During World War I, wartime controls and the absence of men on military service led some families to abandon travelling altogether, and the years that followed brought other changes, as mass production and motorisation reduced the demand for their historical trades and services. For travelling families, agricultural work became more important, and there was a shift towards dealing in scrap metal and motor vehicles. Those who continued to travel tried whenever possible to find winter quarters in towns, sometimes finding safe places to stand their caravans and sometimes moving into slum housing.5Taylor, A Minority and the State, 30–31, 35–36.
After World War I, the main source of conflicts between Gypsies and Travellers and state authorities was the denial of right to camp in public places; here it was mainly the local authorities and police that took the initiative against them. In the 1890s, Gypsies had joined in political lobbying against proposed legislation; after 1914 both spontaneous and organised collective action on their part was more common, and the growth of large settlements of caravan-dwellers on land that they either rented or purchased from private landlords became the focus of official frustration and anxiety. In the mid-1930s, the prohibitions on travelling were lifted (though it remained impossible to camp legally), while at the same time police powers to act against ‘filthy or verminous premises’ were reinforced. Although elements of scientific racism and anthropometric fantasies were present in conversations about Gypsies during the 1930s (not least in the circles of the Gypsy Lore Society), they found no place in official policies. Nevertheless, there emerged local policies, including segregating families in compounds (New Forest) and forcible settlement and removal of children (the Scottish ‘Tinker Experiment’), which echo Continental practices of the same period.6Mayall, English Gypsies and State Policies; Cressy, Gypsies: An English History; Taylor, A Minority and the State; McPhee, ‘The Uglier Side of Bonnie Scotland: The Tinker Housing Experiments’.
Roma during World War II
With the outbreak of World War II, Gypsies and Travellers were subject to the nationwide process of enumeration of the population that enabled them to receive identity cards and ration books, although no formal account was taken of the particular difficulties they might have in accessing rationed food and clothing. The Home Office considered interning them or restricting their mobility, but abandoned the idea, principally for fear that public opinion would see the measures as unfair. The question of how patriotic they were was implicitly raised in an ongoing public discussion of whether they were contributing to the war effort. In practice, and in spite of the barriers posed by their marginal position and low literacy, both men and women played a substantial role, enlisting for military and auxiliary services and working in war production, forestry and agriculture. Among Britain’s decorated war heroes were Romani men, including the pilot Eric Stanley Lock (1919–1941), holder of the Distinguished Service Order. Some Romani servicemen, however, were reluctant to reveal their identities for fear of discrimination or harassment, and the press continued to register popular suspicion of ‘Gypsies’ while at the same time there is evidence in individual cases that wartime cooperation promoted familiarity and respect between Romani and non-Romani Britons.7Taylor, A Minority and the State, 36–48; ‘Romany Harvest’, The Citizen (Gloucester), 14 August 1944; Harvey, ‘Wartime Work of English Gypsies’; Newberry Library, Chicago, Alfred Hammill Papers, Dora Yates Letters, Dora Yates to Alfred Hamill 07.04.1941, 22.08.1941; National Archives, Kew (TNA) WO-390-9, Register of the Distinguished Service Order; Cowles, ‘Studies of British and Foreign Gypsies’.
The German authorities showed an interest in the situation of British Roma. In July 1942, the Foreign Intelligence division of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) wrote to German security and police liaison officers in Western Europe. They were ordered to interrogate Allied prisoners in order to find out how many ‘Gypsies’ there were in Britain and the conditions and controls under which they lived. Donald Kenrick (1929–2015) and Grattan Puxon (born 1939), who first uncovered this document, saw it as evidence of German plans to extend the genocide of the Roma to Britain. However, the source and timing suggest that, as Michael Zimmermann (1951–2007) proposes, the Nazis were speculating that their discontent might make Roma inclined to act as spies for Germany (following the policy pursued with Irish Republicans and Indian anti-colonialists). The only response to the RSHA circular that has survived came from the Hague, where the Commander of the Sipo and SD reported that the prisoners interviewed had seen few or no ‘Gypsies’ and had nothing of interest to report.8Bundesarchiv Lichterfelde, R 70 Niederlande 7, 13-18; Kenrick and Puxon, The Destiny of Europe’s Gypsies, 86–87; Zimmermann, Rassenutopie und Genozid, 196–97.
Knowledge of and Attitudes towards the Genocide among Roma
Commenting in 1939 on press reports about ‘Gypsies’ enlisting for the war effort, Dora Esther Yates (1879–1973), Secretary of the Gypsy Lore Society, explained, ‘They are anti-Nazi. And they have a score to settle with the Germans for the persecution of gipsies [sic] in Germany.’9‘Gipsies are joining up,’ The Daily Mirror, 27 October 1939. The very few public statements about wartime service by Gypsies and Travellers themselves emphasised their own patriotism rather than the policies of the Nazis.10Isaac Pinder, ‘Gipsy’s Reply’, The Daily Telegraph and Morning Post, 6 March 1944; E. Winter, ‘Patriotic Gypsies’, The Daily Telegraph and Morning Post, 13 March 1944; Edward Harvey, ‘Gypsies on War Work’ (script for a BBC Children’s Hour Broadcast), January 1942, University of Liverpool Library, Liverpool, Special Collections, Gypsy Lore Society Archives, GLS XLIV/127. And in fact, it is difficult to establish how conscious they were of the intensifying persecution on the Continent. They were without political organisations or a press of their own, and there were few if any Romani refugees in Britain. The evidence for what they knew or how they might have known it is accordingly limited and anecdotal, and consists largely of reports by non-Roma. Thus Edward Harvey (unknown–unknown) met circus people in the Midlands in 1943 who told of a Greek Rom escaping Nazi efforts to ‘paralyse’ all the Gypsies so they could not bear children.11University of Liverpool Library, Liverpool, Special Collections, Gypsy Lore Society Archives, GLS XLIV/123, Edward Harvey, ‘Masterless Men. Some Aspects of English Nomadism in 1943’ (Unpublished Manuscript), 31. By contrast, Frederick Cowles (1900–1949) described Romani serviceman Jim Cooper (1920–1942) reflecting, ‘I suppose there are Gypsies fighting on the other side , and killing one’s own people is a rotten game,’ but Cowles had to tell Cooper that ‘the other side’ was murdering Roma.12Cowles, ‘Studies of British and Foreign Gypsies’, 30.
The best known expression of an individual Romani response to the genocide is that of the Welsh Rom Manfri Frederick Wood (unknown–unknown). He took part in the relief of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, probably with a mobile hospital unit of the 6th Airborne Division,13TNA WO 176/360 Medical Diaries 6 Airborne Division June 43 to June 46, entry for 13 April; cf https://www.belsen.co.uk/major-harold-daintree-johnson-224-parachute-field-ambulance/. and remembered: ‘When I saw the surviving Romanies, with small children among them, I was shaken. Then I went over to the ovens, and found on one of the steel stretchers the half-charred body of a girl, and I understood in one awful minute what had been going on there.’14Kenrick and Puxon, The Destiny of Europe’s Gypsies, 187. However, his wartime experience was only recorded in the late 1960s, when he was President of the newly founded British Gypsy Council and involved in efforts to build a Gypsy Servicemen’s Association and develop commemorative practices.
What Non-Romani Britons knew about Persecution and Genocide
There is good evidence for what non-Roma could have known and how they might have known about the genocide; the little evidence there is for how much they cared about it suggests a range of selective ways of seeing. People with an interest in Roma and ‘the Gypsy question’, like Gypsy Lore Society members Yates, Harvey and Cowles, would have been particularly attentive to the persecution, but the wider reading public could find evidence of it in the British press from as early as 1936. In that year, British newspapers reported discussions about the status of Roma under the Nuremberg Laws, local initiatives to reduce welfare payments and force people to work, the Erlass zur Bekämpfung der Zigeunerplage of 6 June 1936, and the removal of Roma to the Berlin-Marzahn detention camp.15‘Work Shy Gypsies,’ Manchester Evening News, 18 March 1936; ‘Two-Year Sentence for Possessing Foreign Bank Notes’, Evening Standard, 28 May 1936; ‘Germans Make War on Gipsy Plague’, Evening Standard, 19 June 1936; ‘Gipsies not Wanted’, Evening Standard, 17 July 1936. Readers of the ‘Daily Express’ learned in April 1937 that the German Farmers’ League was demanding the expulsion of all ‘gipsies, “like the Jews, a non-Aryan people”.’16‘”Expel Gipsies”’, Daily Express, 9 April 1937. ’The Times’, ’The Observer’ and the ’Daily Express’ informed readers about Himmler’s Runderlass of 8 December 1938.17‘Nazis to abolish “un-Aryan” gipsies’, Daily Express, 16 December 1938; ‘Outcasts’, The Times, 15 December 1938; ‘The Gypsies of Germany’, The Observer, 18 December 1938.
In the 1930s, there was very little editorial or reader response to news about the persecution, which was framed in neutral and sometimes even jocular terms. In the same issue of the ’Daily Express’ that reported on Himmler’s 1938 decree, a regular ‘Why and wherefore?’ feature asked: ‘I see that Germany is starting to “eliminate” the gipsies. Why do we call these people gipsies?’18‘Why and Wherefore?’ Daily Express, 16 December 1938. Unusually, ’The Observer’ and ’The Times’ reports on the decree were relatively long and accompanied by explicit commentary; both were critical of German policy while maintaining a humorous distance. After a concise account of the order for the racial registration of Roma, ’The Observer’s’ reporter offered a history of ‘Gypsies’ in Europe and concluded: ‘Here, in Britain, we are too used by this time to the caravan on the heath and the dark folk about the camp-fire to wish either to “combat the gypsy mode of existence” [a direct translation of ‘Bekämpfung des Zigeunerunwesens’] or to recall “anti-Egyptian“ laws happily long forgotten.’19‘The Gypsies of Germany,’ The Observer, 18 December 1938. ’The Times’ followed up its news report with a long and heavily ironic editorial which concluded: ‘[T]he Nazis doubtless have their own good reasons for keeping a stern eye on the gypsies … [P]erhaps they feel that in these strenuous times good Germans should live in and for the present; it will not do to have a lot of vagabonds going round foretelling the future.’20‘Gypsies and Warnings,’ The Times, 28 December 1938.
During the war, British readers received information from many parts of Europe (not all of it accurate) about developments and events. These included reports from Romania about calls for the segregation of Roma in early 1941 and the order for their expulsion in October 1942. Also in 1942, Roma figured among the reported victims of German reprisal killings in Serbia (March), there was a report that German Roma might, like, be forced to wear distinguishing marks and ‘work in settlements’ (June) and Reuters reported in September that between the Anschluss and the outbreak of the war all Roma men in Austria had been sterilised.21‘Segregation of Gipsies’, The Observer, 19 January 1941; ‘Gypsies must go’, Sunday Express, 18 October 1942; ‘A crime to remember against Hitler’, Sunday Express, 22 March 1942; ‘Nazis now attacking Gypsies’, Daily Telegraph, 20 June 1942; ‘Blood bath of all dark-haired Poles’, Sunday Express, 27 September 1942. In June 1943 the ’Aberdeen Press and Journal’ drew on German sources to predict ‘a German drive against 800,000 gipsies in Hungary, Serbia and Rumania [sic], similar to that against the Jews’, while a relatively long article in the ’Daily Mirror’ reported that ‘[i]n Rumania, in Germany itself and in Yugoslavia, tens of thousands of gipsies have been massacred or starved to death.’ In November the ’Daily Telegraph’s’ correspondent reported from liberated Kyiv that the persecution of Roma by the German occupiers was notorious.22‘Gypsies Next on Nazi List’, Press and Journal, 16 June 1943; T.V. Guerter, ‘King of Gipsies Declares “Holy War” on Nazis’, Daily Mirror, 17 June 1943; ‘Kiev Terror “Indelible Stain on Germany”’, Daily Telegraph, 29 November 1943.
In the immediate aftermath of the war, the extensive coverage of the Nuremberg Trials regularly cited the indictment that included ‘Gypsies’ among the victims of genocide.23For example: ‘The Nuremberg Calendar’, Daily Express, 19 October 1945. The Ravensbrück Trial, held in Hamburg before a British military court, was well covered by reports that included testimony about the suffering of Romani women and girls who were subjected to sterilisation experiments.24‘Nazi Cruelty to Women’, The Times, 6 December 1946; ‘Gypsies Writhed after Nazi Experiments’, Grimsby Evening Telegraph, 18 December 1946; ‘Manacled Woman’s 2-Day Fast’, Manchester Evening News, 20 December 1946; ‘Atrocities at Ravensbrück’, The Times, 2 January 1947. Articles in both the regional and the national press reported on the Hamburg Doctors’ Trial in 1946 (see below), making clear that the sterilisation victims in the case were Roma and detailing some of their testimony.25‘Case against S.S.’, Lancashire Daily Post, 9 November 1946; ‘Trial of German Doctors’, The Times, 3 December 1946; ‘German Doctors Sentenced’, The Times, 9 December 1946; ‘Nemesis Overtakes the War Criminals’, The Sphere, 14 December 1946. News reports on the migration of Slovak Roma into western Czechoslovakia and the trials of Serbian and Croatian collaborators in 1946 cited the wartime persecution of Roma as part of the context.26‘Gypsies Return to Bohemia’, The Times, 8 October 1946; ‘Belgrade Trial’, The Times, 22 June 1946; ‘Archbishop of Zagreb’s Defence’, The Times, 9 October 1946. And in March 1950, radio listeners could hear the German pacifist Gertrud Luckner (1900–1995) describe how, deploying the principles of ‘self-help’ she had learned in Britain, she had contributed to a network helping ‘Gypsies, Jews, “non-Aryan Christians” and other victims’.27Radio Times, 17 March 1950: 31; BBC Written Archives Centre, Caversham: Gertrud Luckner, ‘Organised Oppression and Improvised Help’ (transcript, typescript).
Before, during and after the war, however, the interest of the media in the fate of the Roma was inconsistent, and the selective vision not only of the media but of British individuals is very apparent in the testimony associated with the liberation of Bergen-Belsen and the trial of the camp personnel, both of which involved British actors. The witness statement by the Jewish doctor Charles Bendel (1914–unknown) in the Belsen Trial about the situation of Roma in Auschwitz-Birkenau featured in much of the regional press, but it was not covered by the principal metropolitan newspapers.28Cf. Joskowicz, Rain of Ash, 259. The ‘Guardian‘, ‘Times‘, ‘Daily Telegraph‘, ‘Evening Standard‘ and ‘Daily Express‘ reported only Bendel’s testimony about his work in the gas chambers. His account of Section BIIe appeared in newspapers published in Liverpool, Birmingham, Leicester, Coventry, Derby, Lincoln, Manchester, Nottingham, Plymouth, Torquay, Stoke on Trent, Aberdeen, Dundee, Leeds, Stafford, Hartlepool, and Tynemouth. For a typical headline: ‘Doctor Tells of Gas Chamber Horrors. Experiments Tried on Gypsies’, Evening Express (Liverpool), 1 October 1945. For another mention of Roma, see ‘How did Irma Greese get like this?’, Daily Express, 16 November 1945. The two best known members of the Belsen relief team who published accounts of their experience were the Communications Officer Derrick Sington (1908–1968) and the Jewish chaplain Leslie Hardman (1913–2008). Both describe the British forces’ burning of the last remaining concentration camp barracks on 21 May 1945, but only Hardman reports the presence of ‘Hungarian gypsies’, who ‘had been subjected to sterilisation more than any other group’ and ‘felt the confines of another prison closing around them’ when asked to move from the edge of the target area where they had pitched their tents.29Hardman, The Survivors, 74. Apart from that of Hardman and Manfri Frederick West, I have found only one piece of published or unpublished testimony from the British liberators that registers the presence of Roma in Bergen-Belsen beyond mentioning them as one prisoner group among others: The British medical students who played a key role there were perhaps best able to see the survivors as individuals, and the medical diary of one of them, Peter John Horsey (1924–2015), records his attentive care for ‘a Polish gypsy’ who was ‘pretty far gone’ and did not survive.30Imperial War Museum, London, Documents.1345, Private Papers of Dr P J Horsey, Typescript diary, pp. 7–9. For the observations of a Canadian serving with the British forces, see https://www.thetyphoonproject.org/439/Victor%20Henry%20John-Le%20Gear.html, and cf. Celinscak, Distance from the Belsen Heap, 108.
British Statesmen, Politicians and Intelligence Officers
Before and during World War II itself, British statesmen, politicians and intelligence officers had opportunities to learn of the persecution of Roma, even if they did not read the popular press. The government Command Paper on the treatment of German nationals in Germany, published in 1939, included statements from two former Buchenwald prisoners who both mentioned the presence of ‘Gypsies’ among the inmates.31Papers Concerning the Treatment of German Nationals in Germany 1938-1939, 10, 11. Among the press reports that referred to the persecution of Roma were articles in the refugee newspaper ‘Die Zeitung’, published in London. They included a March 1943 account received from a Yugoslav refugee that indicated that the Roma of Germany, its satellite states and the occupied territories had been ‘almost completely exterminated’. ’Die Zeitung’ was published and its contents presumably overseen by the British Ministry of Information.32‘Ende der Zigeunerromantik’, Die Zeitung, 25 March 1943. See also ‘Verseuchtes Europa’, Die Zeitung, 2 October 1942; ‘Zigeuner als Kriegsarbeiter’, Die Zeitung, 19 May 1944. It has not been possible to identify the authors of the articles. On the publication’s history, see Sternfeld, ‘”Die Zeitung: A London Journal 1941-1945’, 6; Vinzent, ‘Exilpresse digital in Support of Researching Visual Material: Images in Die Zeitung’; TNA HO 215/439, Distribution of Die Zeitung. And two of the key reports about Auschwitz emanating from Polish sources included information about the presence and circumstances of Romani inmates: At the end of August 1943, the Special Operations Executive (SOE) received a report from the intelligence service of the Polish Home Army on the ‘camp at Oświęcim’, which stated: ‘Mass executions of gipsies have started. The first transport of about one thousand was gassed.33’TNA HS 4/210, SOE Poland 100, German Policy in Poland in July 1943. In January 1944, Polish intelligence in London received a compilation of three eyewitness reports on conditions in Auschwitz which had been written during the previous summer; two of those described the situation of the inmates of the ‘Gypsy Camp’ (‘Zigeunerlager’, i.e. Section BIIe): In June it was reported that some 10,000 Roma had arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau during 1943 and that ‘indiscriminate’ gassing of Roma had begun. Of new arrivals from France and Greece in mid-1943, about 20 percent were reported to be Roma. And in July there was the account of an outbreak of typhus in Section BIIe.34Archiwum Akt Nowych, Warsaw, 1325 202/III/139, pp. 238–48: Beschreibung des KL Lagers Auschwitz. The compilation was first passed to American agencies, but the information circulated widely in various forms, and although no copy has survived in British archives it seems unlikely that it was not seen by British intelligence.35On the circulation of the report, see most recently Fleming, Auschwitz, the Allies and Censorship of the Holocaust, 200–08.
The reluctance of the Allied authorities to act on early information about Auschwitz is well known, and there is no evidence that any of the officers reading these reports reacted directly to the accounts of Romani victims or took specific action on their behalf.36Fleming, Auschwitz, and Michael Fleming, personal communication to the author, 31 August 2023. While the SOE did attempt to work with ethnic minorities in opposition to the German occupying forces in other cases, the suggestion of Jan Yoors (1922–1977), for example, that British intelligence was behind efforts to mobilise resistance among French Roma, cannot be corroborated.
After the War: British War Crimes Trials
The liberation of the camps and the subsequent trials were the first direct encounter that significant numbers of representatives of the British state had with evidence of the Romani genocide or with its victims. The Hamburg Doctors’ Trial (Hans Hinselmann et cons), held before a British military court in December 1946, is noteworthy not only in being the first, and the first successful, prosecution of racially-motivated crimes against Sinti and Roma (forced sterilisation). Also significant is the attitude of the British authorities, who showed a high degree of sympathy with the survivors and awareness of the nature of the persecution. The decision to prosecute the sterilisations as crimes against humanity was probably taken by the British in response to the ongoing investigations into the activity of one of Hinselmann’s co-defendants: Kurt Krause (1888–1954), an officer in the Dienststelle für Zigeunerfragen [Office for Gypsy Affairs] of the Hamburg criminal police, had been denounced for his leading role in the deportations of 1940 and 1943; in the Doctors’ Trial he was convicted of coercing victims to agree to sterilisation.37Repplinger, ‘“Hat sich besondere Kenntnisse in der Bearbeitung des Zigeunerunwesens erworben.“‘ No complete record of the investigation and trial in the Hinselmann case has survived.
Explaining the court’s verdict, the presiding judge, Colonel Herbert Bown (1887–1964), not only refuted the defendants’ plea of acting under orders and the defence attorneys’ claim that Control Council Law No. 10, under which they were prosecuted, was illegitimate because retrospective. He also directly challenged the efforts of the defence to de-legitimise the testimony of the Romani victims: ‘In general these Gypsies were extremely impressive witnesses. They gave a dispassionate account of the facts in spite of what they have suffered. Wherever possible they spoke well of the defendants … Among those witnesses was a poor woman who could neither read nor write, and others who seem to be making the best of things and are able to fight their corner. That made a strong impression on the court and it is convinced that any country could be proud to have these people as citizens. … It is unbelievable that at a time when Germany was in trouble and everybody knew that the war was lost, people were called back from the front – just because they were Gypsies – to be sterilised, to be maimed, and to see their families suffer’.38Staatsarchiv Hamburg 131-11 1982, Disziplinarverfahren Hans Hinselmann, Urteilsbegründung; also in Staatsarchiv Hamburg 221-11 P13797, Entnazifizierungsakte Krause.
Unusually, the court chose to give credence to Romani witnesses even when their testimony was implausible or self-contradictory in its details, taking their circumstances into account. On Bown’s instructions, the fine of 100,000 Marks imposed on Hinselmann was distributed among the victims by way of compensation.39Staatsarchiv Hamburg 351-11 49356, Wiedergutmachungsakte A.S., Prosecutions Department, Military Government, Hamburg to Judge Bown, 30 July 1947.
The dozens of ordinary British men and women in uniform who were involved in the investigation and prosecution of war crimes will thus have carried knowledge of the genocide home with them, though it cannot be established how wide or deep the circles of knowledge were.
Early documentation of the genocide
British organisations and individuals were active in documenting the Romani genocide from a relatively early stage. These included the Gypsy Lore Society and the Wiener Library. The Wiener Library, which Dr Alfred Wiener (1885–1964) established as the Jewish Central Information Office in Amsterdam 1933, moved to London in 1939. In spite of its focus on documenting Jewish life and researching Nazism, its staff began to collect data on the persecution of Roma in the 1940s, and from 1957 onwards systematically gathered oral testimony from Roma survivors. Starting in 1950, the ‘Wiener Library Bulletin’ reported on the persecution and its aftermath.40Joskowicz, Rain of Ash, 155–56; ‘How the Gipsies were Persecuted’, 18; Adler, ‘How the Gipsies were Persecuted’, 36; ‘Gypsies in the Third Reich’. Among the important contributions of the Wiener Library was its sponsorship of the research of Donald Kenrick and Grattan Puxon, which resulted in the publication of one of the first synoptic accounts of the Romani genocide, ‘The Destiny of Europe’s Gypsies’ (1972).
Kenrick came to Romani studies and political advocacy as a Communist, social activist and linguistician. Puxon became a full-time activist in the cause of Roma and Traveller rights after moving from England to Ireland in 1960. Before returning to England, he joined the Directing Committee of the Communité Mondiale Gitane (later Comité Internationale Rom or International Rom Committee– IRC) on the invitation of Ionel Rotaru (geb. unbekannt). Kenrick and Puxon met in the course of actions against the eviction of English Travellers and played key roles in the 1966 formation of the British Gypsy Council, of which Puxon became Secretary.41Acton, ‘Introduction’; Puxon, ‘The Romani movement: rebirth and the first World Romani Congress in retrospect’, 94–113. At the suggestion of IRC secretary Jacques Dauvergne (aka Vanko Rouda) (1936–unbekannt), they began to gather evidence to support the compensation claims of European Romani Holocaust victims, and were members of the IRC’s internal War Crimes Commission. When the Wiener Library advertised research funding in 1967, Kenrick and Puxon made a successful application, and this allowed them to extend their archival and oral history research in Europe, making contact with Continental researchers including Reimar Gilsenbach (1925–2001), Miriam Novitch (1908–1990) and Milena Hübschmannová (1933–2005). The result was ‘The Destiny of Europe’s Gypsies’, completed in 1969 and published in 1972, which established a model by setting the Nazi genocide in the context of the history of antigypsyism and emphasising the continuation of prejudice and discrimination after 1945.42Acton, ‘Introduction’, xxiii; Grattan Puxon, personal communications to the author, 16 and 18 July 2023; Wiener Holocaust Museum, London, Donald Kenrick Papers; Bishopsgate Institute, London, Grattan Puxon Papers, PUX/422.
Commemoration
The fact that the same people were involved in the founding of the IRC and the Gypsy Council, and in particular Grattan Puxon’s determined internationalism, contributed to Holocaust awareness among British Gypsies and Travellers. Inspired by the advice and actions of other IRC members, Puxon organised the first event commemorating the Romani genocide in Britain: On 17 December 1967, to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of Himmler’s Auschwitz decree, a meeting was held at the Friends’ Hall in Bethnal Green (London) under the auspices of the Gypsy Council. The event ended with the ceremonial burning of a tent in the grounds of the hall.43Bishopsgate Institute, London, Grattan Puxon Papers, PUX/84; Grattan Puxon, personal communication to the author, 16 July 2023.
In wider British society, the 1990s marked the intensification of national initiatives to disseminate knowledge of the Holocaust and a continuous practice of commemoration. A Holocaust Educational Trust was founded in 1988, and soon played an important role in educating teachers, as the national curriculum introduced in 1991 mandated teaching on Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. The Imperial War Museum began planning for a dedicated Holocaust Gallery in 1994, following the success of an exhibition on the relief of Bergen-Belsen. 27 January was introduced by law as a national Holocaust Memorial Day in 2000, with an educational trust (Holocaust Memorial Day Trust) funded by the government. The Conservative government that took office in 2010 undertook to further promote Holocaust education, and in 2015 initiated a project for a Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre in close proximity to the Houses of Parliament.44Pearce, Holocaust Consciousness in Contemporary Britain; Britain’s Promise to Remember.
In their original conception, all these initiatives focused on the Jewish experience of suffering, survival and rescue. By the late 2000s the Romani genocide was being incorporated as a topic in the work of most agencies, with commemorative and educational events and internet postings timed to coincide with Holocaust Memorial Day, Roma Holocaust Memorial Day (2 August), International Roma Day (8 April) or Britain’s Gypsy Roma Traveller History Month (since 2008, the month of June). When the Imperial War Museum redeveloped its Holocaust Gallery (re-opened in 2021), extensive efforts were made to represent the persecution of the Roma at each point in the narrative.
However, in 2023 the British government had yet to implement Council of Europe recommendations on teaching the history of the Romani genocide in schools. Moreover, the one public initiative that remained resistant to the claims of Romani victims was the scheme for a Holocaust Memorial. The advisory Prime Minister’s Holocaust Commission appointed in 2014 went beyond its original terms of reference to insist that the persecution of Roma and other non-Jewish victims be included in education and commemoration, but neither that body nor the foundation tasked with carrying out the memorial project had any Romani members. In the 2020s this was still a subject of public protest and legal challenge by Romani organisations, although some Roma are actively participating in the Memorial project.45Britain’s Promise to Remember; ‘It’s August 2nd and the Roma Holocaust continues, say Drive2Survive’, Travellers Times, 2 August 2021 (https://www.travellerstimes.org.uk/features/its-august-2nd-and-roma-holocaust-continues-say-drive-2-survive, accessed 6 January 2024); Bishopsgate Institute, London, Grattan Puxon Papers, PUX/387. Cf https://www.romaniarts.co.uk/commemorating-roma-sinti-victims-of-nazi-persecution/ (accessed 6 January 2024).
While the positive institutional developments outlined here reflect advances that have taken place in academic research and knowledge on the Romani genocide, the voices of British Roma, often represented by the Gypsy Council, have been crucial at key points.46‘Gypsy Council wins victory in the fight for more rights and recognition of the Roma Holocaust’, Travellers Times, 11 August 2016 (https://www.travellerstimes.org.uk/news/2016/08/gypsy-council-wins-victory-fight-more-rights-and-recognition-roma-holocaust, accessed 5 January 2024). After 2010, generational and demographic shifts led to new initiatives from Britain’s Romani communities and dynamic interaction between local and international projects. Romani immigrants from Eastern and Central Europe brought with them transgenerational memories and commemorative traditions, while young British Gypsies and Travellers increasingly engaged in pan-European initiatives such as TernYpe and Dikh He Na Bister. At the same time, the repeated defacement of a Glasgow memorial created by the Roma organisation Romano Lav in 2019 is a reminder that in Britain as across Europe the experiences of war, genocide and reconstruction did not bring an end to prejudice and discrimination. In 2010, Gypsies, Roma and Travellers were legally designated a protected ethnic group. In 2016, they were found to be the most disadvantaged group in England.47https://www.glasgowtimes.co.uk/news/20174274.roma-holocaust-memorial-glasgows-queens-park-vandalised/ (accessed 6 January 2024); England’s most disadvantaged groups: Gypsies, Travellers and Roma (https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/sites/default/files/is-england-fairer-2016-most-disadvantaged-groups-gypsies-travellers-roma.pdf, accessed 6 January 2024).
