Berlin, Germany – The upper chamber of Germany’s parliament, the Bundesrat, on Friday held its annual commemoration of the Sinti, Roma and Yenish who were persecuted and murdered under Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime.
Across Europe, 500,000 members of these minorities fell victim to the Nazis and were murdered in concentration camps, said Bundesrat President Anke Rehlinger.
Today, around 70,000 Roma and Sinti live in Germany again and are at home here, Rehlinger added.
Nevertheless, they still experience stigmatization and marginalization, she said during the chamber’s last session of the year, when the commemoration traditionally takes place.
The strong rise in nationalism and right-wing extremism as well as the resurgence of violent anti-Romani sentiment should be a cause of great concern for everyone, Rehlinger stressed.
The head of the Bundesrat recalled how the Nazis regarded the minorities as “asocial” and “racially inferior” and what this led to during their rule of Germany from 1933-1945, when six million Jews were also killed.
“Families were torn apart with brutal cruelty, children were taken away from their parents and deported to death camps. They were locked up in ghettos, deprived of their human rights and condemned to the worst of all fates,” Rehlinger said. “It is the task of all of us to ensure that racism and discrimination never have a chance again.”