The most shocking thing I have learned about the Holocaust is...

[untonuggan]

That 1.5 million Roma were killed in the Holocaust, but it was not ruled a war crime in the Nuremberg trials because the defense said that all the "gypsies" were not killed because of their ethnicity, but because they were criminals (men, women, and children). And the prosecution let that go, and basically said, "Oh, right, yeah, they're all criminals so that makes sense. Moving on."

And it took 30 years for 1.5 million Roma deaths to be classified as a war crime.

This brought to you by a recent interest in Roma history, because there's still a lot of prejudice against Roma in my immediate family and, well, the world.

Comments

[green_knight]

... and Roma are still struggling for compensation to this day.

(Copyedited a fascinating book a couple of years ago; well worth reading if you haven't.)

[untonuggan]

It's on my list of things to read. Thanks for the link.

[altamira16]

Did you follow that recent story about the little Roma girl?

There was a Roma girl who had blond hair with these adults that clearly did not. Greece assumed that the girl had been kidnapped by these people and was searching for her real parents. Her guardians were jailed. Her real mom turned out to be a Roma who had left the country to look for work who could not afford to take her daughter with her so the daughter was left in the care of friends.

[spiralsheep]

It's not, alas, an isolated incident, especially because of the libellous stereotype that Romani people supposedly steal babies. There was a similar case in Ireland at around the same time.

[untonuggan]

I had heard about the Irish case, but not the one in Greece.

[spiralsheep]

Not only Roma but Sinti too and maybe also small numbers of other Romani peoples. It can be rly difficult to find out what happened to Romani relatives because they weren't always neatly recorded and processed or sent to concentration camps. Many were massacred in small groups in rural locations, and no-one cared enough to record who they were or even how many people were killed.

[untonuggan]

...people.

content warning — feel free to screen this at your discretion

[jjhunter]

My junior year in high school, we went on a trip to Europe / Eastern Europe and visited as many sites of significance to the Holocaust as could be cramped into a week of school vacation. Seeing the mausoleum at Majdanek — acc. to Wikipedia,

some 1,300 m³ of surface soil mixed with human ashes and fragments of bones was collected and turned into a large mound

there's no metric that makes sense of 'worst' for me when it comes to the things that happened.

"30 years for 1.5 million Roma deaths to be classified as a war crime" is an unfathomable injustice that ought to be more broadly known and more thoroughly interrogated in the public sphere, especially as it so clearly signifies the depth of ongoing prejudice against the Roma.

I would be wary still of 'worst'. It tends to bring out 'but what about $thing?' conversation derailment out like woah, when I suspect you mean something more like 'the hardest to grapple with' / 'the most devastating thing' / etc..

/is still haunted by that mausoleum, and how small and shattering it felt to stand there. in my memory it was half a football field of ash mounded high. there were the remains of Roma people in there, among so many, many others.

Re: content warning — feel free to screen this at your discretion

[untonuggan]

You are absolutely right; words fail when faced with "... ... ... WAT"

Thanks. <3

[ofearthandstars]

That is... really horrifying.

[untonuggan]

Yes. <3

[marahmarie]

Aaaaand gypsies still get a bad rap to this day, and the bad rap is presented as fact, and that pisses me off. I have always been fascinated by gypsies and don't feel a small lawless segment within any society should ever be presented as its whole. Why they couldn't agree that should be so back in the day just stymies me.

[untonuggan]

Pretty much.