RAN Newsletter 02/2024 Online Encyclopaedia on National Socialist Genocide of Sinti and Roma
Hundreds of thousands of Sinti and Roma were persecuted and murdered under the National Socialist regime in Germany and Europe. The historical knowledge about this genocide is currently being compiled in a large-scale encyclopaedia under the leadership of the Research Centre on Antigypsyism at Heidelberg University. The first contributions to this unique resource, which is available in German and English, are now online and can be used for research purposes.
“The aim of the Nazi state and its racial ideology was to annihilate the Sinti and Roma minority. Although important special studies have appeared in past decades, knowledge on this topic is still extremely fragmented,” explains project head Dr Karola Fings from the Research Centre on Antigypsyism. The online portal gives access to specialist articles, which are not only ordered alphabetically but also allocated to different sections such as genocide sites, personal biographies or the aftermath and are constantly being updated and expanded. Besides photographs, the digital encyclopaedia also features an interactive map. It shows all the sites across Europe about which there is information, including concentration camps, but also places where massacres were carried out. A chronological list gives an overview of all relevant events from 1933 onward.
More than 90 scholars from 25 countries are contributing to the Encyclopaedia documenting the National Socialist genocide of the Sinti and Roma in Europe, also known as „Samudaripen“. The project, launched in summer 2020 for a planned five-year period, is receiving 1.6 million euros in funding from the Federal Foreign Office and has the backing of various cooperation partners and an academic advisory board. The encyclopaedia is intended to comprise around 1,000 articles by the end of 2025 and constitute a milestone in research and educational activity. It is technically based on Open Encyclopedia Systems and was implemented by the Center for Digital Systems (CeDiS) at FU Berlin.