The Legacies of the Romani Genocide in Europe since 1945

Celia Donert, Eve Rosenhaft, Celia Donert, Eve Rosenhaft

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000511031
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire de l'Europe de l'Est

This book explores the legacies of the genocide of Roma in Europe after the end of the Second World War. Hundreds of thousands of people labelled as 'Gypsies' were persecuted or killed in Nazi Germany and across occupied Europe between 1933 and 1945. In many places, discrimination continued after the war was over. The chapters in this volume ask how these experiences shaped the lives of Romani survivors and their families in eastern and western Europe since 1945.

This book will appeal to researchers and students in Modern European History, Romani Studies, and the history of genocide and the Holocaust.

Part I The forgotten genocide? Producing, circulating and silencing knowledge about the genocide of Roma

1 Mass arrests and persecution of “Nomads” in France, 1944–1946: Post-liberation purges or evidence of anti-“Gypsyism”?

Lise Foisneau

DOI: 10.4324/9780429296604-1

“This is where they buried my youngest child”, Chvartse S. recalled in the 1970s as she passed near the Issoire cemetery.¹ It was there that after being paraded through the city streets in the back of a truck on 2 September 1944, a father and three of his sons were shot by a group of French Forces of the Interior (FFI). No credible explanation could subsequently be found for the collective emotion that led to the execution of this family, and the only information recorded by the Renseignements généraux (French police intelligence service) was that the victims were “Nomads.”

The French administration had used the term nomades since 1912 to refer to groups that exhibited “the particular ethnic character of Romanichels, Bohemians, Tziganes and Gitanos.”² Even before France had surrendered to Germany, an official decree issued on 6 April 1940 either interned “nomads” or assigned them to fixed places of residence (assignation à residence) under police surveillance.³ Because they were suspected of “communicating with enemy agents” and passing on information about the movements of French troops, they were also forbidden from travelling, a ban that remained in effect long after the Liberation.⁴ In fact, while whole towns and villages celebrated the departure of the occupation forces, the “nomads” remained confined to their camps and residences, a ban that would ultimately be lifted only in July 1946.

Interestingly, only since the 1990s has the subject of the internment of “nomads” first proven to be of scholarly interest. The post-war period from 1944 to 1946, during which their movements continued to be restricted, remains chronically neglected.⁵ The historical literature is equally silent concerning the tragic events that transpired in several towns in the Massif Central region in late summer 1944 during Liberation, although a living collective memory persists among present-day “Travellers” (the English equivalent of the new official term gens du voyage that replaced the term nomades in 1969). Research based on their recollections and official French archives confirms that from July 1944 to August 1945 between 60 and 100 nomades were arbitrarily arrested – approximately 30 of whom were executed – in the Massif Central region of France.⁶ Prior to 2019, no historical studies of the plight of the nomades during the Second World War have been based on oral narratives, and their sombre story has consequently been left untold.

Only the notebooks and articles of the Abbott Valet, called the Aumônier des Gitans d’Auvergne (Chaplain of the Gypsies of Auvergne) by the Catholic Church, offer a record of post-Liberation executions and arbitrary arrests inflicted on the region’s “nomad” population. Unfortunately, both his articles, published in 1974 in Monde Gitan and 1995 in Études tsiganes, remained unknown until recently to historians, anthropologists or political activists. Historians who specialize in the purges in France have also paid scant attention to these events, although it is highly likely that they encountered archival references to these executions, which were stored in the same boxes as documents related to the post-Liberation head shaving and humiliation of women in Puy-de-Dôme.⁷

I came upon this little-known chapter of the purges while conducting a study that initially focused on the role of the nomades in the Resistance.⁸ Almost by chance, while speaking with witnesses and examining archival materials concerning the Resistance, I began to hear stories about the arrest and execution of nomades during the purges. When questioning the descendants of Resistance members and nomades assigned to residence in villages in the region, witnesses occasionally linked participation of particularly close friends and family members in the Resistance with reprisals suffered during the Liberation of the villages where they were assigned to residence. The policy that assigned the entire nomade population on French territory⁹ to remain in designated sites for up to five years intimately connected them to village life. In areas in which nomades were particularly implicated in local Resistance activities, especially in the Massif Central, executions and arrests immediately after Liberation were frequent. Numerous young nomade men had joined the maquis after 1943 in order to avoid the STO¹⁰ (Service du Travail Obligatoire or Obligatory Labour Service), as did other members of their generation, and a large number of nomade families risked their lives to hide young villagers who were attempting to avoid being drafted by the STO. A large number of nomades also joined the fighting that took place during the summer of 1944.¹¹ This five-year period of enforced proximity was characterized by persistent tension between nomades subjected to compulsory residence orders and certain villagers. Departmental archives are replete with evidence of daily conflicts in the form of petitions and letters sent to village mayors and prefectures denouncing nomades assigned to residence.¹² Some residents openly blamed nomades for infractions that ranged from small thefts of fruit, fowl and firewood to crying children, vulgar language and indecent behaviour towards adolescents, brawling and the destruction of crops by domestic animals. It is within this social context that the arrests and executions after Liberation need to be understood.¹³

Neighbours of nomades assigned to residence tended to be involved in the scenes of collective arrest described here. Villagers, for example, arguing that the sounds of the Manouche language spoken by some nomades resembled German, succeeded in convincing town residents, such as the FFI or FTP (Francs-Tireurs et Partisans, armed resistance force of the Communist Party) that their nomades neighbours had collaborated with the Germans. P. Hoffmann, one of the witnesses interviewed for this project, explained FFI or FTP participation in this way: “Those people [i.e. who placed nomades under arrest], they were faux-maquis [impostor guerilla resistance fighters], last-minute resisters, who blamed us for everything.”¹⁴ Of the 30 cases examined for this study in the Massif Central that were tried by courts of justice – tribunals established by executive order on 26 June 1944 to prosecute collaborators – only one was sentenced to death. Without exception, the 29 others were freed following acquittals or dismissals, and some judges indicated that “charges were superficial”¹⁵ and were matters of “personal revenge”¹⁶ or “rumours” among villagers. Abbott Valet ascribed such episodes of lynching to “anti-Gypsy racism.”¹⁷ After years of compulsory residence orders or internment of family members and friends, many of whom were killed or deported to Nazi camps, the nomades in the Massif Central faced an even more difficult period that they called “à la Liberation”¹⁸ when members of their community found themselves wrongly accused of “intelligence avec l’ennemi” (sharing information with the enemy).

In describing the persecution of nomades after the Massif Central was liberated, this chapter proposes to situate these episodes within a broader, ongoing process of stigmatization. The intersection between two bodies of sources is informative in this regard – the first corpus consisting of documents issued by prefectures, the Renseignements généraux, police precincts, and files and decisions by courts martial and courts of justice, and a second corpus of oral testimonies that encompasses Abbott Valet’s notes from his interviews with Travellers during the 1970s and testimonies that were part of this study. In this chapter, I will discuss four types of persecution: Summary executions of elderly men, women and children; families of nomades brought before courts martial; arrests of “nomadic individuals” and subsequent judgement by courts of justice; and internment of nomades for several months (later freed without being tried in court) for “intelligence avec l’ennemi.”

1.1 Summary executions in the Massif Central region (July–September 1944)

In late August 1944, somewhere between Chalon-sur-Saône and Dijon, “faux maquis”¹⁹ abruptly entered the location where Hoffmann’s mother and grandparents were assigned residence. Armed men ordered them to leave their caravans and to form a line, accusing them of providing information “to the Germans” and claiming that their language, Manouche, sounded Germanic. Hoffmann’s grandfather, who could not tolerate the fact that his family and neighbours were humiliated in this way by men who were not even from the area, spoke up. His family members tried to prevent him from speaking: “People were telling him, ‘Stop talking,’ but it was too late. You either said too much, or you didn’t say enough.” He was shot on the spot, along with one of his daughters and several neighbours. Michel W. had just turned 46 years old, and his daughter had recently turned 20. “We hadn’t suffered enough yet”, Hoffmann concluded in his narrative, which I collected in 2019 and closely echoes the following accounts noted by the Abbott Valet in 1974 and 1995:

Désiré W. was riding along in a shabby roulotte with her five children above Volvic. The maquisards [guerilla resistance fighters] stopped her and said, “Apparently you’re for the Germans.” The eldest, 25, a simpleton and terrified, was confused and uncertain whether to answer yes or no. The resisters took the whole family away. A Manouche woman ran from the neighbouring roulotte, catching up with the two daughters and saying, “Those girls are mine!” That was how she saved Guentsi and Bolonié. The others were shot in the quarries at Pagnat. The youngest was only fourteen.²⁰

The striking similarities between these two narratives encouraged me to search departmental archives for evidence of additional shootings. Although I did not find documents concerning the killings of Michel W. or Désiré W., I did locate information about the executions of other nomades. Some of these incidents are described in Renseignements généraux (police intelligence services) notes, including the summary execution of a family without trial, while others provided information about a case in a document that had no direct connection to an execution. For example, a memorandum describing the issue of a carnet anthropométrique (anthropometric identity booklet)²¹ to Fanny B. near Montluçon on 19 October 1944 included the following anecdotal detail: “With respect to my husband, the Nomad M. (André), I learned recently that he was executed by patriots on 2 August 1944, but I do not know for what reasons and cannot say anything definite about his situation.”²² A memorandum concerning the reclassification of three women carnival workers as nomades dated 14 April 1945 also stated, “Virginie F. is the widow of the carnival worker Steinbach, suspected of anti-French activities and executed by firing squad in July 1941 by a resistance security team in Castelfranc (Lot).”²³ But my search for additional information concerning these executions failed to reveal evidence to support these charges and even when documents exist, they are too imprecise to allow the positive identification of victims. A judicial police report in April 1945 in Haute-Loire referring to the execution of a “Bohemian” by the maquis recorded:

It was the chief of t...