The persecution of German Romanies: the case of Osnabrück, 1933-46.

MINORITIES; TWENTIETH century; PERSECUTION of Jewish Christians

Studies of racial persecution in Germany, particularly during the Nazi period, now appear on almost a daily basis, so that every victimized minority has received attention. Antisemitism remains the main focus of research but the Romanies have now begun to attract scholars. While historians have studied Jews in virtually every location and over short time periods, they have tended to examine the situation of the Romanies at the national level using a longer time frame, recognizing the continuities of racial persecution that link the Nazi years with the rest of the twentieth century. Panayi brings out these longer-term patterns by focusing on the case of Osnabrück. He begins with an account of the historiography of Romanies at both the local and national level, and contrasts this with the general attention that German history of the first half of the twentieth century, especially the Third Reich, has received. The narrative then moves on to use the limited information available on the Osnabrück Romanies to carry out a detailed examination of the realities of their everyday life and the attitudes of the authorities towards them in the town between 1933 and 1946. Panayi's study falls into the German social history approach of Alltagsgeschichte , which uses the specific to draw out the realities of the general national picture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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