Romani Identity Formation and the Globalization of Holocaust Discourse

Abstract

A Dialectic of the Local and the Global Over the last decade, there has been a growing tendency among Romani elites and organizations to participate in a globalized holocaust discourse to deal with processes of Romani identity formation. This article scrutinizes the consequences of this participation by focusing on debates about the role of the Nazi genocide of the Roma in these processes of identity formation, and by analyzing the exhibition on the extermination of the European Roma in the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in particular. As we will see below, from this analysis arises the general question of how the processes of Romani identity formation in general, and their reliance on the Roma’s various histories of marginalization and persecution in particular, have to deal with their own specificity.1 The visitor to the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Poland who follows the route suggested in the museum’s guidebook will end her or his tour with a visit to the recently established permanent exhibition on the extermination of the European Roma. This exhibition is located in barrack 13 of the former Auschwitz I extermination camp (the so-called Stammlager). The barrack is the last one on the recommended route along the fifteen camp barracks that together make up the museum’s exhibition. Established in August 2001, the exhibition on the Roma marks a rather unique part of the museum’s exhibitions. For the first time in the museum’s history, a particular exhibition has been dedicated to the suffering of the Roma. Moreover, since it was realized by various national Romani organizations, it can be considered as one of the first opportunities for Romani self-representation at such an internationally important site of memory.2 At the moment of its establishment the exhibition was the most modern and remarkable exhibition of the museum, and it still is in Romani Identity Formation and the Globalization of Holocaust Discourse