Newcastle upon Tyne
Remembering the Roma/Sinti Holocaust (Samudaripen)
A Romani word meaning “mass killing”, used by this Centre to name this chapter of the Holocaust.
Between 1933 and 1945, hundreds of thousands of Roma and Sinti people were murdered across Europe. This Centre exists so that they are named, studied and remembered.
The people
The word
What Samudaripen means
Samudaripen is a Romani word meaning “mass killing”. It is the Romani name for the Holocaust, used most widely by Roma and Sinti organisations, and it is the name this Centre uses.
The people who carried it out had their own word for those they killed. Police registries, sterilisation files and deportation lists all say Zigeuner — “Gypsies”. Naming what happened in the language of the people it happened to is not a matter of style. It takes the description away from the perpetrators.
In English you will also read the Roma Holocaust, the Sinti Holocaust and the Roma and Sinti Holocaust. They describe the same events. Where a survivor or a family uses a different word for what was done to them, we use theirs.
- Samudaripen“mass killing”
- The term used most widely by Romani organisations across Europe, and the one this Centre uses in its own writing.The term this Centre uses
- Porrajmos“the devouring”
- Common in English-language scholarship. Many Romani speakers avoid it, because in some dialects the word carries an obscene second meaning. It appears on this site only where a source uses it.
- Kali Traš“the black fear”
- Used in some communities. Where survivors or their families use a particular word for what was done to them, we keep theirs.
How many were killed
220,000 – 500,000
The range within which published scholarly estimates of the Roma and Sinti dead generally fall. Some historians argue for a substantially higher figure.
There will never be a precise number. People were shot at the roadside and buried where they fell, without a register kept or a name written down. In parts of occupied Europe the proportional loss was near-total — the Romani communities of Croatia and of the occupied Soviet Union were effectively destroyed. The imprecision is not a gap in the scholarship. It is a description of how the killing was done.
The people
A list of names, not a number
Behind every name on the Wall of Remembrance there is a record: where the person was born, where they were killed, and the collection that documents it. These four opened the wall.
Anna Maria Steinbach
known as Settela Steinbach, Settela
Nine years old. The face in the cattle-wagon doorway, taken for a Jewish child for fifty years.
1934–1944 · Sinti · Auschwitz-Birkenau
Johann Wilhelm Trollmann
known as Rukeli Trollmann, Rukeli
German light-heavyweight champion for a matter of days, until the title was annulled for boxing in an un-German style.
1907–1943 · Sinti · Wittenberge, a subcamp of Neuengamme concentration camp
Sidonie Adlersburg
known as Sidi Adlersburg
Ten years old. Taken from the foster family in Upper Austria who tried to keep her.
1933–1943 · Roma · Auschwitz-Birkenau
Erna Lauenburger
known as Unku
German schoolchildren read a novel about her while she was being registered, confined and deported.
1920–1943 · Sinti · Auschwitz-Birkenau
Rosa Böhmer
Nine years old. A square in the middle of Gelsenkirchen carries her name, seventy-seven years after the city deported her.
1933–1943 · Sinti · Auschwitz-Birkenau
Werner Böhmer
Six months old, and the first of the nine Böhmer children to die.
1942–1943 · Sinti · Auschwitz-Birkenau
Albert Böhmer
Two or three years old. The exact date of his birth is not recorded.
1940–1943 · Sinti · Auschwitz-Birkenau
Sophie Böhmer
Three years old. She died on the same day as her sister Marie.
1939–1943 · Sinti · Auschwitz-Birkenau
Marie Böhmer
Four years old. She died on the same day as her sister Sophie.
1938–1943 · Sinti · Auschwitz-Birkenau
Karl Böhmer
Six years old. He carried his father's name; his father had died in a camp eighteen months earlier.
1937–1943 · Sinti · Auschwitz-Birkenau
Elisabeth Böhmer
Eleven years old. She died on the same day as her six-year-old brother Karl.
1931–1943 · Sinti · Auschwitz-Birkenau
Willy Böhmer
Eight years old. He outlived his mother in the camp by three weeks.
1935–1944 · Sinti · Auschwitz-Birkenau
Sonia Böhmer
Twelve when she was deported. Alone of the nine Böhmer children, no record of her death has been found.
Fate not established · Sinti · Not established
Anna Böhmer
Taken from her flat on Bergmannstraße with all nine of her children.
1909–1943 · Sinti · Auschwitz-Birkenau
Karl Böhmer
A musician. The cause of death entered against his name was pneumonia.
died 1941 · Sinti · Niedernhagen concentration camp, Wewelsburg
Harald Anton Schopper
known as Harald Gomann
Four years old. His mother wrote to Auschwitz asking whether she was even permitted to send him a parcel.
1939–1943 · Romani · Auschwitz-Birkenau
Janosch Schopper
Conscripted into the Wehrmacht in 1940, discharged for being Sinti, and deported three years later with his four-year-old son.
1909–1943 · Romani · Auschwitz-Birkenau
Patzura Schopper
Photographed by the police twice, a few years apart. The second photograph is the record of what was done to her in between.
1880–1943 · Romani · Auschwitz-Birkenau
Frinka Behrens
Prisoner Z-2381. Selected for the medical experiments because she was a twin.
1921–1943 · Romani · Auschwitz-Birkenau
Johann Behrens
Prisoner Z-2383. Selected for the medical experiments because he was a twin.
1921–1943 · Romani · Auschwitz-Birkenau
Dietrich Behrens
Sixty-three. He arrived at Auschwitz on 13 March and was dead within ten days.
1879–1943 · Romani · Auschwitz-Birkenau
Rigo Hellberg
On arrival he had to surrender his clothing and his work booklet — the document that made lawful employment possible.
1915–1942 · Romani · Niedernhagen concentration camp, Wewelsburg
Maria Müller
Sixty-nine years old, and a widow, when the city moved her into the camp.
1873–1943 · Romani · Auschwitz-Birkenau
Grete Müller
Born inside the camp her family had been confined to, and deported from it before she was two.
1941–1943 · Romani · Auschwitz-Birkenau
Josef Schopper
He survived Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Dora-Mittelbau, Sachsenhausen and a death march, and died at thirty-five.
1926–1962 · Romani · Gelsenkirchen — from the effects of his imprisonment
The Centre's own archive will supply the great majority of names. Each one arrives with its source, or it does not go up.
The record
How it happened
Persecution did not begin with the camps. Roma and Sinti families were being indexed by German police thirty years before the first deportation, and the paperwork is why we know.
The full timeline runs from 1899 to 2015 in 23 dated entries, each one carrying its source.
See the full timeline1899
Munich
A police index of Roma families
Bavarian police establish an information service on Roma and Sinti under Alfred Dillmann, collecting names, photographs, fingerprints and family relationships. In 1905 Dillmann publishes the Zigeuner-Buch, a printed register of more than three thousand people. Nothing in it is secret and nothing in it is illegal. It is simply a list, and it is still in use forty years later.
July 1936
Berlin
The Olympic clearance
Weeks before the Olympic Games open, Berlin police clear Roma and Sinti from the city and confine around six hundred people to a site at Marzahn, between a sewage works and a cemetery. It is called a Rastplatz — a resting place. There is one water tap and two toilets. Municipal camps follow in Cologne, Frankfurt, Düsseldorf and elsewhere, and become the collection points for later deportations.
June 1942 – 1944
Romania to Transnistria
The Transnistria deportations
The Antonescu regime deports around 25,000 Roma from Romania across the Dniester into Transnistria. They are left in villages and open ground without shelter, food or medicine through two winters. At least 11,000 die of starvation, exposure and typhus, or are shot. Romania acknowledged the deportations in the report of its own international commission in 2004.
26 February 1943
Auschwitz-Birkenau
Section BIIe
The first transports reach Birkenau. Roma and Sinti are not separated on arrival but held together as families in section BIIe, the Zigeunerfamilienlager. Around 23,000 men, women and children from across occupied Europe are registered there. There is no sanitation to speak of; noma, typhus and starvation kill continuously. Around 21,000 of those registered die.
2 August 1944
Auschwitz-Birkenau
The liquidation of the family camp
In the weeks before, several thousand Roma and Sinti judged fit for labour are transferred to other camps. On the night of 2 August the SS surround what is left of section BIIe. Around 4,300 people — most of them children, the elderly and the sick — are taken to the gas chambers and murdered. 2 August is Roma Holocaust Memorial Day.
15 April 2015
Strasbourg
2 August recognised across Europe
The European Parliament adopts a resolution recognising what was done to Roma and Sinti as historical fact, and designating 2 August as European Roma Holocaust Memorial Day. The same resolution records that anti-Gypsyism remains widespread in Europe.
The archive
Voices, faces, paper
Survivor testimony, family photographs and administrative records — the evidence that the Nazi state and its collaborators tried to make disappear, and the faces and handwriting it left behind.
- Survivor testimoniesVideo, audio and transcript
- Photographs and documentsFamily and administrative records
- Wall of RemembranceNames, with their sources
2 August
On the night of 2 August 1944 the SS surrounded what remained of the family camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Around 4,300 Roma and Sinti — most of them children, the elderly and the sick — were murdered in the gas chambers.
2 August is Roma Holocaust Memorial Day, recognised across Europe since 2015. The Centre holds a commemoration at the monument every year.
Our purpose
A history still missing from most classrooms
The Roma Holocaust Memorial Centre is a small, community-led organisation in Newcastle upon Tyne. We research, teach and commemorate the persecution and murder of Roma and Sinti people under National Socialism and its allied regimes — a chapter of Holocaust history that remains under-represented in mainstream education and memorial culture.
Working with ROMA ACCESS — Newcastle Association, we raised the first monument in the United Kingdom dedicated to the memory of Roma and Sinti victims of the Holocaust. It stands in Newcastle city centre, near the Civic Centre.
Our work joins historical research to the lived experience of Roma and Sinti communities in the North East today. Remembrance and anti-Gypsyism are not separate subjects.
The monument
Visiting the memorial
The United Kingdom's first monument to the Roma and Sinti victims of the Holocaust stands in Newcastle city centre.
- Where
- Civic Centre, Newcastle upon Tyne
- Open
- At any hour, without charge. The monument stands in the open air.
- Access
- Step-free from the pavement on all approaches.
- Raised with
- ROMA ACCESS — Newcastle Association
What we do
Four kinds of work, one argument
- 01
Commemoration
The monument, the annual gathering on 2 August, and the smaller acts — a name read aloud, a candle left at the base — that keep it from becoming a date in a diary.
- 02
The archive
Collecting, digitising and describing what families still hold. Registration cards, compensation letters, photographs with a name on the back. Most of it has never been in a public collection.
- 03
Education
Free lessons, assemblies and teacher sessions for schools across the North East, written to fit inside a Holocaust scheme of work that is already full.
- 04
Community work
Support for Roma and Sinti families in Newcastle, and the argument — made continually — that the history and the present-day discrimination are one subject.
Sources
Every date and figure here can be followed back
Historical statements on this site are referenced to published scholarship or to a museum collection. Where scholarship disagrees — and on the number of dead it disagrees widely — we give the range rather than the figure that makes the strongest impression.
- Works cited
- 9
- Dated entries
- 23
- Unsourced claims
- 0
Support the Centre
This work is carried by very few people
We are a Community Interest Company. Donations pay for archival storage, translation, school visits and the upkeep of the monument.
We accept donations by bank transfer. There is no card processing fee on a transfer, so the whole amount reaches the Centre. If you would rather give your time, we need translators and archive volunteers more than almost anything else.