Why we say Samudaripen

There is no single Romani word for what happened between 1933 and 1945, and there was never going to be. The communities it was done to were scattered across a dozen languages and were, for forty years afterwards, given very little opportunity to name it at all.

Samudaripen — mass killing — is the term used most widely by Romani organisations, and it is the one we use. Porrajmos, the devouring, is common in English-language scholarship, but many Romani speakers avoid it because in some dialects the word carries an obscene second meaning. We use it only where a source we are quoting uses it.

Where a survivor or a family uses a particular word, we keep theirs. That rule matters more than consistency.