The record
Sources & historical references
Every historical claim on this site is referenced to published scholarship or to a museum collection. This page gathers those references in one place.
- Works cited
- 30
- Citations
- 99
- Covering
- 23 dated entries on the history of the Samudaripen, and 25 named individuals on the Wall of Remembrance.
How we source
What has to be true before it goes up
A memorial site is worth only the confidence a reader can place in it. These are the rules the historical content is written to, set down where you can hold us to them.
01
Every claim carries its source
If a statement cannot be referenced to published scholarship or to a museum collection, it does not go on the site. Each timeline entry prints its citation beneath it; each name on the Wall of Remembrance prints the collection that documents the person.
02
Ranges, not the most striking number
Where scholarship disagrees on a figure, the site gives the range and says that it is a range, with each figure attributed to the body that publishes it. The number of Roma and Sinti murdered is the clearest case: published estimates run from at least 250,000 to as many as 2,000,000, and we do not pick a point inside that for effect.
03
The language of the record
Institutions, decrees and camps are named as the documents name them, with the German or Romanian in brackets — Zigeunerfamilienlager, Auschwitz-Erlass — so that a reader can follow a claim back into an archive catalogue and find it. Quotations and the titles of cited works are reproduced as published, even where their vocabulary is not the Centre's own.
04
Silence is described, not filled
For much of occupied Eastern Europe there is no record, because people were shot at the roadside and no register was kept. Where the documentation stops, the site says so rather than estimating across the gap.
Works cited
Every reference, and what it supports
This list is generated from the citations on the site itself, so it cannot fall out of step with them. Each entry links to the scholarship or the collection, and then to the statements here that rest on it.
01
02
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Roma (Gypsies)” series, Holocaust Encyclopedia (opens in a new tab)
Cited 19 times
- 1899 — A police index of Roma families
- 16 July 1926 — The Law for the Combating of Gypsies, Travellers and the Work-Shy
- 14 July 1933 — Compulsory sterilisation becomes law
- 15 September 1935 — The Nuremberg Laws are extended to Roma
- July 1936 — The Olympic clearance
- 1936 — The Racial Hygiene Research Unit
- 8 December 1938 — “Combating the Gypsy Plague”
- May 1940 — The first mass deportation
- From June 1941 — Shot alongside Jewish neighbours
- Autumn 1941 — Hostage shootings
- November 1941 – January 1942 — Five thousand from Burgenland
- 1941–1945 — Near-total destruction
- June 1942 – 1944 — The Transnistria deportations
- 16 December 1942 — The Auschwitz decree
- 26 February 1943 — Section BIIe
- 1945–1982 — Compensation refused
- How many were killed — Different historical estimates
- How many were killed — Why are the numbers so different?
- How many were killed — Why the historical record is incomplete
03
- About us — the Roma — Indian origins: the evidence of language
- About us — the Roma — Leaving India: through Persia and Armenia
- About us — the Roma — Byzantium and the Balkans, 9th–12th centuries
- About us — the Roma — Wallachia and Moldavia: the earliest documented settlement, 14th century
- About us — the Roma — Arrival in Central Europe: the pilgrim groups, 1417–1435
- About us — the Roma — Western Europe and the Iberian Peninsula, 15th century
- Persecution in Europe — The Holy Roman Empire — Augsburg, 1500
- Persecution in Europe — Roma hunted across Europe
- Persecution in Europe — Heidenjachten — the “hunting of the heathens”
- Persecution in Europe — Executions and policies of extermination
- Persecution in Europe — Sweden — religious prohibitions
- Persecution in Europe — Italy — “good Christians” and the renunciation of nomadism
- Roma slavery — Roughly five centuries of slavery
- Roma slavery — Resistance
- Roma slavery — Religion and Roma slavery in the Romanian Principalities
- Roma slavery — Emancipation of the Roma from slavery
04
05
06
Fraser, A., The Gypsies (Blackwell, 1995)
Cited 4 times
07
REGARD — Remembering Genocide Against Roma Discrimination, Educational Toolkit on Samudaripen, Roma Resistance, History and Culture (European Union-funded project)
Cited 4 times
08
Achim, V., The Roma in Romanian History (Central European University Press, 2004)
Cited 2 times
09
10
Willems, W., In Search of the True Gypsy (Frank Cass, 1997)
Cited 2 times
11
Council of Europe (CDADI), Practical Tool on Teaching about the Roma Holocaust (2024)
Cited once
12
Crowe, D. M., “Muslim Roma in the Balkans”, Nationalities Papers (1996)
Cited once
13
Encyclopaedia entries for the Diet of Augsburg
Cited once
14
Erich Hackl, Abschied von Sidonie (1989)
Cited once
15
European Roma Rights Centre, “The Roma: Between a Myth and the Future”
Cited once
16
Europeana, “Roma slavery in Romania — a history”
Cited once
17
Fundación Secretariado Gitano (gitanos.org), “History of the Roma People”
Cited once
18
Government of Sweden, “The Dark Unknown History” — White Paper on Abuses and Rights Violations Against Roma in the 20th Century (2014)
Cited once
19
Granqvist, K., “Critical evaluation of Romani inclusion strategies in Finland and Sweden”, Journal of Contemporary European Studies (2021)
Cited once
20
21
22
International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, educational resources on the genocide of the Roma and Sinti
Cited once
23
Martínez-Cruz, B. et al., “European Roma groups show complex West Eurasian admixture footprints and a common South Asian genetic origin”, PLOS Genetics (2016)
Cited once
24
Matras, Y., Romani: A Linguistic Introduction (Cambridge University Press, 2002)
Cited once
25
Mendizabal, I. et al., “Reconstructing the Population History of European Romani from Genome-wide Data”, Current Biology (2012)
Cited once
26
Moorjani, P. et al., “Reconstructing Roma History from Genome-Wide Data”, PLOS ONE (2013)
Cited once
27
28
Wikipedia, “1637 in Sweden”
Cited once
29
Wikipedia, “Ioana Rădăreasa”
Cited once
30
Wikipedia, “Slavery in Romania”
Cited once
Collections
Where this history is held
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (opens in a new tab)
Its Holocaust Encyclopedia series on Roma and Sinti is an accessible scholarly overview in English, and the starting point we send teachers to.
Documentation and Cultural Centre of German Sinti and Roma (opens in a new tab)
Heidelberg. Founded by the German Sinti and Roma civil rights movement, and the principal collection on the persecution in Germany and on the forty-year fight for recognition that followed it.
Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum (opens in a new tab)
Holds the surviving registers of the Zigeunerfamilienlager in section BIIe, including the camp books that record names, numbers and dates of death.
Herinneringscentrum Kamp Westerbork (opens in a new tab)
The Netherlands. Holds the transport records from Westerbork, and the research that identified the girl in the cattle-wagon doorway as Anna Maria “Settela” Steinbach.
Holocaust Memorial Day Trust (opens in a new tab)
The United Kingdom's national body for 27 January. The Centre's commemorations appear on their programme.
Roma Support Group (opens in a new tab)
A Roma-led organisation in the United Kingdom working on the present-day conditions this history runs into.
On the figures
250,000to 2,000,000
The span of published estimates of the Roma and Sinti dead, each figure attributed to the institution that publishes it.
No figure on this site is presented as settled when it is not. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum gives at least 250,000 Roma murdered, noting that some scholars estimate around 500,000; the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance uses approximately 250,000–500,000; the EU-funded REGARD project records scholarly estimates of 500,000–2,000,000. We give the span, name whose estimate each figure is, and say where a figure reaches us through a report of somebody else’s range rather than directly.
The imprecision has a cause, and the cause is part of the history. Roma and Sinti people were frequently killed without registration — shot at the edge of a village, buried where they fell — and much of the documentation that did exist was destroyed. Where the record stops, we say that it stops.
Found something wrong?
If a citation is incomplete, a date is out, or you know of a source we should be reading, we would rather hear it than not.