Stiftelsen för forskning inom områden med anknytning till Östersjöregionen och Östeuropa

The Roma Genocide in Ukraine 1941-44: History, memories and representations


Ämne: Historia
Projektledare: Piotr Wawrzeniuk
Startår: 2012
Projekttyp: Projekt

The study of the Roma genocide in Ukraine has been fundamentally neglected. There are many unanswered questions concerning the nature of the Nazi policy towards Roma, its implementation, and the numbers of murdered Roma. There is virtually no research on the mechanics of the memory work among the group and the impact of the state commemoration policies on the historical memory of the genocide among the general public and the Roma, and the virtual absence of Roma in the national historical narrative.

The project contains of two parts. The first deals with the Nazi policy towards the Roma in
Reichskommissariat Ukraine and the Transcarpathian region (part of Hungary 1939-1944) run by civil administration, and Stalino (Donetsk) region of eastern Ukraine administered by the Wehrmacht. Its task is to identify the character and implementation of the Nazi policy towards Roma, its local interpretations, the scale of the persecution and killings, along with identification of the perpetrators and their local collaborators. As to Ukrainian territories of Romanian Transnistria and Galicia (part of General Governement), current research will be included in the analysis in order to achieve a broader picture. The second part deals with the memory work among the Roma, the representations of the Roma genocide among professional historians, along with the memory places of the genocide and the official Soviet Ukrainian and post-independence Ukrainian commemoration policies. Its task is to study the formation of the collective memory of the genocide among the Roma, and the impact of the official commemoration culture on the historical memory of the Roma genocide.