The persecution and murder of Sinti and Roma people was not recognised as genocide after the war ended. The Roma struggle for redress eventually resulted in West Germany recognising in 1982 that the Sinti and Roma had been victims of genocide during the Holocaust. The EU recognised the genocide in 2015.
Arrival in Sweden
Many Holocaust survivors arrived in Sweden with the White Buses and White Boats rescue programmes when the Second World War in Europe came to an end in 1945. However, only a small number of Sinti and Roma people came to Sweden at this time as Sweden banned immigration by foreign Roma groups between 1914 and 1954. Some of the Sinti and Roma people who arrived in Sweden immediately after the war were forced to return to their country of origin after having received care.
Most surviving Sinti and Roma people arrived in Sweden after 1954, as labour migrants or quota refugees; or as war refugees during the war in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Many Sinti and Roma survivors were subjected to the prejudices and antigypsyism of Swedish society after arriving in Sweden. That was why a lot of them chose to hide their Roma backgrounds and said nothing of what they had experienced during the Holocaust.
The Jönköping Riots
In 1948, Jönköping, Sweden, had a large group of settled Travellers. Rumours spread, and newspapers reported that the Travellers were harassing the rest of the population and living off municipal welfare. During the spring and early summer, several street fights occurred, where residents provoked and attacked some of the Travellers, creating a tense atmosphere.
In early July 1948, a group calling themselves "The Whites" decided to attack the Travellers in eastern Jönköping. Along with hundreds of curious onlookers, they assaulted the Travellers, who were forced to barricade themselves in their homes. Many Travellers were beaten and had to flee their homes. The hunt for Travellers continued for about five days.
The media largely sided with the attacking mob, fueling the riots, and the police remained passive during much of the events.
The recognition process
After the war, surviving Sinti and Roma people who returned to their homes all over Europe faced the same treatment as they had before the war. Many homes had been looted, their property stolen by neighbours.
No compensation was paid to the surviving Roma communities because the West German state was of the opinion that they had been persecuted and imprisoned on account of criminality, not their ethnicity. It was not until 1956 that the people imprisoned as a result of Himmler’s order to send Sinti and Roma people to Auschwitz were able to claim compensation.
The Roma civil rights movement of the 1970s played an important role in raising awareness of the vulnerability of Roma groups during the Nazi era. Sinti and Roma organisations held demonstrations at the sites of the Bergen-Belsen and Dachau concentration camps in 1979 and 1980, respectively. They called for recognition of the genocide of the Sinti and Roma.
In 1982, the Chancellor of West Germany officially acknowledged that the Sinti and Roma had suffered genocide based on their ethnicity, and the EU also recognised this genocide in 2015.
Main photo: The boat Karskär, one of the White Boats. National Maritime Museum.
