Romanies tug at Germany’s conscience

Press, 4 December 1985, Page 21

Romanies tug at Germany’s conscience

From

TONY CATTERALL,

in Bonn

The West German Government had little choice after the founding of the country but to acknowledge the Nazis’ attempts to wipe out the Jewish population of Europe. It took somewhat longer for a similar action in the case of tinkers and Romanies, commonly lumped together as “gypsies.” About half a million were killed in the extermination camps, in percentage terms on a par with what happened to the Jews, based on “research” by the infamous Institute for Racial Hygiene. Despite the existence of records which proved the Nazis regarded the tinkers and Romanies as an “inferior” racial group, successive West German Governments maintained they had been rounded up by the police in the Third Reich as part of general crime-fighting work.

Unlike the Jews, the survivors

were not entitled to compensation, a situation which did not change even when the then Chancellor, Helmut Schmidt, declared in 1982: “A great injustice was decreed for the tinkers and Romanies by the Nazi dictatorship. They were persecuted on racial grounds. Many were murdered. This crime constitutes genocide.”

It has now taken a further three years for the Bundestag to get around to debating their situation — 40 years after the end of the Second World War.

The debate was brought about by the efforts of the Central Committee for German Tinkers and Romanies, which since its establishment in 1979 has done much to

force the problem into the public consciousness. It was to be hoped, the committee said, that the Government would “at last agree to our demands for an immediate pension provision for surviving victims of the Nazis; and we also expect an actual equality of treatment in reparations.” The demands — for a basic pension of about $l3OO a month plus free health care — were taken over in their entirety by the radical Green Party, which called the Bundestag debate. The main oppo-

sition party, the Social Democrats, confined itself to calling for an investigation of the whole reparations question without naming specific sums. The Government parties, the Christian Democrats and the Free Democrats did not go even that far. Their motion, a Romany spokesman said, “disguised the true situation” and effectively said that tinkers and Romanies “had not been denied their rights.” All three motions now go to a parliamentary committee where attempts will be made to find a

composite, and the matter will most likely be debated again early next year. In the meantime, the tinkers and Romanies will continue their campaign, seeing the debate as a taking-off point which, along with a formal reception of the central committee’s leadership by President Richard von Weizsacker, they characterise as “part of moral reparations.” They still have a long way to go, to combat what Chancellor Helmut Kohl referred to with some understatement as “a lack of flexibility” on the part of “this or that official.” It is true, as Government speakers said, that no laws exist

which actually discriminate against them, but they remain a fringe group in society. Some 10 per cent of the estimated 50,000 living in West Germany have not even German citizenship despite their having been born here. And although there is no official discrimination, they still have to contend with attitudes such as that expressed by a policeman a few years ago during the forcible clearing of a tinker camp: what was the difference between that action and what happened to them in Auschwitz? “Nowadays,” the policeman replied, “you can choose your own gas.” Copyright, London Observer