Working definition for the denial and trivialization of the genocide committed against the Sinti and Roma
More than any other events, the racist persecution policies and practices during the Nazi era, with their aim at extermination, have had persistent negative effects on the persecuted and their descendants. In order to ensure that these racist crimes and their continuing effects receive appropriate attention, MIA uses a separate definition for the denial and trivialization of the Nazi genocide against the Sinti and Roma. This is based on the working definition for the denial and trivialization of the Holocaust adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) in October 2013:
Discourses and forms of propaganda that negate, excuse or minimize the historical reality and the extent of the persecution and extermination of the Sinti and Roma and other people persecuted by the Nazis and their accomplices as gypsies during the Second World War will be viewed as denial and trivialization of the genocide committed against the Sinti and Roma, as will any attempts to obscure the responsibility for such acts. Denial refers to any attempt to claim that the Holocaust against them did not take place.
Denial or trivialization of these Nazi crimes also exists if the instruments of the persecution and extermination (such as gas chambers, shootings, starvation, forced labor, imprisonment, racist assessments, forced sterilizations and medical experiments on humans, etc.) or the premeditation involved in these crimes are denied, doubted or minimized.
In all their different forms, the denial and trivialization of the genocide committed against the Sinti and Roma are always an expression of antigypsyism. Forms of genocide denial also include the claim that the Sinti and Roma exaggerated or invented the genocide, in order to gain a political or financial benefit. Forms of trivialization include the claim that Sinti and Roma are responsible for their own genocide and other crimes committed against them. In the final analysis, the aim of these forms of denial and trivialization is to declare Sinti and Roma guilty and legitimate antigypsyism.
Statements that present the genocide against the Sinti and Roma as a positive historical event are also included in the category of trivialization. Such statements do not involve a denial of the genocide but, as a radical form of antigypsyism, are closely linked to it. They imply that the genocide did not go far enough in reaching its goal of extermination (as described in the Auschwitz decree of December 16, 1942).
