Zigeuner (from the fourteenth-century Greek word atzinganoi) is a pejorative German word that translates into "Gypsy." The word Gypsy is also considered by some to be a pejorative by the Romani, Roma; or "Roma and Sinti" (Sinti refers to the largest German Gypsy group). Many authors and Romani use both Zigeuner and Gypsy to maintain solidarity in remembrance of the Porajmos (The Roma Holocaust) during World War II. While the atrocities of genocide committed by the Nazis will seem invariably focused on the Jewish Holocaust, recently more light has been shed on other groups that were victims of ethnic cleansing, racial hygiene, and medical experimentation.

The Romani can trace their roots to the sub-continent of Northern India and were displaced early in the second millennium by repeated military raids. The Roma began their nomadic plight by emigrating to the west and northwest into Africa and Southern Europe. They became known as a lower class of people that the root word zigan, in many European languages, was used to describe travelers and wanderers that had no worth, were foreigners, vagabonds, thieves, and charlatans.

By the beginning of the twentieth century, the Romani population had grown to number in the millions and due to continued diaspora, settled in most every country throughout Europe, Russia, and Asia Minor (present-day Turkey). Many countries imagined their identity being tainted with Roma blood and this was the basis on which Hitler and the Nazis imposed the same fate as was given to the Jews. The Reich Hitler envisioned grouped the Roma and the Jews together as a nomadic foreign invader that was "life, unworthy of life", and anti-social conduct of the gypsy was unfit for life among the German people.

The Zigeuner, as the Nazis referred to the Roma, were a threat to the racial purity of the German Volk (people). Migration away from the negative impact of discrimination was no longer a viable option for survival. In 193 3, Hitler imposed his answer to Zigeunerfrage (the Gypsy question) by using the Einsatzgruppen (operational groups) as the killing units under the SS and allowing Nazi doctors to perform some of the most heinous crimes against humanity ever recorded. The Romani were not quick to testify in the post-war Nuremberg Trials and have been reluctant, until the last decade, to give interviews or eyewitness accounts of their persecution and subsequent death sentence by the Nazis. 

As we move forward and learn more of the truth about the Roma peoples, their population continues to grow on every continent around the world. An estimate by the Romani put their numbers near 15 million, with a rich and guarded history that preserves their individual identity behind a secret name, a Romani name, and the common name they allow the gadje (non-Romani) to know.

Text by John Lawrence