Sinti and Roma people from across Europe gathered at the Holocaust memorial at Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland on Wednesday to remember the murder of an estimated 500,000 men, women and children by Nazi Germany during the Second World War.
Wednesday marks the international day of remembrance for Sinti and Roma victims of the Holocaust.
On August 2, 1944, the last remaining 4,300 Sinti and Roma people being held in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp were killed.
Prejudices continue against Roma and Sinti in Europe
German Culture and Media Minister Claudia Roth, from the Green party, remarked that “anti-Romani prejudices and sentiments in our society are still far too widespread.”
She pointed to how “up to half a million Sinti and Roma were violently killed in Nazi Germany,” adding that discrimination against Sinti and Roma did not begin in 1933 “and did not simply end in 1945.”
According to a poll cited by the Catholic news agency KNA, four out of 10 Sinti and Roma people have experienced discrimination in the past four years.
European Parliament Vice-President Nicola Beer, who hails from Germany, said that “these shocking numbers stand in contradiction to our European basic values and our understanding of equality for all.”
EU calls for more work to be done against anti-Romani prejudice
The European Commission released a statement from Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Vice President Vera Jourova and Commissioner for Equality Helena Dalli.
“Europe has a duty to protect its minorities from racism and discrimination,” the statement said.
“As the number of survivors and witnesses of these horrors dwindles, it is our duty, now more than ever, to continue their remembrance and pass on their testimonies.”
“Together, we must counter and eliminate antigypsyism in all its forms!” the Commission said.
A report from the European Commission looking into how well different EU member states had incorporated strategic frameworks to promote equality, participation and diversity for Roma and Sinti people said that many countries had not yet fully implemented the measures.
Twelve member states, including Germany and Austria, had only partially included measures to tackle anti-Romani prejudices, while another six had only included “the minimum commitments to a very limited extent.”
https://rm.coe.int/factsheets-on-romani-culture-1-7-romani-group-names/1680aac36b
"There is no agreement among scholars regarding the origin of the ethnonym Sinti (also called Sinte). A popular etymology among the Sinti is that their self-appellation is based on the Pakistani province of ‘Sindh’.
Such explanation indicate that the Sinti were already before the migration to Europe distinct from the Roma, a fact which supports the Sinti in underlining their separate iden- tity. Nevertheless, there is no doubt about that the ethnonym Sinti cannot be of Indic origin, since the word ‘Sinti’ is inflected as Eu- ropean loanwords (see the below table).
It however remains unclear from which contact language was the word Sinti borrowed and what was its original meaning. Based on historical sources, Matras (1999) assumes that the ethnonym Sinti turned up at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries and was used as a name of a particular Romani group among the German Roma.
The original endonym of the group was Kale, a Romani group name which is widespread also in other Western and Norther European coun- tries. The new group name Sinti seems to completely replace the older name Kale in the beginning of the 20th century."