Project and online portal Encyclopaedia of the Nazi genocide of the Sinti and Roma in Europe
This international project is the first to examine the European dimension of the National Socialist genocide of Sinti and Roma in Europe. The widely scattered and often inaccessible historical knowledge on the genocide will be brought together in a large-scale encyclopaedia and made available for research and the general public.
The articles, which are currently being written by more than 80 scholars from Germany and abroad, will initially be presented online. Based on this, a printed version of a multi-volume handbook will be produced. The Federal Foreign Office is funding the five-year research work with around 1.6 million euros.

The encyclopaedia will be structured alphabetically and contain around 1,000 keywords. For the handbook articles, for example, overviews of individual countries and places, ghettos and camps, racist legislation and persecution measures such as deportations and forced sterilisation are to be compiled. Events such as the murder of the Sinti and Roma in the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp or the massacres of the Roma population in countries occupied by the Wehrmacht are also included, as are biographies and other topics such as the legal punishment of the crimes.
The Federal Agency for Civic Education, the Center for Digital Systems at Freie Universität Berlin (CeDiS), the Documentation and Cultural Centre of German Sinti and Roma, the Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance, the Fritz Bauer Institute and the Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe are cooperating on the encyclopaedia. An academic advisory council accompanies the development of the encyclopaedia.

Project team

Martin Holler, M. A.
Isaac Schmidt
Academic advisory council
- PD Dr. Susanne Heim, Freie Universität Berlin
- Prof. Dr. Tanja Penter, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg
- Prof. Dr. Dieter Pohl, Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt
- Prof. Dr. Sybille Steinbacher, Goethe-Universität und Fritz Bauer Institut, Frankfurt am Main
- Prof. Dr. Nikolaus Wachsmann, Birkbeck College an der Universität London
- Prof. Dr. Jens-Christian Wagner, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena und Stiftung Gedenkstätten Buchenwald und Mittelbau-Dora, Weimar
- PD Dr. Jane Weiß, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
- Prof. Dr. Michael Wildt, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
