Germany likes to present itself as the ‘world champion of remembrance’, as a place where historical violence is dealt with in full and its victims are remembered. Yet white German society swept the racist persecution and systematic murder of Sinti and Roma during the National Socialist era under the carpet after the end of the Second World War. Worse still, the structural discrimination did not stop after 1945. Sinti and Roma communities responded to this second persecution with various strategies of resistance. And the memory of the deported and murdered Sinti and Roma was also kept alive for decades almost exclusively by the survivors and now by their descendants.

At Empowerment and Resistance, Hamze Bytyçi, Kelly Laubinger, and Isidora Randjelović talk about these different strategies with Max Czollek and Ibou Diop and recall stories and events that are still barely known to wider society today. Their focus lies on the connection between resistance and a new urgency to act, which is realized by Sinti and Roma in response to constant rejection, criminalization, and stigmatization they encounter in Germany. Bytyçi, Laubinger, and Randjelović chronicle a history of violence and of self-empowerment that extends to the present day.