Discrimination and Persecution

In most European countries the interwar years were a time of economic crisis and rising tensions, which increased the discrimination against the Roma. Roma and Sinti people were registered on special lists and made to carry special identity papers, and in some countries so called “Gypsy-Laws” were passed, regulating and restricting their daily lives and traditional trades.

Inhabitants of the Roma settlement at Oberwart in Austria. Police photograph taken in the 1930s to illustrate the work of the police.

Global Crisis

Itinerant tinkers in a village in northern Burgenland, Austria, between the wars.

Competition

Police checking a man’s identifi cation papers during a raid on the Roma settlement in Allhau in the province of Burgenland in the interwar period.

Police Control

Identification

A “Gypsy ID card” (“cigányigazolvány”) complete with photograph and fingerprints issued in the Austro-Hungarian border town of Szentgotthárd in 1937.

Registration

Genealogical tree of the Zero family (a deliberately negative pseudonym) designed to illustrate Josef Jörger’s theories on the negative effects of a mixed marriage with a traveller.

Eugenics

Inspection of living conditions at the Roma settlement in Oberwart, Austria, on 15 January 1933 by members of a commission attending a conference on the “Gypsy problem”.