Bonn / Germany (RNC Agency) 30.01.1998

On Friday the Bundesrat, the chamber representing the German federal states, or länder, commemorated those Sinti and Roma murdered under the Nazi regime. The occasion was the so-called Auschwitz-decree of December 16th 1942, in which SS-leader Heinrich Him mler ordered the deportation of all Sinti and Roma in Germany and Nazi-occupied territories to the extermination camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau. 22,000 people were deported as a result. The number of Sinti and Roma shot in mass-executions and killed in camps is estimated to be around 500,000. In the presence of a delegation from the central council of Germany’s Roma and Sinti, the current president of the Bundesrat and governor of the Land of Lower Saxony, Gerhard Schröder, said that almost every Sinti and Roma family in Europe lost relatives in the genocide. He emphasised that, despite the fact that nothing could make good the crime done to these people, ‘‘recognition of Sinti and Roma as victims of the National Socialists’ racial obsessions is a prerequisite f or our request for reconciliation. This we owe them and ourselves.’’ The head of the central council, Romani Rose, demands that civic and legal accords with the federal states (Länder) be signed, giving Sinti and Roma the same minority rights as Jewish com munities. In a speech, Governors Schröder, Kurt Biedenkopf (Saxony) and Edmund Stoiber (Bavaria) declared their willingness to consider accords of some what lower standing.