The Roma and the Question of Ethnic Origin in Romania during the Holocaust

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.29098/crs.v4i2.143

Keywords:

Biopolitics, Eugenics, Holocaust, Nationalism, Roma

Abstract

This article suggests that the arguments used to justify the deportation of Roma to Transnistria in 1942 were racial and eugenic. As a selfstyled scientific theory of human betterment, eugenics aimed to sanitize Romania’s population, proposing a new vision of the national community, one biologically purged of those individuals believed to be “defective”, “unfit”, and “unworthy” of reproduction. Based on new archival material we suggest that the racial definition of Romanianness that prevailed at the time aimed to remove not just Jews but also
Roma from the dominant ethnic nation (“neamul românesc”). To define Romanianness according to blood, ethnic origin, and cultural affiliation had been an essential component of Romania’s biopolitical programme since the 1920s. During the early 1940s, it served as the political foundation upon which the transformation of Romania into an ethnically homogeneous state was carried out. At the time, the “Roma problem”, similar to the “Jewish Question”, was undeniably premised on eugenics and racism.

Author Biographies

  • Marius Turda, Oxford Brookes University

    Marius Turda is Professor at Oxford Brookes University and Director of its Centre for Medical Humanities. He published widely on the history of eugenics, race, and racism. He is the general editor of A Cultural History of Race (2021) and editor of CEU Series in the History of Medicine. His recent public engagement work includes a travelling exhibition on the legacies of eugenics, “The Eugenics Podcast”, and “Confront Eugenics”.

  • Adrian Nicolae Furtuna, Research Institute for Quality of Life, Romanian Academy

    Adrian-Nicolae Furtună has a BA in sociology from the University of Bucharest and an MA in Advanced Sociological Research from the same university. Currently enrolled in a PhD programme at the Research Institute for Quality of Life of the Romanian Academy, his dissertation focuses on the social memory of Romani slavery in Romania. He is the author of a number of studies on collective memory and Romani history.

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Published

10/25/2022

Issue

Vol. 4 No. 2 (2021): Roma Holocaust, Memory, and Representation

Section

Articles

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How to Cite

The Roma and the Question of Ethnic Origin in Romania during the Holocaust. (2022). Critical Romani Studies, 4(2), 8-32. https://doi.org/10.29098/crs.v4i2.143