Porajmos

The Romani genocide or Romani Holocaust, also known as the Porajmos (Romani pronunciation: IPA: [pʰoɽajˈmos]), Pharrajimos ("Cutting up", "Fragmentation", "Destruction"), or Samudaripen ("Mass killing"), was the planned and attempted effort, often described as a genocide, during World War II by the government of Nazi Germany and its allies to exterminate the Romani (Gypsy) people of Europe. Under the rule of Adolf Hitler, a supplementary decree to the Nuremberg Laws was issued on 26 November 1935, defining Gypsies as "enemies of the race-based state", the same category as Jews. Thus, the fate of Roma in Europe in some ways paralleled that of the Jews. Historians estimate that 220,000 to 500,000 Romani were killed by the Nazis and their collaborators, or 25% to over 50% of the slightly fewer than 1 million Roma in Europe at the time.Ian Hancock puts the death toll as high as 1.5 million. In 1982, West Germany formally recognized that genocide had been committed against the Romani. In 2011 the Polish Government passed a resolution for the official recognition of 2 August as a day of commemoration of the genocide.

The term porajmos (also porrajmos or pharrajimos—literally, "devouring" or "destruction" in some dialects of the Romani language) was introduced by Ian Hancock, in the early 1990s. Hancock chose the term, coined by a Kalderash Rom, from a number of suggestions in an "informal conversation in 1993".

The term is used mostly by activists and is unknown to most Roma, including relatives of victims and survivors. Some Russian and Balkan Romani activists protest against using the word porajmos. In various dialects, porajmos is synonymous with poravipe which means "violation" and "rape", a term which some Roma consider to be offensive. János Bársony and Ágnes Daróczi, pioneering organisers of the Romani civil rights movement in Hungary, prefer the Pharrajimos, a Romani word meaning "cutting up", "fragmentation", "destruction". They argue against using porrajmos, saying it is marhime (unclean, untouchable): "[p]orrajmos is unpronounceable in the Roma community, and thus is incapable of conveying the sufferings of the Roma".

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