'Lwów saved us' : Roma survival in Lemberg 1941-44

The ritualized memory of genocide has been a cornerstone of Roma political mobilization during at least the last three decades. A uniqueness paradigm has been developing for some time, applying a memorial discourse inspired by the Jewish Holocaust model. While paralleling each other in time, the mass murders of Jews and Roma during the Second World War differed on several points. In the General Government of the Occupied Polish Territories and the territories occupied by Nazi Germany after Operation Barbarossa, the persecution of Roma took place largely in local initiatives. Consequently, the Nazi policies varied considerably, leading to territories in which Roma were annihilated and those in which about half of the Roma population survived. In Distrikt Galizien, Roma were persecuted violently in the countryside, while the district capital of Lemberg (Lwów, Lviv) saw a different course of events.