From transnational to local remembrance: European Roma genocide memory and the commemoration of Samudaripen in Lithuania

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper will trace the formation of a memory culture focused on the commemoration of the Roma Holocaust in Europe in general and in Lithuania in particular. Although Lithuania's Roma community was severely affected by the Holocaust (it is estimated that every third Roma was killed), this case has not attracted much attention from scholars. By tracing the interaction between the Roma and Jewish communities in Lithuania, it shows how the formation of this memory culture is not just a top-down process associated with the transnational European memory of the Roma genocide, but one that is shaped by local actors.