Held as part of the Symposium on New Directions in the Study of the Roma Genocide and in association with the Fraenkel Prize

Jews and Roma died side by side in the Holocaust, yet the world did not recognize their destruction equally. In the years and decades following the war, Jews’ experience of genocide increasingly occupied the attention of legal experts, scholars, educators, curators, and politicians, while the genocide of Europe’s Roma was largely ignored. Responding to this imbalance, many Roma came to rely on Jewish institutions, funding sources, and professional networks as they sought to gain recognition for their wartime suffering.

This presentation charts the resulting evolving relationship between Roma and Jews since the Holocaust. During the Nazi era, Jews and Roma were largely proximate strangers with little in common besides their experience of simultaneous persecution. Yet many decades of entwined struggles for justice have deepened Romani-Jewish relations, which now centre not only on commemorations of past genocides but also contemporary debates over antiracism and Zionism.

About the speaker

Ari Joskowicz is Associate Professor of Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt University and Director of the university’s Max Kade Center for European and German Studies. He is the author of Rain of Ash: Roma, Jews, and the Holocaust (2023), which won the Fraenkel Prize 2022, and The Modernity of Others: Jewish Anti-Catholicism in Germany and France (2014), and editor of Secularim in Question: Jews and Judaim in Modern Times (2015).

Chair: Dr Celia Donert, Associate Professor in Central European History, University of Cambridge.

Rain of Ash: Roma, Jews, and the Holocaust will be available to purchase on the night.

Event guidelines for those joining online:

1. The Library will send you a Zoom link and joining instructions via email prior to the event. Please check your junk email folders.

2. Please try and join 5 minutes before the event start time and we will let you into the room (do try and bear with us if this takes a few minutes).

3. If you would like to ask a question during the event, please type your question into the chat function, and we will endeavour to answer as many questions as possible during the Q&A. Your webcam will not be seen during this event.

4. The event will be recorded for the Library’s YouTube channel and will be shared at a later date.

This event is free, although registration via the link below is required. Please note that our free events are run by staff volunteers. Thank you for your patience should we have any technical or audio difficulties. We will do our best to correct them but this is not always possible.