Summary of the impact

Eve Rosenhaft's research on Gypsies and Africans in Germany, which she has undertaken since the later 1990s, has had local and international impact. Her work has enhanced quality of life by helping individuals and communities to recover their own histories. The dissemination of her research findings has improved individual, public and local community understandings of the sources and consequences of racism, reinforcing people's capacity for self-reflection and positive behavioural change. The beneficiaries have included: Holocaust survivors and their families; schoolchildren; university students; teachers and other Holocaust educators; church congregations and their local communities; and, through the enrichment of their knowledge base, academics and practitioners in partner institutions.

Underpinning research

The underpinning research, consisting of two related projects, was conducted by Rosenhaft, who joined the University of Liverpool in 1981 and was appointed Professor of German Historical Studies in 2005.

The first project began in 1998, and was inspired by photographs and manuscripts relating to the `Gypsy Holocaust' held in the Gypsy Collections of the University of Liverpool Library. Rosenhaft subsequently conducted extensive archival research and interviews to gather further contextual and biographical information. The project is a study in intercultural relations which captures and explains the everyday experiences of Gypsies in twentieth-century Germany, with specific reference to the sources and consequences of Nazi persecution. While it has long been understood that the Gypsies suffered forms of popular and institutional racism even before the Nazi takeover, this research problematizes the question of how everyday racism related to National-Socialist racial policies. It demonstrates how a shifting balance between everyday and genocidal racism shaped the experience of the victims. Between 2001 and 2010, Rosenhaft published six book chapters and four journal articles on these topics, all single-authored.

The second project began in 2003. It examines the everyday experiences of Africans and the emerging black community in Germany between the colonial period and the 1950s, focussing specifically on the careers of the first generation of African colonial migrants to Germany as well as their families (1884-1960). The project won AHRC funding in 2005. Rosenhaft acted as PI and collaborated with project researcher Robbie Aitken, who was in post at Liverpool from 2005 to 2010 before moving to a lecturing position at Sheffield Hallam University. The findings of this second project show that, in the context of colonial and post-colonial Black-White relations, Germans' notions of `race' were unstable and constantly negotiated. In addition, the dimensions and trajectory of the Nazi attack on Germany's black population are brought into clearer light, especially the extent of the use (as with Gypsies) of compulsory sterilisation to prevent the growth of the `mixed-race' population. Between 2003 and 2013, the project generated three articles, four book chapters and two encyclopaedia entries, all single-authored, as well as a monograph, an edited volume and four book chapters that are co-authored. All are based on extensive archival research and interviews.

These projects stand as complementary studies of forms of racism which survived World War II largely unchallenged. The projects have unearthed large bodies of qualitative data in the form of photographs and personal testimony which bring to life the stories of ordinary people living under conditions of discrimination and persecution. They also offer new understandings, since they demonstrate that Nazi policy was less the climax of all preceding racisms than a genuinely radical project of redefining race. But they also demonstrate that the `racial state' remained a work in progress, with forms of everyday racism sometimes offering protection to potential victims. Moreover, in view of continuing discrimination and violence against black people and Gypsies, these projects have ethical implications for contemporary multi-ethnic societies that have allowed follow-on impact work through educational and advocacy initiatives.

References to the research

Details of the impact

Rosenhaft's research on non-Jewish Holocaust victims has enhanced individuals' capacity to engage positively with issues of racism, with potential impacts for community relations. In 2009, she was approached by the organiser of the Tackling Racism — Promoting Diversity Group (TRG), a city-wide trade-union supported initiative. She worked with TRG until autumn 2011, using her research materials in weekly workshops with 10-15 secondary-school pupils, preparing them for study visits to Auschwitz, and facilitating student-led sessions at two city-wide study days (50 participants on each occasion). An undergraduate volunteer whom Rosenhaft invited to lead some workshops observed changes in the participants. She commented that: `The TRG expanded the young people's understanding of gypsies [...] and broke down the negative stereotypes surrounding them that a number of the group had before the session.' The project had an impact on her, too: it `opened my eyes and sparked my interest in human rights', leading to postgraduate fieldwork in international development. Rosenhaft undertook structured interviews with TRG participants to assess the relevance of Holocaust education for ethnic minority youths, and these also revealed clear shifts in perception. The workshops were `better than school', and the study involved was `important [...] because it makes you understand'; `looking at other victims made it more understandable'. An analysis of the interviews was presented to an international audience of about a hundred public history professionals at the October 2011 conference of the Federation of International Human Rights Museums (3,900 unique visitors to the conference website), thereby feeding the outcomes of public engagement into research-based reflections on practice. Rosenhaft's TRG work featured as a case study in the AHRC's 2011 report on knowledge exchange in the Arts and Humanities.

Rosenhaft's work with the University Library's Gypsy collections, for which she acquired several hundred photographs in 2000, has supported private and public memory in Germany. Surviving members of the families of the photographs' subjects continue to take pleasure in images which she was able to send them. Consultations with the Director of the Saxony Anhalt Monuments Commission and the Mayor of Dessau-Roßlau that began in the early phases of the project fed into continuing memorial work in the region. Rosenhaft's research findings were cited by the mayor at a February 2013 memorial event. Her interview with Radio Corax (Halle) has received over 3000 hits since 2009. She has supported the Association for Roma and Sinti History and Culture in Lower Saxony with exhibition material. In the UK she has widened the horizons of educators, speaking by invitation on the Gypsy Holocaust at the Imperial War Museum North in 2010 and at a Holocaust Educational Trust (HET) study day in 2011 (audiences of about 50 people at each). HET participants commented to the organisers that `they now want to go away and learn more about the experience of Roma and Sinti'. A podcast on the HET website has been downloaded twenty times since June 2011 (additional downloads direct through iTunes cannot be quantified). A new initiative began with a Council of Europe-funded workshop held at the University Library in June 2013. Designed to build capacity by giving six young scholars of Roma origin the opportunity to work with sources in Romani history, the workshop attracted PGRs and activists from the UK and Europe. Participants described it as `very instructive' and `an inspiration'.

Rosenhaft's research on black history has furthered understanding of and reflection on the history of racism and colonialism. Her talk on Blacks under Nazism at the German Historical Institute London (March 2012) attracted nearly a hundred people, the largest and most diverse audience ever recorded for a lecture there. She subsequently spoke at the Wiener Library in the context of Black History Month. One listener commented: `I walked away feeling I had really benefited from that talk, and that not attending would have done me a great disservice.' In May 2013, she addressed public meetings organised by Baptist congregations in Berlin-Friedrichshain and Eberswalde (about eighty attendees altogether). Those communities had hosted Africans visiting Germany between 1886 and 1914 (the subject of the lectures), and Eberswalde is also notorious for a 1989 racist murder. Both discussions activated family memories of the Baptists' African mission and reflections on its ethical implications, as well as on more recent local histories of Black-White relations. The Berlin hosts commented on a `successful evening' which participants continued `to discuss intensively for a long time'. The Eberswalde City Museum's Director invited Rosenhaft to contribute to an exhibition, and expressed interest in collaborating on a project excavating the longer history of African-German relations there.

Sources to corroborate the impact

1. Reimar Gilsenbach, Von Tschudemann zu Seemann. Zwei Prozesse aus der Geschichte deutscher Sinti (Berlin: Edition Parablis, 2000), pp. 95-96.

Gilsenbach (1925-2001) was a Romani rights activist and pioneering writer on the Gypsy Holocaust. His book confirms the significance of Rosenhaft's work in locating photographs of the victims and disseminating knowledge about the pictures and the lives of their subjects, emphasising the continuing value of those images for survivor families.

2. Fremd im eigenen Land. Sinti und Roma in Niedersachsen nach dem Holocaust (Bielefeld: Verlag für Regionalgeschichte, 2012).

This catalogue for an exhibition organised by the Association for Roma and Sinti History and Culture in Lower Saxony, contains material from University of Liverpool Library which was provided through Rosenhaft's mediation. It further confirms her contribution to German memory work in respect of the Gypsy Holocaust.

3. Rosenhaft's paper, `The Holocaust and the Inner City: Experiences of a local anti-racism initiative' (see day two, session 1), presented to the 2011 Conference of the Federation of International Human Rights Museums, is both a contribution to discussions among practitioners and a record of interviews with TRG participants, who were invited to evaluate their TRG experience and who comment on how the workshops affected their understanding of issues of racism and human rights.
4. `Auf den Spuren einer Prinzessin', Die Gemeinde, no. 13, 30 June 2013, p. 19. This item from the Baptist monthly bulletin reports on Rosenhaft's lecture in Eberswalde and confirms how the lecture contributed to the audience's understanding of and reflection on their own history.
5. The Learning and Engagement Officer of The Wiener Library for the Study of Holocaust and Genocide can be contacted to corroborate the impact of Rosenhaft's invited lecture at the Wiener Library on the subject of Blacks under Nazi Rule. He can verify the impact of the lecture on listeners and on the work of the Library on the basis of audience feedback.
6. The Director of the German Historical Institute in London has provided a statement to confirm that Rosenhaft's lecture on Blacks under Nazi Rule at the GHI both had an impact on listeners and helped to extend the reach of the Institute's educational work beyond its traditional audience.
7. A learning mentor from Enterprise South Liverpool, who was the organiser of TRG, can be contacted to confirm the response of TRG participants to Rosenhaft's workshops and also subsequent pupil activities which reflected lessons learned there. He can also report on Rosenhaft's interactions with school staff which generated secondary impact by providing ideas and materials for teaching.
8. An undergraduate volunteer on the TRG project has provided a statement to verify the ways in which the attitudes of participants in TRG changed and also the impact of the experience on her, leading to her engagement with human rights. This has had secondary impact through her postgraduate fieldwork in Tanzania.
9. A retired Pastor of the Freikirchlich-Evangelische Gemeinde "Zoar" (Baptist Congregation) Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg has provided a statement (with accompanying English translation) to corroborate that Rosenhaft's public lecture in Berlin, which climaxed a three-year exchange of information between Rosenhaft and the Baptist congregations, provoked reflection and debate among the listeners.