Porraimos: Film Analysis

Written history seems to gain more credibility than do oral history. Over time oral history transforms from what it initially starts with. For example, Nazi Germany slaughtered more than just Jews, but there are more accounts of the Jewish atrocities because there are more written records from the Jews. We do not have enough records of the mass murders of the Gypsies because of their oral culture. As time passed their oral history faded. In fact, when people think of the Holocaust it always seems Nazis only targeted the Jews, but in reality a great number of Gypsies also lost their lives. Many textual records that we do have are not even written by Gypsies, so they do not depict the true experiences of being a Gypsy in Nazi Germany. In the movie Porraimos, we have the opportunity to hear the true experiences of being a Sinti or Roma in Nazi Germany. While the texts depict the life of being a Nazi Germay from second party resources, the assigned movie Porraimos truly depicts the experiences of the Sinti and Roma from their own perspectives. The survivors of the porraimos talk about their experiences, their …show more content…
From the readings it seemed the Gypsies consisted of a group of people who didn’t want to do work, but the movie showed their talents. For example Rita Winterstein is the daughter of a musician and a dancer. Other Romanis came from families of acrobats and artistic talents. The movie showed that the Gypsies faced many hardships. Because of their oral culture, even today we do not know enough about the Gypsy life in Nazi Germany. Because of the availability and recounts from Jewish life in Nazi Germany, like many, I thought only the Jews were persecuted. The film challenged my readings because the Nazis enforced laws that prohibited Gypsies lifestyle and over half of them, who lived throughout the continent died, unlike the reading which showed Sinti Roma killing as less devastating than Jewish