Romani Girls: Resiliency and Caretaking during the Holocaust in Romanian-Controlled Transnistria

Key goals of this paper are to examine resiliency among Romani girls and women who were victims of the Holocaust in Romanian-controlled spaces. Thus far, few scholarly works have delved into the fate of Roma children and youth who were deported and interned in camps. From 1941 to 1944, the German-allied Romanian regime led a genocidal campaign against Jewish and Romani populations. Over 200,000 Jews and over 11,000 Roma died in occupied Ukraine. While the Romanian space of the Holocaust has only taken on significance in Holocaust studies after 1989, as post-communist investigations into archives grew dramatically during the transition period, the exploration of Roma genocide during the Holocaust remains yet understudied. In this paper, I delve into gendered experiences of Romani girls who shed their childhoods in Transnistria and faced extreme choices amidst a horrific genocide enacted against them. I focus on the plight of Romani girls because they were exceptionally vulnerable to the perpetrating regime. Ethnicity, gender, and age were salient in the persecution of Roma, just as they were for Jewish victims of the Holocaust.  The intersectionality of these identities played a prominent role in the survival of women and girls. Of the over 25,000 Roma targeted by the Romanian regime, children comprised the majority of deportees, followed by women and then men. Using interview data, I will explore the nexus of resiliency and culture and how they factored into girls’ survivorship.