Romani Rose

Romani Rose was born on August 20, 1946, in Heidelberg. Until 1982, he worked there as a self-employed businessman and carpet dealer. He is also a contemporary witness of the hunger strike at the Dachau concentration camp memorial in spring 1980. The hunger strike, organized by eleven Sinti and a social worker, protested against the antigypsyism of German authorities and became a founding moment of the civil rights movement of Sinti and Roma in Germany.
When the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma was established in 1982, Romani Rose was elected chairman by the delegates of the member organizations—then nine, now sixteen state associations and regional clubs—and has been re-elected every four years since. In 1991, he also assumed leadership of the Documentation and Cultural Center of German Sinti and Roma in Heidelberg.
He is well known in Germany and abroad for his determination and uncompromising work. Rose comes from a Sinti family: 13 members, including his grandparents, were murdered in Auschwitz or Ravensbrück. Other relatives survived as concentration camp prisoners, forced laborers, or victims of medical experiments in Natzweiler; still others went into hiding. His father, Oskar Rose, and uncle, Vinzenz Rose, survived the genocide of Sinti and Roma—known today as the Porajmos—and since 1946 fought for the prosecution of the perpetrators.
Romani Rose is married and has six children.