Destins gitans

Curatorial Note

French edition of Donald Kenrick and Grattan Puxon’s pioneering study The Destiny of Europe’s Gypsies (1972), one of the earliest substantial historical investigations of the persecution and genocide of Roma and Sinti in Europe. Drawing on archival documentation and evidence concerning Nazi racial policy, the authors trace a longer history of anti-Roma persecution before examining its radicalization under National Socialism and the mass murder of Roma and Sinti during the Second World War. First translated into French in 1974 and reissued by Gallimard in its Tel series in 1995, the work played an important role in bringing the Romani Holocaust into historical scholarship and public discussion at a time when the subject remained widely marginalized. Although subsequent research has revised aspects of its interpretation and demographic estimates, the volume remains significant both for the history it reconstructs and for its foundational place in the historiography of the Romani Holocaust.