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‘The girl with the headscarf’ was identified by Dutch journalist Aad Wagenaar in the early 1990s as Sinti girl Anna Maria ‘Settela’ Steinbach. Here, Rainer Schulze, Professor of Modern European History at the University of Essex, shares her story.

Sabina had a happy childhood in Bosnia until the Bosnian War forced her family to flee the country. The family went at first to Slovenia, before they were finally resettled in the UK. Now living in Scotland, Sabina is a social justice campaigner focused on the rights of refugees and people with lived experience of homelessness. She is the Vice Chair of Beyond Srebrenica, a charity dedicated to raising awareness of the Bosnian genocide and promoting tolerance in Scotland.

During this year’s Gypsy Roma Traveller History Month, historian Rainer Schulze reminds us of the systematic persecution the Roma and Sinti suffered during the period of Nazi rule in Germany and in Nazi-occupied Europe.

Alfred Garwood nee Garfinkle, MBE, was born in a Nazi ghetto, imprisoned in Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp, and later put on a train destined for Terezin Concentration Camp, when he and his family were liberated by the Red Army. Alfred spent the rest of his childhood in Britain and grew up in the centre of a community of Holocaust survivors. He has since written extensively on the psychological implications of trauma relating to genocide whilst also working as a General Practitioner.