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The Yenish (; , Taïtch) are an itinerant group in Western Europe who live mostly in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Belgium, and parts of France, roughly centered on the Rhineland. The origins of the Yenish are unknown, though a number of theories for the group's origins have been proposed, including that the Yenish descended from members of the marginalization and vagrancy poor classes of society of the early modern period, before emerging as a distinct group by the early 19th century. Most of the Yenish became sedentary in the course of the mid-19th to 20th centuries.
Linguist Yaron Matras and anthropologist Rémy Welschinger have identified a history where Yenish communities absorbed members of other itinerant and marginalised communities who left those communities for various reasons over the centuries, including Romani and Jewish individuals.
The persecution of Romani people under Nazi Germany beginning in 1933 was directed not exclusively against the Romani people but also targeted "vagrants who travel around after the manner of the gypsies" ("nach Zigeunerart umherziehende Landfahrer"), which included the Yenish and people Homelessness in general.Wolfgang Ayaß, "Gemeinschaftsfremde". Quellen zur Verfolgung von "Asozialen" 1933–1945, Koblenz 1998, Nr. 50. Travellers were scheduled for internment in KZ Buchenwald, KZ Dachau, KZ Sachsenhausen and KZ Neuengamme. Yenish families began to be registered in a Landfahrersippenarchiv ('archive of travelling families'), but this effort was incomplete by the end of World War II.Zimmermann, Michael, Rassenutopie und Genozid. Die nationalsozialistische „Lösung der Zigeunerfrage“, Hamburg 1996, S. 153, S. 436. Ulrich Opfermann: Die Jenischen und andere Fahrende. Eine Minderheit begründet sich, in: Jahrbuch für Antisemitismusforschung 19 (2010), S. 126–150; ders., Rezension zu: Andrew d’Arcangelis, Die Jenischen – verfolgt im NS-Staat 1934–1944. Eine sozio-linguistische und historische Studie, Hamburg 2006, in: Historische Literatur, Bd. 6, 2008, H. 2, S. 165–168, It appears that only very limited numbers of Yenish (compared with the number of Romani victims) were actually deported: five Yenish individuals are on record as having been deported from Cologne,Michael Zimmermann, Rassenutopie und Genozid. Die nationalsozialistische „Lösung der Zigeunerfrage“, Hamburg 1996, 174; Karola Fings/Frank Sparing, Rassismus – Lager – Völkermord. Die nationalsozialistische Zigeunerverfolgung in Köln, Köln 2005, 211. and a total of 279 Dutch Travellers]] ('caravan dwellers') are known to have been deported from the Netherlands in 1944.Michael Zimmermann, Rassenutopie und Genozid. Die nationalsozialistische „Lösung der Zigeunerfrage“, Hamburg 1996, 314. Lewy (2001) has discovered one case of the deportation of a Yenish woman in 1939. The Yenish people are mentioned as a persecuted group in the text of the 2012 Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Victims of National Socialism in Berlin.
From the 1920s until the 1970s, the Swiss government had a semi-official policy of institutionalizing Yenish parents as mentally ill and having their children adopted by members of the sedentary Swiss population. The name of this program was Kinder der Landstrasse ('Children of the Road'). The separation of children was justified as the Yenish being a 'criminal milieu' of 'homelessness and vagrancy' was later criticized as a violation of the fundamental rights of the Yenishe to family life, with children separated from parents by force without due criminal procedure, and resulting in many of the children suffering an ordeal of successive foster homes and orphanages. In all, 590 children were taken from their parents and institutionalized in orphanages, mental institutions, and even prisons. Child removals peaked in the 1930s to 1940s, in the years leading up to and during World War II. After public criticism in 1972, the program was discontinued in 1973., an historical study spanning the years from 1926 to 1973. In February 2025, the Swiss government formally acknowledged that the forced removals and assimilation efforts targeting the Yenish, Manouche, and Sinti people under the Kinder der Landstrasse program constitute a crime against humanity under international law.
An organisation for the political representation of travellers (Yenish as well as Sinti and Roma) was founded in 1975, named Radgenossenschaft der Landstrasse ("Wheel Cooperative of the Road"). The Swiss federal authorities have officially recognized the "Swiss Yenish and Sinti" as a "national minority". With the ratification of the European language charter in 1997, Switzerland has given the status of a "territorial non-tied language" to the Yenish language.
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