Holocaust

The arrival to power of Nazi in Germany and the subsequent Second World War brought the worst to Roma. Roma and Jews were the only two ethnic groups singled out by the German Nazis for total extermination. In 1938, Heinrich Himmler passed a new law called “Bekämpfung der Zigeunerplague” – Fighting against the Gypsy Plague. Earlier, the Germans had rounded up German Roma and dispatched them to concentration camps, mostly Sinti. In Austria, after 1938’s Anschluss many Roma from the Burgenland, where they had been settled by Maria Theresia were also sent to KZs. They were locked up in camps like Dachau, Buchenwald, and Ravensbrück in Germany, Mauthausen, Lackenbach and Salzburg in Austria.

These Roma were singled out for a slow death through starvation and hard work or for outright murder.

In 1939, Hitler invaded Poland and in 1941 the USSR. Many Roma lived in these countries. The Nazi, for Roma as for Jews, developed a new method of murder. The Einsatztruppen (Special Troops) murdered the Roma where they lived, in villages, cities, on the road or in the woods. Contrary to concentration camps, these troops left no evidence behind, no scrupulously held records. It is therefore difficult to know how many Roma were murdered by these Komandos.

In Poland, the Germans created new concentration camps. The best known, Auschwitz-Birkenau, had a Zigeunerlager, special camp for Gypsy. Another one is the Litzmannstadt ghetto, a Jewish and Roma ghetto in the Polish city of Lodz. Needless to say that in both, many thousand Roma were murdered. In the Gypsy camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau, we have evidence about the Roma who were murdered. They came from Austria, Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, Hungary, Moravia, Poland, Russia  and many other places, wherever they fell in the Nazi’s hands. The camps record contains the names and other information about 20’943 Roma. Many more, as is now known, were simply immediately sent to the gas chambers upon arrival in the camp. For these, as in the case of Jews, no records were made. Polish Roma until now are singing a song about these horrors:

They brought us in by the gate

They had us out through the chimney.

The murder of Roma happened in other camps as well. Step by step, others, such as the Croatian fascists, “ustasha”, followed the German lead. In their camp, Jasenovac, they exterminated many thousands Roma from all over Yugoslavia.

In Romania, an action, still known in the Roma minds as the “transmission”, was undertaken. Roma were sent to a slow death through work and starvation in what was called Transnistria, the Ukrainian territory under Romanian control. In Bulgaria, many Roma were arrested in villages and cities and were interned in camps, for forced labour, side by side with  Jews.

People who have analysed the Roma Holocaust during the Second World War now claim that a minimum of 500’000 Roma were murdered. Others advance the higher number of 2’500’000 victims. The truth is not known. Analysing records (camps, exhumations, for example in the Baltis States etc.), yield a very low number (around 200’000). This same discrepancy between actual victims and “official” records exists for Jews also. Simply, in the case of Jews, pre-war population records exist, while in many countries, one can only guess at the total Gypsy pre-War population.  The most important fact should not be obscured by a controversy on numbers: Roma were murdered for their ethnic appurtenance, along the same lines as Jews. Even now, few people know about or even have heard about this Roma Holocaust. There are but a few Roma left who have survived the horrors of the concentration camps and most do not want to speak about this period.

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