Roma and Sinti: Victims of the Nazi Era
During World War II, the Nazis and their collaborators murdered thousands of Sinti and Roma men, women and children living in German-occupied European cities.
Between 1933 and 1945, Sinti and Roma (“Gypsies”) suffered greatly as victims of Nazi persecution. Because of historical prejudices, the Nazi regime believed that Gypsies, whom it considered both “asocial” (“outside of “normal” society) and racially “inferior,” threatened the biological purity and strength of the “superior Aryan” race. During World War II, the Nazis and their collaborators murdered thousands of Sinti and Roma men, women and children living in German-occupied European cities.
Having been marginalized in Europe for centuries, Gypsies were despised as people with an alien appearance, language and customs. The persecution of Sinti and Roma in modern Germany long predated the Nazi regime. According to Article 109 of the Weimar Constitution, although Gypsies had equal and full citizenship rights, they were subject to special and discriminatory laws. On July 16, 1926, in the Bavarian Law, ‘Gypsies were defined as “vagabonds and lazy people” and were systematically registered by the state accordingly. With this law, Gypsies were prohibited from living a nomadic life, and those who could not prove that they worked regularly were threatened with being sent to camps to work for two years. This law became a national norm in 1929. When Hitler came to power in 1933, the anti-Gypsy laws remained in effect. Within the new vision of Nazi Germany that was suddenly put into effect, a racial hierarchy was developed with Aryans at the top and Jews, Gypsies and other black races at the lower levels. The Nazi regime quickly began to implement laws that would affect the Sinti and Roma in Germany. Under the law “for the prevention of newborns with congenital defects” enacted in July 1933, Nazi doctors sterilized countless Gypsies, half-Gypsies and Gypsies born of mixed marriages without the consent of the people. Similarly, in the law enacted in November 1933 “against dangerous and persistent criminals”, the police arrested Gypsies as well as prostitutes, beggars, alcoholics and homeless people. pan id="more-130">
Although not explicitly stated in the September 15, 1935, Nuremberg Race Law (German blood and honor protection and Reich citizenship laws), the view of those who interpreted these laws is that Gypsies were included in the same group as other racially excluded foreigners (Jews and Blacks) who were not of German blood. For example, these groups were expressly forbidden from marrying “Aryans”. Like Jews, Gypsies were deprived of civil rights.
In June 1936, an office was opened in Munich to “Fight Against the Gypsy Menace”. This office took on the task of being a “national information bank” regarding Gypsies. In line with this, the Berlin Police Department was given the authority to arrest Gypsies upon the instructions of the Ministry of the Interior. In this way, the image of the city that hosted the Berlin Olympics would not be spoiled because of Gypsies. The police arrested 600 Gypsies and put them in a Gypsy concentration camp (Zigeunerlager) established in the Marzahn district of Berlin. Marzahn was an area close to the Belin slum cemetery and sewage center. The camp had only 3 water pumps and 2 toilets. Crowded and unsanitary conditions led to an increase in epidemics. The camp was guarded by police and police dogs. In the 1930s, similar “Zigeunerlager” were established in Cologne, Düsseldorf, Essen, Frankfurt and other German cities with the initiative of the municipalities. When Germany incorporated Austria into the Reich in March 1938, the Nuremberg laws began to be applied to Austrian Gypsies. Two special prison camps were opened; one in Salzburg in October 1939 for 80-400 Gypsies, and the other in Lackenbach, on the eastern Hungarian border of Austria, in November 1940 for 4,000 Gypsies. The conditions in Lackenbach continued brutally until the end of the war, and many people were killed. Gypsies were forced to work in both camps. In addition, these camps served as registration and concentration camps for Gypsies to be sent to Nazi extermination and death camps.
The “Crime Prevention” decree issued in December 1937 provided the police with the pretext for rounding up Gypsies. In June 1938, 1,000 German and 1,000 Austrian Gypsies; They were deported to the concentration camps of Buchenwold, Dachau, Sachsenhausen and Lichtenburg (this camp was for women only). A year later, thousands of Gypsies were sent to the concentration camps of Mauthausen, Rovensbrack, Dachau and Buchenwald. In these camps, prisoners wore signs of various shapes and colors, which allowed the guards and officers in the camp to distinguish the class of the prisoners. Gypsies wore black patches in the shape of a triangle, meaning "asocial". The green triangle patch was the symbol of Gypsies who had committed crimes. Sometimes they were classified with the letter "Z"
They were being held. Psychiatrist Dr. Robert Ritter was conducting genetic and hereditary research on Gypsies, and played a primary role in the police arrests of Sinti and Roma. In 1936, Ritter became head of the research department of the Ministry of Health and later of the Police Headquarters. In 1938, Ritter and his assistants moved to Berlin with the “Combating the Gypsy Menace” center to racially categorize all Gypsies in Germany and Austria.
Rittler’s biological-racial Gypsy study was most likely based on Heinrich Himmler’s project for “total elimination of the Gypsy problem on racial grounds”, which advised the “Combating the Gypsy Menace” directive. Rittler organized the records of all Gypsies over the age of six living within the borders of the Reich, and used 3 racial groups in making this classification: Gypsies, partially Gypsies, and nomads who acted like Gypsies. Himmler, who was responsible for the creation of a large security purified German Empire, stated that the aim of the State was to preserve and defend the homogeneity of the German nation in order to “physically purify the German nation from Gypsies”.
Sinti and Roma children were imprisoned in regional camps to be racially classified and experimented on. Between 1933 and 1939; the authorities took many Sinti and Roma children from their families and placed them in private homes. These homes were like state wards. Gypsy children who went to school were considered criminals and were sent to private schools. Children who could not speak German were classified as retarded and sent to private schools for mentally disabled children. Just like Jewish children; Gypsy girls and boys were subjected to ridicule and insult by their friends. This situation continued until March 1941.
The outbreak of war in September 1939 caused the policies of the Nazi regime towards Gypsies to become even more radical, just like the anti-Jewish laws. On September 21, 1939, at a conference on racial policy, chaired by Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reich Security Main Office in Berlin, it was decided that, in addition to the deportation of Jews, 30,000 German and Austrian Gypsies would be deported from occupied Poland. The policy of "resettlement in the East" was followed by the mass killing of Sinti and Roma as well as Jews. The deportation of German Gypsies, men, women and children, began in May 1940, when 2,800 Gypsies were deported to Lublin, occupied Poland. In early November 1941, 5,000 Austrian Gypsies were deported to the Lodi ghettos and from there to Chelmno. The mass killing in the gas chambers in Chelmno in early January 1942 was the first major mass killing of Gypsies. Similarly, in the summer of 1942, German and Polish Gypsies who had been sentenced to the Warsaw ghettos were deported to Treblinka, where they were gassed to death. In addition, German Gypsies were deported to ghettos in Bialystok, Krakow and Radom.
During the war, some minor disagreements arose in the highest levels of government regarding the "final solution to the Gypsy problem." Himmler wanted to preserve a small group of "pure" Gypsies for use in ethnic studies of "enemies of the state," but this idea was rejected. By a decree dated December 16, 1942, Himmler ordered the deportation of Gypsies and half-Gypsies to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. At least 23,000 Gypsies were deported to Auschwitz, the first group arriving from Germany in February 1943. Most of the Gypsies in Auschwitz were brought from Germany or from regions that had been incorporated into the Reich, such as Bohemia and Moravia. The police also sent a small group from Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Norway to Auschwitz.
The concentration camp officials had set up a separate section for Gypsies at Birkenau Camp, called B II. The wooden barracks, gas valves and cremation ovens were clearly visible. During the 17 months of imprisonment, the majority of the Gypsies were either mass-gassed or died of starvation, excessive working conditions and disease (typhus, smallpox and a rare type of leprosy called noma). Many of the others, including children, died as a result of cruel medical experiments carried out by Dr. Josef Mengele and other SS physicians. The camp was evacuated on the night of August 2-3, 1944, with 2,897 Sinti and Roma men, women and children killed in the gas chambers. Some of the 1,400 survivors were sent to work in the Buchenwald and Ravensbruck concentration camps.
After Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, special SS cadres (Einsatzgruppen) and regular army units and police began mass shootings of Roma in Russia, Poland and the Balkans. They also killed communist leaders and Jews.
In Western and Southern Europe, the fate of the Sinti and Roma
