Transcript Gypsies and the Holocaust

Gypsies and the Holocaust
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Roma and Sinti
In 1939, about a million Roma lived in Europe.
About half of all European Roma lived in
Eastern Europe. In Greater Germany there
were about 30,000 Roma, most of whom held
German citizenship. Relatively few Roma lived
in Western Europe.
It is very difficult to be accurate as Roma and
Sinti had learned not to be counted or
photographed, as classification had previously
brought about persecution.
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For centuries Roma and Gypsies had been
badly treated in Europe – a people judged to be
of foreign appearance, language and customs.
A Bavarian law of July 16, 1926, outlined
measures for ‘Combating Gypsies, Vagabonds,
and the Work Shy’ and required the systematic
registration of all Sinti and Roma. The law
prohibited Gypsies from ‘roaming about or
camping in bands,’ and those ‘Gypsies unable
to prove regular employment’ risked being sent
to forced labour for up to two years. This law
became the norm in 1929.
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The situation in Germany following World War One
Following the First World War, the terms of the treaty of
Versailles created a drain on the resources of Germany.
The grinding poverty, which resulted in Germany,
produced anger and resentment.
Hitler offered scapegoats to blame; the non-Aryan
people or the ‘enemies within.’
The people included were primarily Jewish people and
Roma and Sinti.
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The philosophy of the Nazi Party
This went beyond racism to the total destruction of ‘alien races’.
Adolf Hitler underpinned his beliefs in Mein Kampf (My Struggle), 1925. He
linked racial purity to the laws of nature: in that only the strongest survived.
‘No more than Nature desires the mating of weaker with stronger individuals,
even less does she desire the blending of a higher with a lower race, since,
if she did, her whole work of higher breeding, over perhaps hundreds of
thousands of years, might be ruined with one blow.’
Furthermore, Hitler not only called for racial discrimination but for the total
destruction of inferior races and the consequences of equality.
‘Historical experience offers countless proofs of this. It shows with terrifying
clarity that in every mingling of Aryan blood with that of lower peoples the
result was the end of the cultured people.’
Volume One, Chapter XI, Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler
Extracts from Mein Kampf, A. Hilter (1925). Used with kind permission of The Random House Group Ltd.
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How did the Holocaust happen?
Once Hitler and the Nazi party had seized power in
Germany, a series of laws were introduced which made
life difficult for the Jewish and Roma communities.
Many of these laws built upon existing anti-Roma
legislation which had been in existence since the Middle
Ages. These laws eventually sent the Roma/Sinti
communities into the death camps.
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The laws which led to the holocaust
• 1933: ‘Lebensunwertesleben’ (lives not deserving life) establishes
sterilisation for specific ethnic groups.
18th–25th September: The Reich minister calls for the arrest of all Roma
Travellers.
• 1934: January: The first Roma are sent to concentration camps for
processing and sterilisation.
July: German nationals are forbidden to marry ‘Jews, Negroes and Roma’.
September 8th: Travellers are refused the right to trade in Dusseldorf.
September 17th: National citizenship Law relegates Jews and Roma
Travellers to second class citizens with no civil rights.
• 1936: March 17th: Roma lose their right to vote.
• 1941: Roma children are banned from schools.
• 1944: Himmler orders the execution of all Roma in concentration camps.
• 1942: Roma are removed from the jurisdiction of German courts.
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Citizenship Law
By 1943 the Citizenship Law omitted any mention of Roma, as the
Nazis believed that they would not exist for much longer.
The order to send Roma to Auschwitz was passed on December
16th 1942 and Himmler ordered their extermination in 1944.
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Life in the concentration camps
At Auschwitz – Birkenau there was a
separate camp set up for Roma. In
this camp the majority of
inhabitants died. Those who were
not gassed died as a result of
poor conditions and hard labour.
Travellers
had to wear
black
triangles on
their
uniforms
Children were
used in medical
experiments by
the SS
physicians.
The camp closed on
August 2–3,1944
when around 3000
Roma men were
gassed.
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Resistance in the concentration camps
In May 1944, over 100 Roma men were ordered out of the barracks
at the Auschwitz family camp by the SS guards, probably with the
gas chamber as their final destination.
They refused and armed themselves with knives and axes, following
a stand-off the SS guards withdrew.
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Porrajmos – The Gypsy Holocaust
Roma have named the Holocaust, Porrajmos, which translates
as the Great Devouring.
The total number of Roma killed by the Nazis will never be
known due to the destruction of records and the chaos in
the formerly occupied countries at the end of the war.
Estimates range from 25,000 to 1.5 million or 50% of all
European Roma.*
In Auschwitz a recorded 16,000 Roma were reduced to 4,000
by August 1944.*
Indeed, by 1941, Nazi documentation omitted Roma from
legislation because the Nazis thought the group would soon
be wiped out.
A group of Gypsy prisoners, awaiting instructions from their German captors, sit in an open area near the fence in the Belzec concentration camp – United States
11Holocaust
Memorial Museum, courtesy of Archiwum Dokumentacji Mechanicznej. "The views or opinions expressed in this guided resource, and the context in which the images are
used, do not necessarily reflect the views or policy of, nor imply approval or endorsement by, The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.“
After the Holocaust
Roma were absent from the Nuremberg trials and it is only
relatively recently that the genocide of Roma in the Holocaust
has been truly recognised. Some writers feel that the genocide
of Roma was forgotten after the war.
In 1995 on the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of the
Buchenwald camp, a monument and a museum were
established on the site.
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Porrajmos
The great devouring of our people,
Can be sometimes be overlooked,
Because the Nazis kept no records,
No figures in their books.
They brought the people from their homes,
And bundled them into trains;
men, women and children,
Never to be seen again.
They walked into camps
And were separated,
From kin and from friends.
Walking to their deaths,
Only ashes remain.
They made us wear black triangles,
And made us separate.
But some of us survived
To tell the dreadful tale.
The Nazis hated our ways,
Our culture and our history.
They tried to destroy us,
But we still remain.
York Pupils, KS3 and KS4.
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Final thoughts from an Auschwitz survivor
‘Other people suffered in the war. Soldiers (sic) had weapons and
were free. We in the camps were forced to accept everything; we
were completely powerless…(sic) because of our so-called “racial
origin.”
Is this my fault? Is this the fault of my parents?
No Sinto, no individual, should ever had to suffer what we suffered.’
Walter Winter
Extract from Winter Time: Memoirs of a German Sinto who survived Auschwitz by Walter Winter (2004). © University of Hertfordshire Press.
Used with kind permission.
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Acknowledgements
• Extracts from Mein Kampf, A. Hilter (1925). Used with kind
permission of The Random House Group Ltd.
• A group of Gypsy prisoners, awaiting instructions from their German
captors, sit in an open area near the fence in the Belzec
concentration camp – United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,
courtesy of Archiwum Dokumentacji Mechanicznej. "The views or
opinions expressed in this guided resource, and the context in which
the images are used, do not necessarily reflect the views or policy
of, nor imply approval or endorsement by, The United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum.“
• Extract from Winter Time: Memoirs of a German Sinto who survived
Auschwitz by Walter Winter (2004). © University of Hertfordshire
Press. Used with kind permission.
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