Prejudice and Persecution
claims of racial inferiority…
For centuries, the Romani people have been the victims of ethnic subjugation and cleansing. The fearsome shadow of attempted genocide of Roma (“gypsies”) in Europe is still menacing, in light of worsening oppression, especially in Eastern Europe. This concern is understandable in light of the first two genocidal massacres: during World War I Turks killed Roma and Armenians; and during the Holocaust, Nazis massacred Roma alongside Jews.
Under the Nazi regime, German authorities and civilian authorities subjected Roma to arbitrary and unjustified internment, forced labor, and mass murder. German authorities systematically murdered tens of thousands of Roma in the German-occupied territories of the Soviet Union and Serbia, and thousands more were killed or forced into labor, at camps including Auschwitz, Birkenau, Treblinka, Buchenwald and Dachua.
In the autumn of 1941, German police authorities deported 5,007 Sinti and Lalleri Gypsies from Austria to the ghetto for Jews in Lodz, where they resided in a segregated section. Nearly half of the Roma died within the first months of their arrival, due to lack of adequate food, fuel, shelter, and medicines. German SS and police officials deported those who survived these horrific conditions to the killing center at Chelmno in the first months of 1942 where, along with tens of thousands of Jews, the Roma died in gas vans, poisoned by carbon monoxide gas.
German authorities also confined all Roma in so-called “gypsy camps” (Zigeunerlager) where they were deprived of the necessities of life and where children were often separated from the parents. Hundreds of Roma died as a result of the inhumane conditions: food and medical help was sparse and inadequate. Local Germans repeatedly complained about the camps, wanting the camps to be removed from their “neighborhoods. They demanded the deportation of the Roma interned on the predicate to “safeguard” public morals, public health, and security. Due to these public outcries, Himmler ordered the deportation of all Roma 1942 from Greater German Reich.
The Roma of Europe were registered, sterilized, ghettoized, and then deported to concentration and death camps by the Nazis. Approximately 250,000 to 500,000 Roma were murdered during the Holocaust - an event they call the Porajmos (the "Devouring")
After the war, discrimination against Roma continued throughout Central and Eastern Europe. The Federal Republic of Germany determined that all measures taken against Roma before 1943 were “legitimate official measures” against persons committing criminal acts, not the result of policy driven by racial prejudice. This decision effectively closed the door to restitution for thousands of Roma victims, who had been incarcerated, forcibly sterilized, and deported out of Germany for no specific crime. The postwar Bavarian criminal police took over the research files of the Nazi regime, including the registry of Roma who had resided in the Greater German Reich.
Only in late 1979 did the West German Federal Parliament identify the Nazi persecution of Roma as being racially motivated, creating eligibility for most Roma to apply for compensation for their suffering and loss under the Nazi regime. By this time, many of those who became eligible had already died.