2 august

2 August European Action Day Remember the Roma Genocide Act against Roma Discrimination

Brief information on the Roma Genocide in Second World War

What is the Roma Genocide?

According to the United Nations, the term genocide refers to “a denial of the right of existence of entire human groups“, aiming at complete extermination of such groups. The term Roma Genocide, then, refers to the mass extermination of Roma and Sinti throughout Europe which took place during World War II. The term „Holocaust“ refers to acts of genocide which took place during World War II – and today many scholars agree that it refers to the genocide of the Jews (known as Shoah) and the Roma (sometimes referred to as Porrajmos or Samudaripen) as both of them were targeted based on racial grounds with the objective of their complete extermination. The regime also targeted all LGBT, people with disabilities and political disidents who did not fit into the “Arian superior” archetype.

Victims of the Roma Genocide It is difficult to give a specific number of Roma victims as many were murdered by mobile SS groups, on sight, or reached the gas chambers without ever being registered officially. Today most scholars agree that an estimated of at least 500.000 Roma were victims of the genocide, amounting to perhaps as much as 7080% of the total Roma population in Europe at the time.

Why the Roma?

Given the Nazi ideology for “racial purity”, the Roma were among their first victims.

As of the late 1800´s and with the elaboration of the pseudo-scientific doctrine of “biological determinism”, a number of anti-Roma laws were passed and different institutions were destined to fight with the “Gypsy menace”. With the rise of Hitler to power in 1933 and following the Nazi ideology of “racial purity”, the anti-Roma laws proliferated.

On July 14, 1933 the Nazi Department of Racial Hygiene and Population Biology began to experiment on Roma to reach criteria for their racial classification, and it was determined that most Roma posed a danger to German racial purity and should be eliminated. The Nuremberg Laws, which passed in 1935 and targeted the Jews directly, were extended to include “Gypsies, Negroes and their bastard offspring” in late 1935. As of 1936, the Racial Hygiene and Demographic Biology Research Unit was established under the supervision of Dr. Robert Ritter.

Soon after the first Roma ghettos and deportation to labour camps begun.

“The Gypsy question is for us today primarily a racial question. Thus, the national socialist state will basically have to settle the Gypsy question just as it has solved the Jewish question. We have already begun...” Adolph Würth, Racial Hygiene Research Unit at the Nazi Department of Health Solution of the “Gypsy question” Initially there was disagreement about “the solution of the Gypsy Question” but the debate ended in 1942 when Himmler signed the order marking the beginning of the mass deportations to Auschwitz. For the Romani people of Europe, this order was equivalent to the January 20 decision of that same year, made at the Wannsee Conference (20 January 2013), at which Nazi bureaucrats decided on the “Final Solution” to the “Jewish problem”. Himmler then ordered, on November 15, 1943, that Roma and “part-Roma” were to be put “on the same level as Jews and placed in concentration camps”. In Auschwitz the arriving Roma were not subjected to

selection, instead they were put into the newly built “Gypsy family camp”, so called because entire families stayed there together.

The Nazi persecution of Roma varied from country to country and region to region.

In the Balkan states and the Soviet Union, mobile killing squads travelled from village to village massacring the inhabitants and typically leaving few or no records of the number of victims. Roma were also victims of the puppet regimes that cooperated with the Third Reich during the war, especially the Ustaša regime in Croatia. In Jasenovac concentration camp tens of thousands of Roma were killed.

Yad Vashem estimates that the Roma Genocide was most intense in Yugoslavia, where around 90,000 Roma were killed.

The Romanian regime did not systematically annihilate the Roma population in its territory, but deported 26.000 Roma to Transnistria, where approximatively 11000 died from disease, starvation and brutal treatment.

2 August 1944 In May 1944, the Nazis started to plan the “Final Solution” for the “Gypsy Family Camp” in Auschwitz. The initial date for the liquidation of the “Gypsy camp” was planned for the 16th of May. The prisoners of the camp were ordered to stay in the barracks and surrounded by 60 SS men. When the SS men tried to force the prisoners out of the barracks they faced a rebellion of Roma men, women and children, armed with nothing more but sticks, tools and stones, and eventually the SS had to withdraw. The resistance of Roma prisoners gave them only a few additional months of life.

The Nazi also feared that an insurrection could spread to other parts of the camp and they planned the “Final Solution” on August 2nd. On orders from SS leader Heinrich Himmler, a ban on leaving the barracks was imposed on the evening of August 2 in the “Gypsy Camp”. Despite resistance by the Roma, 2,897 men, women, and children were loaded on trucks, taken to gas chamber V, and exterminated.

Their bodies were burned in pits next to the crematorium. After the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp in 1945 only 4 Roma remained alive.

Lack of recognition of the Roma Genocide Due to the lack of recognition of the fate of the Roma under the Nazi Regime, the Roma Genocide was often referred to as the “forgotten Holocaust” which seems still valid until today. After the war, hardly any attention has been paid to the fate of the Roma and Sinti during the WWII neither by scholars nor by governments. During the Nuremberg trials there was not a single Roma witness and the Roma mass murders were only mentioned marginally. It was not until the trail of Adolf Eichmann in 1962 in Jerusalem that the crimes against Roma under the Nazi regime were for the first time explicitly mentioned, proven and judged.

As of the 60´s a number of Roma and Sinti organizations begun the plight to officially recognize the Roma Genocide, mobilizing attention around the fate of the Roma during the WWII through actions such as the demonstration at the former Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1979 or the hunger strike in 1980 at Dachau.

The demands presented before the German authorities were largely fruitless. For many years, the Roma Genocide was denied recognition based on the argument that the murders of Roma under the Nazi regime were not done on racial grounds, but

rather for the Romani status as “antisocial” or criminal groups. It was not until 1982 that the government of West Germany has officially recognized the Roma Genocide: »The Nazi dictatorship inflicted a grave injustice on the Sinti and Roma. They were persecuted for reasons of race. These crimes constituted an act of genocide.« Helmut Schmidt, Federal Chancellor of Germany, 17 March 1982 Despite the official recognition of the Roma Genocide by the German Authorities, this chapter in European history still remains largely unrecognized. The Roma Genocide still has not entered the canon of modern history and is seldom taught or even mentioned in school curricula. It is only in recent years and thanks to common efforts of Roma and non-Roma organizations and individuals that the Roma Genocide is gradually gaining official recognition. In 2011 the Polish Government passed a resolution for the official recognition of the 2nd of August as a day of commemoration, in 2012 the European Parliament discussed a declaration for the recognition of 2nd August as an official day of remembrance but the recognition yet still has to be approved. »The genocide of the Sinti and Roma was motivated by the same obsession with race, carried out with the same resolve and the same intent to achieve their methodical and final extermination as the genocide against the Jews. Throughout the National Socialists’ sphere of influence, the Sinti and Roma were murdered systematically, family by family, from the very young to the very old.« Federal President Roman Herzog, 16 March 1997 For further reading Right to Remember. A Handbook for Education with Young People on the Roma Genocide, author: Ellie Keen, Council of Europe, 2014 Documentation and Cultural Centre of German Sinti and Roma, The National Socialist Genocide of Sinti and Roma and info about The Civil Rights Movement

http://www.romasintigenocide.eu