Top Photo: A group of Roma pose for a photograph, 1930s. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Kore Yoors.

Nazi policies toward Roma in Germany and occupied territories developed gradually during the regime’s rule, eventually culminating in the genocide of over 250,000 people.[1] The genocide of the Roma is sometimes referred to as the Porajmos (the “devouring”) or Pharrajimos (“cutting up” or “destruction”) in the Romani language.[2] The Nazis also targeted other groups, perpetrating a genocide against European Jews in which six million people were murdered, as well as killing over three million Soviet prisoners of war, nearly two million Poles, over 250,000 people with disabilities, over 1,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses, hundreds of men accused of homosexuality, and other victims.

The Prewar Years

Prior to the Nazi regime taking power, Roma had been a subject of fascination and hatred in Europe. Though many viewed Roma as outsiders—and they were closely monitored by the authorities in Germany—the roughly one million Roma people in Europe lived diverse lives across the continent. Some Roma lived in caravans and traveled from town to town, selling horses and handcrafted products. Others lived in cities, towns, or villages doing a variety of jobs, from farming to fortune-telling to medicine.[3]

When the Nazi regime took over in 1933, little changed right away for the Roma. They were already subject to travel restrictions and investigations by the police. But in early 1934, a number of Roma came under threat from the “Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases.” This law legalized and encouraged forced sterilization for people who were considered medically likely to have children with a “defect” of some sort—disabilities, mental or physical, that the Nazi regime considered damaging to the “German race” and workforce. Between 1934 and 1945, over 300,000 people were forcibly sterilized, most of them women. Many of these women did not survive the procedure, which often had to be repeated, was extremely painful, and was often done without any anesthetic. In the 1930s, 500 German and Austrian Roma were sterilized.[4]

In 1935, there was another harsh blow to German Roma when the “Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor” was enacted. The first of the Nuremberg Laws, this law denied Jews their citizenship, banned marriages between members of “foreign races” and Germans, and took away political rights of so-called non-Germans.[5] Passed in September, the laws were expanded in November 1935 to include Roma. As a result, marriages were broken up, many Roma lost their jobs, and families faced destitution.

During this time, Roma began to face further restrictions on their lives. High rental prices, foreclosures, destruction of caravan sites, and harassment by the police were some of the ways the government controlled “Gypsy” populations. As part of a policy designed to “prevent” crime, Roma men capable of work were frequently rounded up and sent to concentration camps as “vagrants,” “work-shy,” or “asocial” prisoners. Families of traveling Roma were confined to small geographic areas, enabling the police to monitor them closely. 

Robert Ritter and Eva Justin taking a man’s blood in a field. Bundesarchiv, Item ID: R 165 Bild-059-026.

Realizing the difficulty of defining who exactly was Romani, Nazi authorities established the Research Institute for Racial Hygiene, headed by Dr. Robert Ritter, a German physician and prominent eugenicist. Ritter used this new agency to conduct research on German Roma, whose population he estimated to be around 30,000. He and his assistants traveled around the country visiting “Gypsy camps,” where they drew people’s blood, measured their heads, and interviewed them.

In 1938, anti-Roma policies were consolidated under the agency of the Reich Central Office for Combatting the Gypsy Nuisance. This organization fell under the criminal police, speaking volumes about how the regime viewed Romani people.[6] Shortly after this agency was established, its powers were strengthened with the passage of the decree “On Combatting the Gypsy Nuisance,” which specified racial categories of Roma, as established by Ritter and his team. The decree, circulated by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, begins: 

Experience gained in combatting the Gypsy nuisance, and knowledge derived from race-biological research, have shown that the proper method of attacking the Gypsy problem seems to be to treat it as a matter of race. … [I]t has been shown that efforts to make the Gypsies settle have been unsuccessful, especially in the case of pure Gypsies, on account of their strong compulsion to wander. It has therefore become necessary to distinguish between pure and part-Gypsies in the final solution of the Gypsy question. To this end, it is necessary to establish the racial affinity of every Gypsy living in Germany and of every vagrant living a Gypsy-like existence.[7]

The decree highlights the medical and “racial” interest in Roma. The Research Institute for Racial Hygiene, which continued its research throughout this time, established racial categories of Roma, including “Gypsies,” “Gypsy Mischlinge (mixed race),” and “Gypsy Mischlinge with predominantly Gypsy or predominately German blood.” The Institute also collaborated with police departments and archives, parishes, and municipal offices to create a “Gypsy Clan Archive,” in which they created hereditary charts and genealogical certificates.[8]

In addition to classifying Roma, the decree also paved the way for the first special internment camps for Roma to be established. The Nazis forced Roma to relocate to central areas and register for forced labor. One of these sites was Lackenbach, the largest camp for Austrian Roma, holding over 2,000 people at its peak. Among the hardships of imprisonment was the lack of adequate clothing, supplies, and food: 

One of the more difficult realities of everyday life at Lackenbach was the poor food, served in meager portions. Soups and stews made from turnips or rotten cabbage. Inedible cheese. Peas and beans full of maggots. We ate food intended for pigs. My sister and her children cried for a piece of bread. But what you going to do? Nothing.[9] 

Where Austrian Roma families were not interned, they still faced increasing discrimination. Romani children were often removed from schools for being “pests” or “threats.”[10] Starting in March 1939, Roma were also ordered to carry race identification cards that stated which category they fell into. A 15 percent “race” tax was imposed on Roma as well.[11]

The Outbreak of War

After the invasion of Poland, anti-Roma policy assumed a new level of importance. Wehrmacht leadership raised concerns that Roma, particularly traveling Roma, were spies and risked spreading information about the German military’s movements in Poland and other occupied countries.[12] On October 17, 1939, a month and a half after the invasion, the Reich Security Main Office issued guidelines for how to handle the Roma population. They stated that Roma should not have freedom of movement, and until they were able to be deported, they should be housed in special collection camps, which had already begun to pop up across Germany.[13]

Map of a select number of ghettos and camps that Roma were sent to during World War II. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

On the Western Front, Roma were considered a threat to national security as well. In France, Roma and other people considered to be “nomadic” were seen as outsiders who might reveal military movements to the Germans. The French authorities tightened restrictions on traveling Roma. When France fell to the invading German forces, the Nazi regime further tightened restrictions on Roma and planned to send Roma to collection camps. During Nazi rule in occupied France, more than 3,000 Roma and “nomadic” people were incarcerated.[14]

Less than a week after the invasion of France began, Nazi authorities started arresting Roma in major German cities and towns and deporting them. In May 1940, 2,338 Roma were deported to internment camps in occupied Poland. These early camps were dirty and often barren. Deportees were forced to build the flimsy barracks they would sleep in. The harsh labor conditions combined with overcrowding and minimal rations led to the death of 80 percent of the prisoners.[15] 

View of the Romani section of the Łódź Ghetto. This image was taken by Walter Genewein, the head of the Łódź Ghetto economy and a Nazi Party member. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Robert Abrams.

Deportations of Roma from Germany and occupied Austria and Czechoslovakia to Poland continued through autumn 1941, when 5,000 Austrian Roma were deported to Łódź Ghetto, set up to consolidate and confine Jewish people from the surrounding areas. The incoming Roma were forced into a small section of the ghetto, separated from the Jewish prisoners. Prior to their arrival, the mayor of Łódź had warned Nazi authorities that the ghetto was already overcrowded and faced food shortages and epidemics. His warnings were ignored.[16] In the Romani section of the ghetto, each building was filled with prisoners, leading to lice and diseases spreading even more rapidly. Typhus, which is carried by lice, killed hundreds. In January 1942, the surviving 4,400 people were sent to the newly established Chełmno death camp, where they were murdered in gas vans.[17]

Further deportations of Roma occurred in 1942, including 2,000 Roma who were sent to Białystok prison in January and February. In April and June 1942, hundreds more Roma were arrested in Germany and deported to the Warsaw Ghetto. Rather than being sectioned off, like in Łódź, they lived alongside ghettoized Jews, facing the same miserable conditions. When the ghetto was emptied after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the surviving Romani prisoners were deported to Treblinka death camp, where they were killed.[18]

Genocide by Bullets

The seemingly haphazard arrests and deportations were not the only ways that Roma were targeted during the war. Many also fell victim to what is known as the Holocaust by bullets. Organized executions of Roma occurred first in Serbia, where Roma were persecuted as part of retaliatory measures. Partisans and nationalist forces resisted the German invasion of Yugoslavia, shooting Nazi troops and sabotaging their equipment. To deter further resistance, the Wehrmacht stated that they would shoot 50 people for every German who was wounded and 100 for every German killed. They used this as a pretext to murder male Jews, Roma, Communists, and partisans across Yugoslavia. Throughout 1941 and into 1942, the Wehrmacht and police units murdered thousands in these retaliatory measures. Jewish and Romani women and children whose husbands and fathers had been shot were interned in camps established around Serbia.[19] In the camp at Semlin (also known as Sajmište), 7,500 Jews and 292 Romani women and children were interned. In early 1942, not having a clear directive on how to treat Roma, the authorities released the Romani prisoners. The Jews who remained at Semlin were killed.[20] Similar cases of imprisonment happened in Croatia, where between 15,000 and 20,000 Roma were imprisoned in the Jasenovac camp. Most Romani prisoners were killed in the camp.

A Serbian gendarme forcibly leads a group of Roma to their execution. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Muzej Revolucije Narodnosti Jugoslavije.

On the Eastern Front, as Hitler’s troops marched into the Soviet Union, Einsatzgruppen, special killing units under the Schutzstaffel (SS), followed behind, rounding up and executing Jews, Communists, and Roma. They considered these people to be a threat, “fifth-column informers” who served “Jewish Bolshevism.” Though not initially a main target of the Einsatzgruppen, Roma were again viewed as spies, and certain Einsatzgruppe units targeted them, particularly in the Crimea. Wehrmacht troops would also hand over Roma to the Einsatzgruppen when they found them in the vicinity of their operations.[21] By the time German troops were pushed out of the Soviet Union in 1944, they had killed around 30,000 Roma.[22]

Auschwitz-Birkenau

In December 1942, while the Einsatzgruppen were murdering Roma in the Soviet Union, Himmler issued an order to deport Roma in the occupied western countries. Roma from Germany, Austria, the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, the Netherlands, Belgium, and northern France were to be rounded up and sent on a long, arduous train journey to Auschwitz-Birkenau, by now a large concentration and death camp. Two small gas chambers were already in use at the site, and four larger chambers were being built. 

Of the three racial categories established by the Institute for Racial Hygiene, only those considered “Gypsy Mischlinge” were to be deported. Socially integrated Mischlinge were to be sterilized; as a result, 2,000 Roma were sterilized in painful procedures that often resulted in lifelong complications.[23] “Pure-blooded” Roma would be allowed to reproduce among themselves. As the arrests were left to local authorities, they often disregarded these categories and arrested the majority of Roma in the area.[24]

The first Romani transport to Auschwitz-Birkenau arrived on February 26, 1943. When they arrived, they were led to a barren section of the camp surround by barbed wire. Shoddy tools and thin wood were forced upon them as they were ordered to construct barracks in what would become the “Gypsy Family Camp,” a section of the camp where Roma would work, sleep, and eat for the next year. As one of the few places in Auschwitz where children were allowed to remain alive, a kindergarten was established on one side of the barbed wire. As they went off to their forced labor assignments, parents peered through the barbed wire to see Josef Mengele, a Nazi doctor, giving their children candy. After plying them with sweets, he would whisk the children away to his “hospital,” where he performed gruesome medical experiments, often resulting in prisoners’ deaths.

Transports continued to arrive to the “Gypsy Family Camp” through summer 1943. The section reached its peak population of 23,000 people, leading to overcrowding and death in the summer heat. In addition, disease was always rampant in Auschwitz, and the camp hospitals did little to stop the epidemics. They lacked medicine, food, and qualified personnel. At work, prisoners also faced risks to their lives. SS officers and guards regularly beat them, punished them with lashings, and subjected them to harsh physical labor, usually outdoors regardless of the weather and season. By the end of 1943, 70 percent of the prisoners in the “Gypsy Family Camp” had died or been killed.[25]

In May 1944, only 6,000 people remained in the Romani section of the camp. They were malnourished and weak. By then, they had also witnessed hundreds of thousands of transports arrive in the camp. Their section was located near the train tracks, where prisoners were forced off the trains, and many were dragged, weary and afraid, to the gas chambers. From their barracks, the Romani prisoners could see the newly arrived people marched under armed guard toward the gas chambers. They never saw them come out. They knew this would likely be their fate as well.

On May 16, 1944, the SS showed up with trucks to “transport” the Romani prisoners. The prisoners refused to leave their barracks, barricading the doors and arming themselves with tools, weapons, and pieces of wood. Unprepared for a revolt, the SS drove off, granting a temporary stay of execution. A week later, the SS returned and selected young, fit Romani prisoners for transfer to other camps. Over 1,400 prisoners were transported to concentration camps and forced labor camps in the occupied territories. With those capable of armed resistance gone, the SS were able to round up the remaining Romani prisoners and force them into the gas chambers, though not without difficulty. Over 19,300 Roma died in Auschwitz-Birkenau during its operation.

The End of the War

When liberation finally came, many felt that it was too late. They returned home to find that their houses had been destroyed and their families were gone: “The worst things, the stories of the survivors. Your father is dead, your mother is dead, your sister, your brother—all the crying when they found out who was dead. Thirty-eight of my relatives died in Auschwitz.”[26] In total, between 250,000 and 500,000 Roma were killed in the genocide. 

In additional to their personal grief, Roma faced the challenge of rebuilding in a world that did not recognize their persecution and suffering. Because many Romani people had been imprisoned as “asocials” or “work-shy,” governments often refused their claims for restitution and aid, claiming that they had been justly imprisoned. From this tragedy, many Romani groups banded together, seeking governmental recognition and fighting for social justice and equality. It took decades for their persecution to be recognized as racially motivated, with the West German government only acknowledging their persecution in 1965. In 1982, for the first time, Chancellor Helmut Schmidt finally called the mass killings of Roma a genocide. Still, the fight for awareness and and end to discrimination continue.