Gypsies and the Holocaust

Abstract

ON 18 MAY 1940, 2,800 German Romani and Sinti Gypsies were deported from seven assembly centers, located in the Old Reich, to Lublin, located in the General Government (Nazi occupied Poland)'. One and a half years later, from 5 to 9 November 1941, five transports (each consisting of 1,000 Austrian Gypsies) arrived in the Lodz ghetto. Less than two months later, in December 1941 and January 1942, these Gypsies were taken from Lodz to Kulmhof (Chelmno), where they were among the first to be killed in mobile gas vans.2 Although material about these events has been readily available for several decades, these facts are seldom included in most studies about the Holocaust. The exclusivity of emphasis on Judeocide in most Holocaust literature has generally excluded Gypsies (as well as blacks and the handicapped) from equal consideration.3 Adherents of this general school of interpretation do not deny that Nazi mass murder was directed not only at Jews but also at the handicapped and the Gypsies. However, they posit a qualitative difference between the murder of Jews and that of Gypsies and the handicapped without providing any convincing documentary evidence. Yehuda Bauer's assertion that Roma were not Jews, therefore there was no need to murder all of them, is only the most extreme example of such arguments.4

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