Gypsy genocide: concept, terminology, period of extermination of Gypsies, experiments on people, organizers. Gypsy genocide in Nazi Germany

And occupied countries. The destruction of the gypsies was part of the general policy of the National Socialists to destroy political opponents, homosexuals, terminally ill, mentally ill, drug addicts and Jews. According to recent studies, the number of victims of the Roma genocide is 150,000-200,000 people. The number of victims is even greater.

On October 25, 2012, a memorial to the Roma who became victims of the genocide in Nazi Germany was opened in Berlin.

Terminology

The genocide of the Roma does not have a single generally accepted terminological designation. Paraimos (or Poraimos) is a term coined by Romani activist Janko Hancock. Ian Hancock)). Since one of the meanings of the word is “abuse, rape”, in which it is used very often, there is a dispute among gypsy activists and gypsyologists about the ethical use of this term. Alternatives are "Samudaripen" (killing everyone) and "Kali Trash" (black horror)

The beginning of the persecution of the gypsies

The Reich Minister of the Interior, Frick, authorized the chief of the Berlin police to conduct a "general round-up day for gypsies." On the wedge of land between the Martsan cemetery, the line of the city railway and the fields, already in May 1936, the imperial labor service prepared a place for the construction of the “Martsan halt site”.

German police officer and specialist in "racial psychology" Robert Ritter talking to a gypsy woman

Executions in the occupied territories of the USSR

Since the autumn of 1941, in the occupied territories of the USSR, along with mass murders of Jews, mass murders of Gypsies began. The Einsatzgruppen destroyed the encampments they met on the way. In December 1941, Einsatzgruppe D (commanded by O. Ohlendorf) carried out mass executions of gypsies in the Crimea, and settled families were already dying. This experience was extended, starting in the spring of 1942, to the entire occupied territory of the USSR (with the exception of the Romanian zone of occupation). The punishers were guided by the "principle of blood." The executions of gypsy collective farmers, urban workers or artists did not fit into the framework of the struggle against tabor crime. Gypsy nationality was enough to fill the ranks of the victims. Somewhat later, the genocide on a national basis was supplemented by actions of an "anti-partisan war". In 1943-1944, the gypsies perished along with the Slavs during the burning of "partisan villages", during the cleansing of cities from the underground, and so on.

Foreign researchers believe that at least thirty thousand gypsies were killed in the occupied territory of the USSR.

Destruction of the German Gypsies

On December 16, 1942, Himmler ordered “to select, according to certain criteria, half-breed gypsies, Roma gypsies and representatives of gypsy clans of Balkan origin who do not have German blood and, during the action, be placed in a concentration camp for several weeks.” In the hierarchy of victims of genocide, there were thus three levels:

• the first, numerically small group (about 300 people) - "thoroughbreds" or "good half-breeds in the gypsy sense". They were seen as "the heritage of the Aryan ancestors" and were to be kept alive for scientific study; they were ordered to be settled under SS supervision between Burgenland and the Neusiedler See;
• the second group consisted of "socially adapted". They were subject to sterilization upon reaching the age of 11;
• the third group was to be sent to Auschwitz.

Arrests of German gypsies began in the early spring of 1943. Even gypsies who served in the German army and had military awards were imprisoned. Those arrested were sent to Auschwitz.

The survivors at Auschwitz were mostly German Sinti gypsies, whom the Nazis considered more civilized. Polish, Russian, Lithuanian, Serbian, Hungarian gypsies were mostly destroyed in gas chambers immediately upon arrival at the camp. But German gypsies also died en masse from hunger and disease, and those who were unable to work were also sent to gas chambers.

When the Soviet army came close enough to Auschwitz in 1944, the children and disabled prisoners of the "gypsy sector" were sent to the gas chambers, and the rest were taken to other camps, away from the front line.

Genocide in Croatia

The extermination of the Roma was also carried out in the Independent Croatian State, which actively collaborated with Nazi Germany. The Jasenovac extermination camp system was located 60 kilometers from Zagreb and was set up by Croatian nationalist Ustaše in August 1941 to exterminate Serbs, Jews and Gypsies.

Medical experiments conducted on gypsies in concentration camps

The Nazis were interested in the Gypsies due to the fact that they were an Indo-Aryan people. Among the gypsies, rarely, but there were people with blue eyes; in Dachau, such gypsies could have their eyes removed to study an incomprehensible phenomenon. In the Dachau death camp, at the direction of Himmler, an experiment was set up on 40 gypsies on dehydration. There were also other experiments that led to disability or death of the experimental subjects.

Genocide by country (some facts)

Famous gypsies who died or were affected by the genocide

Organizers of the genocide

• Robert Ritter
• Ernst Rudin
• Eva Justin

Display of the genocide in the folklore and creativity of the gypsies

The experienced genocide found its reflection in fairy tales, songs, poems and literary works of gypsies from different countries. For example:

• In the film by the gypsy director Tony Gatlif "Good Way" in one of the scenes, an elderly gypsy sings a song dedicated to a gypsy who died in a concentration camp. Another of his films, "On My Own", is entirely dedicated to the genocide of the gypsies.
• The film "Sinful Apostles of Love" by Russian actor and director Dufuni Vishnevsky is dedicated to the genocide of the Roma in the occupied territories of the USSR.

Bibliography

• Kenrick D., Paxon G. Gypsies under the swastika. - M., "Text", magazine "Friendship of Peoples", 2001.
• Barsony, Janos: Pharrajimos: the fate of the Roma during the Holocaust, IDEA, 2008, ISBN 978-1-932-71630-6.
• Guenter Lewy, The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000 ISBN 0-19-512556-8
• Fonseca, Isabel Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies And Their Journey, London , Vintage, 1996. Chapter 7, The Devouring

For many centuries in a row, the gypsies have called themselves a pacifist people. They are not belligerent and do not seek conquest. “It’s not for us to fight, the gypsies should sing!” - the key idea of ​​the performance of the theater "Romen", dedicated to the history of the Gypsies of Russia.

However, during the war, the gypsies more than once took up arms and stood in the ranks of the defenders of their country. During the Great Patriotic War, they, along with representatives of other nationalities of the Soviet Union, not only fell under the draft, but also went to the front as volunteers, and also became partisans.

Gypsies go to the front

Despite the ethnic "cleansing" of 1933, during which hundreds of Roma were deported from Leningrad and Moscow to Siberia, there were many Roma in the European part of the USSR. Some of them continued to lead a nomadic lifestyle, which the Soviet government fought against, others settled down, took up crafts and even joined specially organized gypsy collective farms.

Hitler, having come to power in Germany, from the first years began a policy of persecution of the "lower races". Along with the Jews, the gypsies were also persecuted. From the mid-1930s, they were subjected to sterilization, later placed in concentration camps, and simply destroyed in the territories occupied by the Nazis. When German troops invaded the territory of the USSR, the Soviet gypsies did not hesitate to take up arms.

Settled gypsies, attached to the military registration and enlistment offices, among others, went to the front. Representatives of nomadic camps also fell under the draft. Many gypsies volunteered at the assembly points and also went to the front line. They not only loved their homeland, but also soberly understood: in the event of Hitler's victory, they simply would not survive.

Gypsy Sniper

Gypsies were sent to almost all troops: infantry, cavalry, aviation, reconnaissance, artillery, front-line medicine.

The story of the gypsy Viktor Belyakov, who fought on the Western Front and destroyed many fascists with well-aimed shots, is noteworthy. The regiment commander reported about him to General Andrey Stuchenko in the summer of 1942: “A month does not leave the front line, fifty Fritz are on his account. He doesn't want to leave until he hits 100. He does not have a father, his mother works at the Romen Theater.

On the initiative of General Belyakov was awarded the Order of the Red Star. By July 1943, Victor had 206 destroyed Nazis on his personal account. At a rally of snipers, Belyakov told his colleagues how to lure the enemy out of hiding. Noticing the accumulation of Germans, Victor asked the command to open mortar fire on the enemy's trenches. The Nazis jumped out of the trenches in fright and fell into the scope of a sniper.

The gypsy sniper went through the whole war and survived. He was awarded the medals "For Courage" and "For Military Merit". In 1968, after the release of the book of memoirs of General Stuchenko, the staff of the Romen Theater found Viktor Belyakov in the Moscow region and invited him to a meeting with the theater troupe.

It is difficult to calculate how many gypsies were awarded orders and medals during the Great Patriotic War, because many of them were listed in military units and passports as Tatars, Ukrainians, Moldovans or Russians. Only one Hero of the Soviet Union had the entry "gypsies" in the questionnaire - this is the Marine Timofey Prokofiev, who received the title posthumously.

Despite the reservation at the place of work, Timofey volunteered to go to the front in 1942 after the death of his brother. As part of the troops of the Black Sea Fleet, he defended Malaya Zemlya, captured the Kerch bridgehead, was twice seriously wounded, but refused to leave his unit and go to the hospital.

During the Odessa operation on March 26, 1944, a Soviet landing was made in Nikolaev. Prokofiev, among 67 fighters, repulsed 18 enemy attacks within two days. The landing force destroyed about 700 Nazis. Prokofiev fired at the enemies with a machine gun. He was mortally wounded in the head by a sniper. When two fascists approached him, the dying sailor gathered his strength and shot them with the last burst.

Other gypsies also returned with orders from the fronts of the Great Patriotic War: pilots Murachkovsky, artilleryman Massalsky, tanker Menshikov.

Partisans and resistance members behind enemy lines

The Nazis ruthlessly destroyed the gypsies in the occupied territories. In the regions of the Soviet Union occupied by German troops, up to 80% of the gypsy population were destroyed. Those who managed to hide from the Nazis went to the partisans.

Gypsy Polya Morazevskaya fought in a partisan detachment in the Smolensk forests. A very young girl walked along the roads and villages with a baby in her arms - the image of a young mother was supposed to lull the suspicions of the Nazis. Polya collected information on the numbers and movements of German troops. She was captured by the Nazis and burned alive with her child in the furnace of a factory stove.

Gypsies fought the Nazis not only on the territory of the USSR. The French gypsy Armand Stenger commanded a detachment of partisans, and after the Allies landed he joined them in Normandy. He was not only awarded the orders of France and Britain, but also headed the Gypsy Association after the war.

Many gypsies in Croatia and Serbia joined the partisan movement People's Liberation Front. Albanian gypsy underground Khazani Brahim carried out a successful sabotage by blowing up a German warehouse with large supplies of fuel and military vehicles. Tomas Farkas assembled a partisan detachment of Roma and Slovaks and successfully commanded it.

Resistance did not subside even in captivity. In the German concentration camp Plaszczow near Krakow, four gypsy prisoners from the USSR were hanged by the Nazis for killing the camp staff. Lisa Papas, Anyuta Tsekhovich, Rosa Timofey and Klasha Ivanova dealt with three sadistic guards.

Supporting the front with art and money

All the years of the Great Patriotic War, the gypsy theater "Romen" performed in the rear and on the front line. The artists not only raised the morale of the soldiers at the front, but also earned money with concerts in peaceful cities and towns. The collected funds were directed to support the Red Army.

On tour in Vladivostok, the theater team received a government telegram. Its text read: “I ask you to convey to the employees of the Moscow State Romen Theater, who collected 75,000 rubles for the construction of the Romen Gypsy Theater bomber, my fraternal greetings and gratitude to the Red Army. I. Stalin.

The theater kept extremely low prices for its performances - the halls were overcrowded, since even a bagel on the market during the war years cost more than an entrance ticket to a concert. At the same time, according to the report on 01.01.1944, the team transferred almost 500 thousand rubles to help the front. During the summer of 1944, the theater collected another 500,000 profits from planned concerts to the country's budget.

Gypsies on the other side of the barricades

Surprisingly, gypsies also sometimes fought on the side of the Third Reich. German boxing champion Johann Trolmann was sterilized in 1938 and then drafted into the German army. After being wounded in 1941, Trollmann ends up in a concentration camp, where SS men practice blows on him. In February 1943, he was killed during one of the training sessions.

The Hungarian gypsy Gyorgy Tsifra was drafted in 1942 to the German front - first into the infantry, then into the tankers. The guy did not want to fight for those who destroy his fellow tribesmen, and soon deserted. After the war, Digit became a famous pianist.

Memory of the people

Every year on April 8, Moscow gypsies come to the Moskva River - on International Gypsy Day they remember their relatives who died in World War II and throw fresh flowers into the water. According to various estimates, from 500,000 to a million Gypsies died at the hands of the Nazis, including from 200,000 to 500,000 Gypsies from the Soviet Union. The world's only monument to the losses of the nomadic people is located in Berlin.

With special respect, the gypsies of Russia remember those brothers who fell with weapons in their hands in the fight against Nazism. Their names are forever inscribed in the Books of Memory along with hundreds of thousands of Russians, Ukrainians, Kazakhs and other citizens of the USSR.

Gypsies, as you know, are a people professing pacifism. All the more strange is the fact that throughout their European history, the gypsies have been somehow connected with the armies of different countries.

So, even when the Gypsies left the crumbling Byzantium, in some Eastern European countries, such as Hungary, they received various benefits and indulgences as ... gunsmiths who contracted to work for government troops. The Turks who conquered Romea did the same with the remaining gypsy gunsmiths. It is unlikely that gunsmiths appeared suddenly in the gypsy environment, so, apparently, they were engaged in this craft even when they were Byzantine citizens.

If you think that the gypsies made only some kind of armor, then you are mistaken. They were valued more for guns and rifles.

Gypsy saddlers also worked for the army, making various horse harnesses, and even more so: horses were in great demand in wars until the 20th century.

However, the connection between the gypsies and the army was not limited to providing certain very necessary things. Already a hundred or two hundred years after the exodus from Byzantium, European gypsies began to actively recruit in the armies of many countries. The reason was extremely banal: at that time, very cruel laws were passed against vagrants, vagrant professions and nomadic groups, and it was very difficult to fit into one or another settled community due to the isolation of both village communities and workshops, and the army was almost the only a way to legally fit into society and avoid execution or galleys. So in the 17th-18th centuries, as well as the beginning of the 19th, there were a lot of gypsy soldiers.

It was in this way that the scene that occurred during the battle of the French army led by Napoleon with the Spanish became possible: during this battle, two soldiers, walking at each other with bayonets, suddenly peered into each other's faces and asked the Most Important Gypsy Question, well, you remember :

Tu san rum?!?!

After that, they successfully fought the battle,.

By the way, one of Napoleon's generals was yes. In the sense that rum.

Gypsies could be found not only in the French and Spanish armies. Lombroso, for example, noted among other gypsy vices that they are the evil of the Austrian army;) Gypsies were seen in the Hungarian, all sorts of German and Scandinavian troops. Actually, among the German and Scandinavian gypsies, this occupation was so massive that it is now considered traditional historical, that's it.

Modern science is well aware that it was from these gypsies that the Russian Roma descended. Arriving in Russia through Poland and the Baltic principalities, at first they even bore the name "haladytka Roma", i.e. gypsy soldiers, army gypsies. In the new country, it turned out that you can fit into society and remain pacifists. Actually, there was already a peculiar analogue of the gypsies here: itinerant merchants-ofeni, who practically make up their own special caste. The society, which already has its own wandering tribe, took it easy to replenish with another one, and many "halid Roma" quickly retrained as nomadic horse breeders. Nevertheless, for a long time, individual young men from gypsy families, either at the call of desire or for some other reason, left for the ranks of the Russian army. At the same time, the Russian gypsies completely ignored the numerous decrees of the Russian emperors, demanding to somehow streamline this matter and to hand over recruits normally, like Russian peasants. It was not clear to the gypsies: here Vaska wants to be a soldier, he went, but Petka and Kolka do not want to, so why send them?

Perhaps it was precisely because of their army past that Russian gypsies reacted to serious wars in a completely non-pacifist way. When Napoleon came to Russia in 1812, guys from the families of Russian gypsies en masse went into lancers and even, they say, hussars (if anyone doesn’t know, both of them are such soldiers on horseback and with a saber), while their families donated large sums and herds of tribal horses to the army. When Hitler attacked the USSR in 1941, many Russian Gypsies went to the front without waiting for mobilization, i.e. volunteers. This time, the gypsies no longer served as cavalrymen, but as infantrymen, tankers, artillerymen, pilots, doctors, signalmen, and so on. However, during the Second World War, many Soviet gypsies, not only Russian Roma, went to the front. The exceptions were gypsies with non-Soviet citizenship - like the Lovaris - who were not subject to mobilization and generally lived in this country relatively recently, as well as Crimean gypsies who were deported to the expanses of Central Asia in company with the Crimean Tatars.

If Budulai came to your mind now, then you are right. Anatoly Kalinin wrote a novel about him exactly that, however, with a completely different name. And there were thousands of such Budulaevs.

Oddly enough, during the Second World War, the gypsies also served on the side of the Third Reich and its allies.

Firstly, on the territory of Nazi Germany, for some time, there was an indulgence for the families of military personnel. It was not only the Jews who used it to save their relatives (which fact is often told), but also the gypsies. Then, however, the indulgence vdrukk was canceled, and the Wehrmacht soldiers, along with relatives of non-titular nationality, ended up in concentration camps in the same way as their other compatriots.

Secondly, as I already wrote, they fought in this war for Finland, stupidly because they were called up on the basis of citizenship.

Thirdly, some of the gypsies of Romania declared themselves faithful servants of the monarchy and completely voluntarily enrolled in the troops, among which, among other things, they drove their honest brothers - Romanian - to concentration camps. This historical fact is very exciting and excites my husband in our time.

However, what a big leap we have made in time! Indeed, between the wars of Napoleon and the Second World War there was another war in which the gypsies were noted.

After the 1917 revolution in Russia, as you know, a civil war broke out. Its numerous and diverse participants, by and large, did not touch the gypsies, at least the nomads (with the exception of some Ukrainian nationalist gangs; the Dimitrievich family had a chance to testify against one of the atamans already in Paris). However, despite the apoliticality officially and everywhere declared during this period, the gypsies nevertheless turned out to be represented in the ranks of both the Red and White armies in the form of individual young volunteers. (As far as I understand, a similar picture was observed during the time.) Remember the movie about the Elusive? So, Yashka had a real prototype, moreover, a person quite famous in the USSR (an important figure in the Romen Theater). Only his name was not Yashka, but Vanka, he was not from a poor nomadic family, but from a rich choral one, and, finally, there is reason to believe that he actually fought for the whites, he simply cleverly hid this fact.

Talking about gypsy soldiers, one cannot ignore such a phenomenon as gypsy Cossacks. They were seen mainly servs (Ukrainian gypsies), as well as a small number of Vlachs (still Ukrainian gypsies). There would be nothing remarkable in this if these gypsies, like the Russians, were descended from German or other gypsies accustomed to military service. But no: Servs and Vlachs are descendants of peace-loving Balkan gypsies, with blacksmithing as their main craft (to which music-making and singing are added among the Servis). Why did these gypsies appear in the Cossacks - I, at least, do not know. Perhaps it was an effective way to become more or less at home in a fairly xenophobic environment. In any case, my father is one of them! In addition, both the Serves and the Vlachs traditionally served the Cossack troops as blacksmiths: they shod horses, made iron tires for wagon carts, and so on. The main difference between the Gypsies-Cossacks and the Cossacks-Cossacks was their dislike for tillage work. Gypsies, in principle, traditionally prefer handicrafts and animal breeding (mainly horses and pigs) to tillage.

Finally, I am often asked how things are with Russian Gypsies with military service in peacetime.

I know nothing for the first half of the 20th century beyond what I have already written, but in general I can say that the trends were still the same as in society as a whole. While serving in the army was the norm, the gypsies, like everyone else, went to the military registration and enlistment office on conscription, served, returned home. My father served, Alexander Martsinkevich served, a bunch of gypsies served from among those whose call fell at a time BEFORE the collapse of the USSR. However, when the army became such a dangerous place as it is now, and the titular population began to massively avoid it, the gypsies did not lag behind and now, pardon the frankness, they mow down and slaughter in the same way. The Kotlyars have their own system for this: there, boys of 12-13 years old are married to girls of 15-17, and by the time of their 18th birthday, a young, I would even say, a very young husband acquires the number of children necessary to be released from an honorary duty. People often ask why the bride is taken so much older than the groom? Well, there is a psychological version - usually from men: to be responsible, to build a family for her, and a physiological version, more from women: to be ripe for childbirth, why torture the girl in vain.

Finally, it is impossible not to ignore the gypsies who have chosen a military (or related service) career. There are not very many of them, but they exist as a phenomenon. These are almost always gypsies over the age of 40 and, moreover, from nationalities accustomed to service (Russian gypsies, servis, sometimes Vlachs). So, the writer Alexei Ilyinsky ("Gypsies. 300 years in Russia"), whose book I once reviewed on this blog, is an officer by main occupation. And my friend

Most studies of Nazi Holocaust policy focus on the persecution of European Jewry, which suffered six million casualties. Gypsies are often or not remembered at all, or only occasionally remembered. But the Nazis also planned to destroy the Gypsies as a group. However, the proposal to consider the Roma as victims of the Holocaust caused an outcry among its researchers. Is it fair?

Although most Holocaust history studies focus on the suffering of the Jewish population in Axis-occupied Europe, the Roma were also the target of Nazi extermination.

The Gypsies, as a people, were able to survive the campaigns directed against them primarily due to the fact that they were in countries that were under the control of German allied governments.

These governments usually refused to participate in the extermination of the Roma (similar to how some of them participated in the extermination of the Jews). The majority of the Romani population in Axis Europe was outside the direct control of the Nazi extermination machine.

As a result, his survival rate was relatively high. Unlike the Gypsies, the majority of European Jews came under the direct control of Germany, so their mortality rate was proportionately much higher. So, it can be argued that the geographical location was one of the main factors explaining the high survival rate of the Gypsies compared to the Jews.

The fate of the Roma under Nazi rule during World War II sparked considerable debate over whether they should be recognized as victims of the Holocaust, or simply one of the many groups that fell victim to the conflict and destruction associated with the war and the Axis occupation. The main question is to what extent were the Roma the target of extermination: the same as the Jews doomed to death by Hitler and the Nazi security apparatus?

In order to determine the intentions of this Nazi leadership, the fate of the Gypsies is compared with the fate of the Jews, according to the scheme developed by Helen Fein for understanding the severity of anti-Jewish persecution in Europe during the Holocaust 2. This comparative analysis will provide a solid basis for understanding how far the Gypsies should considered victims of the exclusive Nazi policy of genocide, which is known as the Holocaust.

Gypsies as a group victim

Of course, Roma have faced legislative discrimination and negative attitudes since the Middle Ages, many European states have passed laws aimed at discriminating Roma; mistreatment of them was often sanctioned by the authorities 5. In Germany, after the Nazis came to power, the gypsies, like the Jews, fell under the influence of "special laws" aimed at separating them from the "Aryan" population and preventing interracial mixing 6.

Gypsies, like Jews, were classified by German racial laws before the Second World War as second-class citizens, they were treated as outsiders. death camps 8. At the time of the deportation of the Roma, the bureaucratic parallels between the classification of them and the Jews were extremely similar. 9 Indeed, a small number of German Roma were pardoned.

Those who had pure gypsy blood were allowed to exist within their communities 10. When the gypsies began to be deported to the death camps, these differences lost their meaning 11. Although we know for sure that the gypsies suffered greatly during the war, the question should still be answered , were they the target of targeted destruction?

The vast majority of research on the Holocaust and related issues of Nazi politics focuses on the persecution of European Jewry, which is understandable given the six million losses of this group. Gypsies are often or not remembered at all, or only occasionally remembered. However, there must be such works that will put the Gypsies at the center of the study as a group that the Nazis also planned to destroy 12.

The suggestion that the Roma be victims of the Holocaust has provoked a backlash among its researchers, who argue that the duration and level of persecution of this group and Jews was not the same. Yehuda Bauer believes that the Roma were not victims of the Holocaust, in particular when relying on well-developed definitions of "mass murder", "genocide" or "Shoah" ("Catastrophe") 13. Mass murder requires large-scale murder.

Genocide is an effort to destroy an ethnic, racial or national group by destroying its leaders and culture, including the destruction of the elites and other members of the targeted group.

"Genocide, as defined, must include Nazi policies against Czechs, Poles, or Gypsies..." 14. The term "Holocaust" or "Shoah" is reserved for efforts to exterminate a group entirely. Jews under Nazi rule and Armenians in the Ottoman Empire are two examples of such attempts in recent history.

Such definitions are close to the UN definition of partial and total genocide (ie the Holocaust). Because of these important differences, Bauer consistently argues that the Holocaust is different from other examples of genocide, and the interpretation of this term cannot be extended, for example, to include Roma or Poles among its victims. perspective, the Second World War was fought against them 16.

Jack Eisner came to similar conclusions.17 Even Donald Kenrick and Gretten Paxson, who chronicled the Nazi campaign against the Gypsies, note that the Gypsies in Greece survived because “probably the Germans were very busy with their main victims, the Jews, in order to wasting time with gypsies” 18. Steven Katz made a comparative historical analysis of the Holocaust and other genocidal situations, considering gypsies as one of the possible examples 19.

He concludes that the persecution of the Roma by the Nazis was not tantamount to their anti-Jewish actions. Gypsies under the Nazis did suffer, but "their fate, really cruel, was qualitatively different, less ritualized, less uncompromising, less categorical" 20.

Perhaps his most striking claim is that less than a quarter of the Roma died in Nazi-controlled territory, compared with more than 85% of the Jewish population of these lands. 21 that the policy of the Nazis was not aimed at the complete destruction of the gypsies in the same way as the Jews. The question is whether the Nazis planned to completely exterminate the Gypsies, as they did with the Jews, or whether the Gypsies were the victims of a "partial genocide" - to use Bauer's terminology.

Although the death rates of Jews and Gypsies differed markedly, these differences can be at least partly explained by the difference in the level of influence that the Nazi authorities, and in particular the extermination apparatus, had in the various Axis-controlled regions. Some areas were directly included in the Reich, others were occupied, the rest were allied countries in which it was impossible to carry out a unilateral German policy.

Ellen Fein, in her work on the Holocaust, identified three levels of SS control according to the differences outlined above. 22 Since she notes a variety of other factors that influenced the fluctuations in the death rate of the Jewish population in different areas, her triple scheme is also useful in explaining the difference in survival rates. Applying the same model to the Roma can be fruitful in understanding the high level of their survival in Axis-controlled Europe.

This analysis may confirm Bauer and Katz's claim, for example, when it does demonstrate that the Nazis were lenient towards the Gypsies. Especially when we see that in the same regions, the mortality rate among the Gypsies will be consistently lower than among the Jews. On the other hand, if local collaborationism and the rejection of it explains many of the differences, then it is quite possible that the Nazi regime was equally focused on the extermination of both Jews and Gypsies.

Comparison by zones of influence of the SS

Population and mortality ratios for Roma and Jews in different regions of Europe were summarized by individual territories and zones of SS control and used by Fein in her study of the Holocaust. The corresponding figures are contained in Table 1. There are two changes to the picture drawn by Fein.

Table 1. Mortality rates among Gypsies and Jews by SS zones

Sources: for Jewish losses - Lucy S Dawidowicz, The War against the Jews, 1933-1945 (New York. Bantam, 1975), pp 483-544; for gypsy losses - Kenrick, Puxon, Destiny, esp. pp. 183-84. Figures for Italian Greece and Thessaloniki and the deportation of Roma from Norway are taken from: Martin Gilbert, AtlasoftheHolocaust (Oxford. Pergamon Press, 1988)

Luxembourg, a country she did not consider, had been included in SS Zone 1 since the annexation of the Grand Duchy to the Reich, as long as the local population was subject to the same laws and restrictions as the population of other parts of it, such as Germany and Austria. Moreover, Fein did not include any parts of the USSR other than the Baltic countries in her analysis.

Data on the initial Jewish and Gypsy population and their mortality for the Soviet Union as a whole are less relevant, since the vast majority of its territory was never under the control of the Axis. Thanks to this, in many regions of the USSR, the Jewish and Gypsy population was beyond the reach of German racial politics.

However, all of Belarus and Ukraine fell under the rule of the Nazis, because of which the German racial policy was applied to the population of these areas. The Jews and Gypsies of the two Soviet republics were under the direct control of the German military administration and were the object of deportations to the same extent as the population of the Baltic countries. Therefore, it was decided to consider them within the framework of Zone SS 1.

SS Zone 1

Table 1 shows the notable differences between these three zones. In SS Zone 1, where the Nazis had the most freedom of action, Jewish losses exceeded 90% of the pre-war population. Gypsy casualties were partly lower, but they were at least more than half of the pre-war numbers.

In Belarus and Ukraine, where there were significant numbers of both Jews and Gypsies, the number of deaths of the latter was even proportionately higher. In this part of the table, the most questionable in relation to the Roma are the data on Serbia. Serbia was the only part of the dismembered Yugoslavia that came under direct German control already in 1941, which was the reason for the direct application of the SS policy on "undesirable" categories of people.

The casualty figures among the Roma of Yugoslavia are very inaccurate. Kenrick and Paxon gave a minimum figure of 12,000 for Serbia, which, in their opinion, could be an underestimate. 24. This figure shows that approximately 50,000 of the 60,000 Serb Gypsies were killed. If we accept this (probably overestimated) estimate, then the mortality rate for gypsies in zone SS 1 will be 72.6%, not 53.9%.

It is unlikely that gypsy losses really reached this maximum figure. Some of the Roma survived in the Serbian countryside, where the control of the Nazi administration and local collaborators was rather weak. This distinguished them from Serbian Jews, who were concentrated in the cities, because of which more than 25 of them died. It is difficult to accurately assess the losses of the Roma, also because many of the killings took place within Serbia itself, and not in the death camps 26.

Gypsies were systematically taken hostage and shot as punishment for German losses from partisan attacks. A hundred hostages were shot for every German soldier killed, fifty for every 27 wounded. Undoubtedly, such actions led to more deaths than the announced figure of 12,000.

The suffering of Serbian Jews and Gypsies was truly enormous. Belgrade and those parts of Serbia under direct Axis control were declared free from Jews and Gypsies as early as 1942. high, although not maximum, mortality estimates in Serbia, it is likely that the total loss of Roma in Serbia amounted to 60-65% of the pre-war number. This figure is lower than the losses suffered by the Jewish population of these areas, but proportionately very high.

SS Zone 2

Only a few territories were included in the SS 2 zone. Here German domination was somewhat less total than in Zone 1, but its consequences for the Gypsies were almost as deadly as for the Jews. As for the former, their few communities in Belgium and the Netherlands were actually destroyed on 29.

Several gypsies lived in Norway, some of them were sent to concentration camps, where they died 30. Probably a certain number of gypsies lived in Thessaloniki and neighboring Thrace, but there is no evidence of their deportation to death camps. The small number of gypsies in Zone 2 is incomparable, but there is limited evidence to support a high casualty rate.

SS Zone 3

The greatest differences in loss rates among Jews and Gypsies appear in SS zone 3. Therefore, it is the events in these territories that require detailed commentary. It was here that the percentage of surviving Jews and Gypsies was higher than in Zones 1 or 2. Since the Berlin authorities had to negotiate about actions against certain categories of people, and not just start deportations or order “death teams” (“Sonderkommandos” - “A ”) to commit murder. The actions of the Allied governments of the Axis, aimed at facilitating or, conversely, preventing the persecution of the Jews, are well studied. Nevertheless, the gypsies in this part of Europe were pitied much more than the local Jewish population.

As for the countries of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Finland limited itself to a military alliance with Germany during the attack on the Soviet Union, at the same time the Germans led Denmark indirectly to allow her to maintain a fictitious neutrality. There were relatively few gypsies in these countries, but they were rescued by their 31 governments.

Back then, when Finland refused to deport Jewish citizens, and Denmark organized the rescue of its Jewish population, no government cooperated in the deportation of Roma 32, the survival rates for both Jews and Gypsies in Denmark and Finland look much better compared to the figures from Norway ( SS zone 2), from where half of the local Jews and the entire small gypsy community were deported to the camps.

France was the only Western European country in Zone 3. Both in the France of the Vichy government and in the occupied territory, both Jews and Gypsies were persecuted. However, the lower degree of German control meant that more than half of the Jews and Gypsies survived the war. In this regard, France looks much better than the Netherlands and Belgium (Zone 2).

Interestingly enough, the survival rate of the Gypsies here is even proportionately worse than in the case of the Jews. One of the reasons for this fact is that the Roma were easy targets for deportations. Their collection for transportation to the death camps was facilitated by the fact that many Roma were detained and concentrated in the camps by the French authorities as early as 1940, so they were taken to the camps after their surrender in the same year 33.

Probably, here we see one of the few examples when the gypsies were a group, it was easier to single them out and prepare them for deportation. It should be noted that in this case the German authorities took advantage of the opportunity to quickly deal with a large number of gypsies.

In Southern Europe and the Balkans, there were many allied states and client countries of Germany. It is well known that Italy did not cooperate in the deportation of Jews, either in Italy itself or in the Italian zones of occupation in France, Greece and Yugoslavia. Since this country was a full-fledged European ally of Germany, it could resist pressure to exterminate the Jews, and separate forces in Italy protected the Jews from persecution 34.

Gypsies in Italy and in the territories controlled by it were also protected from deportation. The worst anti-gypsy action taken by the Italian government was the expulsion of representatives of this group to Sardinia and the Adriatic islands under its control 35. The Italian occupying forces also protected the gypsies from persecution by the Germans or local residents 36.

The killing of Jews and Gypsies took place after the capitulation of Italy, when German troops occupied the north and center of the country. The number of victims among the Gypsies in Italy is quite small quantitatively and much less proportionally than the corresponding figures for the Jews, and this despite the rescue of many Italian Jews 37.

It is possible that the expulsion of the Gypsies to the islands, which took place before these events, ultimately worked in their favor, because they were immediately outside the zone of German control. The deportations of Jews and Gypsies from Albania, southern Greece and part of Yugoslavia took place only after the capitulation of Italy and the establishment of direct control by the German administration 38. After the surrender of Italy, German troops occupied southern Greece. A certain number of gypsies were caught for the purpose of deportation, but significantly more local Jews ended up in the death camps.

In order to prevent the deportation of the Gypsies, representatives of the Greek church and government intervened in the situation 39. In many localities, individual Greeks hid numerous Jews, but a significant number of them were nevertheless deported 40. So, after Italy surrendered in 1943, it would be much more logical to classify as belonging to SS Zone 2. In the period from 1940 to 1943, many Jews and Gypsies managed to survive until the beginning of a new period. And later, German control in some regions was significantly weakened. The reason for this is that, as a result of the offensive of the Red Army, the Germans were more prepared for hostilities, therefore they no longer had enough strength for anything else.

Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary were allies of Germany, so their governments had a little more freedom of action before Berlin. This leeway led to significantly higher survival rates for Jews and Gypsies than we see in SS Zones 1 and 2. Bulgaria generally refused to deport its citizens, whether they were Jews or Gypsies. The German ambassador in Sofia noted that the Bulgarians did not cooperate on the issue of the deportation of the Jews because they lived too long next to the Armenians, Greeks and Gypsies, after which they could not draw negative conclusions about the Jews 41.

The Bulgarian government, however, agreed to the deportation of Jews from occupied Thrace (Greece) and Macedonia 42. Therefore, the Jewish death rates in Table 1 refer specifically to the Jewish population of these newly occupied territories, and not to Bulgarian citizens proper.

The Jews and Gypsies of Romania also suffered less than the members of these groups in SS Zones 1 and 2, despite the fact that Romania had its own anti-Semitic tradition, which led to high losses among the Jews. However, even in the midst of this historical enmity, the wartime Romanian government usually protected its citizens.

The larger numbers of Jewish deaths, however, we see, took place in Bukovina and Bessarabia, the territory that Romania re-occupied after the invasion of the Soviet Union, and not in the main lands of the kingdom. No more than 20,000 of all Jewish victims were in Regata (the old lands of the kingdom) 43. In fact, all the Gypsies who died in the Romanian-controlled territory were from the newly annexed regions 44.

The situation in Hungary during the early period of the war was similar to that in Bulgaria and Romania. The Horthy regime protected its citizens from German demands to be deported to the death camps. Hungarian Jews had significant losses in the forced labor battalions created specifically for them, operating in the Soviet Union.

Jews who were not Hungarian citizens were not protected. In addition, there were atrocities in some territories occupied by the Hungarian troops, but there was no approved policy of mass extermination 45. However, in March 1944, the Germans invaded Hungary and occupied the country. The new Hungarian government collaborated with Adolf Eichmann's team in deporting the Jews. Later, the Germans brought the anti-Semitic Arrow Cross organization to power, after which the deportations of Jews and Gypsies began to take place. In fact, all the gypsies sent to the death camps were captured at this time 46.

As we can see from Table 1, proportionately more Jews were deported during this period. But it is significant that at a time when the war was already effectively lost, and the Soviet troops were advancing into Hungary (and other territories), the Germans and their local collaborators tried to deport both Jews and Gypsies. Although the number of Jews captured was large, the fact that the Nazis wanted to make an effort to capture the Gypsies is also noteworthy. All of these deportations and subsequent killings took place after March 1944, when Hungary would have been more appropriately identified as belonging to SS Zone 2 rather than 3.

The rest of the states in Zone 3 are the puppet regimes of Slovakia and Croatia, which clearly demonstrate the differences in anti-Jewish and anti-Gypsy campaigns caused by local governments and local circumstances. The pre-war Jewish and Gypsy populations in both countries were similar, but the treatment of Gypsies was dramatically different.

In Croatia, the Ustaše exterminated both of these groups (and the Serbs as well), so the number of casualties among all of them was extremely high. In Slovakia, only Jews were targeted for massacres, the Tiso government cooperated with the Nazis in the elimination of the local Jewish population. Although Slovak Roma were subjected to discriminatory laws, only a small proportion of them were deported to the death camps47. Obviously, it was the attitude of the Slovak government that caused the survival rate among Roma here to be higher than in the case of Jews.

Discrepancies and differences

The above comparison of government policy scenarios and mortality rates shows that which SS Zone (1st, 2nd, or 3rd) a particular territory belonged to often had defining consequences for potential victims of Nazi genocidal policies.

First, in the regions with the strongest Nazi domination (Zones 1 and 2), the Gypsies suffered almost as much as the Jews. In fact, here the goal was their complete destruction. In part, the high survival rates among the Roma in these areas may indicate that the Jews were seen as the main group doomed to liquidation, but it is clear that the Roma were also the target of such actions.

It is well known - though often ignored in discussions of the Holocaust - that the Nazis often depended on local collaborators for their racial policies in certain territories. There were local security forces recruited from representatives of subject peoples who took part in the creation of the ghetto, the murders and the deportation of victims.

Anti-Gypsy sentiment, at least in some localities, may have been less overt than anti-Semitism. Such differences may have allowed more Gypsies to escape the death camps than Jews. Obviously, in a different situation, virtually no one could have escaped. It is clear that for the dominance of Nazi racism, such cooperation was necessary on the part of national governments in SS zone 3.

Where Germany's allies refused to cooperate in deportation to death camps, the survival rate was much higher. Italy (until 1943), Finland, Bulgaria, and Hungary (until 1944) protected their citizens, and this was the same for Jews and Gypsies. "Neutral" Denmark also used all available resources to protect its citizens. Slovakia was deported to Jewish death camps, but the number of Roma deported here was very small.

Romania generally protected its citizens from at least the Germans, if not from persecution by the locals. Jews were more likely to become victims of intra-Romanian politics at a time when the Roma were apparently not at the center of attention of wartime governments. The regime that dominated Croatia vigorously tried to exterminate members of various groups, including Jews and Gypsies in virtually equal proportions. It is possible that the Nazis put more pressure on their allies to deport the Jews than they did in the case of the Gypsies 48.

Perhaps it was enough for the leaders of these regimes to note that the Nazis saw the immediate deportation of the Jews as their priority target in order to postpone the decision on the same actions against the Gypsies to the future. It can be said for sure that such a distinction is fruitful only in the case of Slovakia, a state whose government has often sought to delay the execution of Berlin's orders.

In the Balkans as a whole, as in Serbia, for example, the percentage of Roma who survived may have been higher than in the case of Jews, precisely because of their less visibility to the German occupiers 49. With regard to confessional affiliation, Roma usually professed one of the dominant local religions 50. Nomadic groups of gypsies, unlike the settled ones, probably also had an easier time evading Nazi roundups and surviving in the countryside, in how their previous life experience helped them 51.

The difference in mortality rates between the three SS Zones takes a long time to explain the differences in survival rates of Jews and Gypsies in Axis-controlled Europe. As we can see from Table 2, the Jewish population in the sub-Nazi part of Europe was mainly concentrated in the SS zone 1, while at the same time, a quarter of the Roma were in regions with such tight control.

Table 2. Distribution of the pre-war Jewish and Gypsy population by SS zones

The gypsies of Europe were mostly located within the SS Zone 3, where there was a negative attitude of local governments towards the destruction of the gypsies (with the exception of Croatia), which caused significant differences in their fate. Staying in SS Zone 3 significantly increased the chances of survival for Jews as well, but at least some states of this region facilitated the implementation of the deportation of Jews and did not do this in the case of gypsies.

Thus, the mortality rate of two-thirds of the Jewish population of Europe and only about 25-30% of European Gypsies is much easier to explain precisely by taking into account their placement in European countries. Gypsies, like Jews, were doomed by German fascism to complete annihilation, and not just to partial genocide, as in the case of Poles or Czechs. However, with the exception of Croatia, they were not the target of similar violent actions by any other European fascist movement that came to power on its own or with the help of German troops.

Gypsies: The Forgotten Holocaust

Jack Eisner agrees with Stephen Katz that the Holocaust was a specifically Jewish phenomenon: Nazis along with six million Jews

No one can deny the existence of millions of non-Jewish victims, least of all those who survived, endured, divided and witnessed the famine and murder of thousands of Jews in the Majdanek, Flossenberg, Dachau or Buchenwald camps. However, there is a critical difference: as Jews, they were not representatives of a race doomed to complete elimination, and this is precisely what characterizes the Holocaust.

However, the Romani race also falls under this definition. Finally, the gypsies were persecuted by the Nazis precisely for racial reasons 54. They did not perform individual actions that would become a reason for persecution. The fate of the Jews and the Gypsies is common in that they were the only two ethnic groups that the National Socialist ideology specifically doomed to complete annihilation 55.

It seems that from the above analysis it is clear that Roma, like Jews, can indeed be qualified as a minimum as potential victims not only of partial genocide, but also of the Holocaust. It seems that anti-Gypsy measures cannot be reduced to Yehuda Bauer's definition of partial genocide, since in their case the killings were not limited to the destruction of elites, leading cultural figures and educated strata. Entire communities have been targeted (and in some cases completely destroyed). An analysis of the events in the three zones of Nazi influence writes out intentions to liquidate the Gypsies in the same way as the Jews were exterminated 56.

Despite the obvious Nazi aspirations, the survival rate of the Gypsies is higher than the survival rate of the Jews. Perhaps the Nazis were more focused on eliminating the latter, and the gypsies would have been the next main target immediately after the destruction of the Jewish population of Europe. First Jews, then Gypsies.

Finally, it is quite understandable that the Nazis did not neglect the opportunity to deal with the gypsies - we see this in the case of France, as well as Hungary immediately after the Arrow Cross came to power. The Gypsies also benefited from the fact that they were mainly concentrated in countries whose governments, while perhaps opposed to them, were not inclined to cooperate in massacres. Stephen Katz, arguing that the Roma cannot be considered victims of the Holocaust, applies the definition of "genocide" from the UN Convention.

In which the defining use of the term is the intent to destroy an ethnic, national, religious or racial group 57. Katz's comparison of the death rate among Gypsies and Jews is too superficial to conclude that the Gypsies were not victims of Nazi genocidal policies. If Hitler and the Nazis had won the war in Europe and consolidated their control, the death rate for Jews and Gypsies would have been the same 58.

Therefore, in contrast to the assertion of Katz and other researchers, it seems appropriate to assert that the gypsies as a people, ethnic group or nation in the view of the Nazis were doomed to become victims of the Holocaust, and not just a partial genocide. Due to their smaller overall numbers and frequently changing location, this group suffered significantly fewer casualties than European Jewry.

While the concept of "genocide" can be easily applied to many different situations, it is important to recognize that the Roma were the targets of total (in Bauer's terminology) genocide during the war. Their fate sheds more light on the crimes committed against the Jews and on the genocidal and racist nature of Nazi policies.

Brenda Davis Lutz, James M. Lutz

Translation into Ukrainian by Sergei Girik.

We express our gratitude to Mikhail Tyagloy for his comments on the translation.

The genocide of the Roma was carried out by the Nazis during the Second World War, from 1939 to 1945. It was held in Germany, in the occupied states, as well as in countries that were considered allies of the Third Reich. The destruction of this people became part of the unified policy of the National Socialists, who sought to eliminate certain peoples, political opponents, incurable patients, homosexuals, drug addicts, and mentally unbalanced people. According to the latest data, the number of victims among the Roma population ranged from two hundred thousand to one and a half million people. There were even more victims. In 2012, a memorial dedicated to the Roma who were victims of the genocide in Nazi Germany was opened in Berlin.

Terminology

Even in modern science there is no single term that defines the genocide of gypsies. Although there are several options for how to designate repression against this particular people.

For example, gypsy activist Janko Hancock proposed to designate the genocide of gypsies with the term "paraimos". The fact is that one of the meanings of this word is “rape” or “abuse”. In this sense, it was often used among gypsy activists. At the same time, scientists are still arguing about how ethical this term can be considered.

The beginning of the persecution

From the point of view of Nazi theory, the gypsies were perceived as a threat to the racial purity of the German nation. According to official propaganda, the Germans were representatives of the purebred Aryan race, which was originally from India. At the same time, it is known that Nazi theorists had to face a certain difficulty due to the fact that the gypsies were even more direct immigrants from this state. At the same time, they were also considered close to the current population of this country, they even speak a language belonging to the Indo-Aryan group. So it turned out that the gypsies could be considered Aryans no less than the Germans themselves.

But still, a way out was found. It was officially announced by Nazi propaganda that the gypsies who live in Europe are the result of a mixture of an Aryan tribe with the lowest races from all over the world. This allegedly explains their vagrancy, serves as proof of the asocial nature of this people. At the same time, even settled gypsies were recognized as potentially prone to delinquent behavior of this kind because of their nationality. As a result, a special commission issued official demands strongly recommending that the Gypsies be separated from the rest of the German people.

The law on the fight against them, parasites and vagabonds, which was adopted in 1926 in Bavaria, became the legislative basis for the start of the genocide of the gypsies. According to its analogue, legal acts were tightened in all regions of Germany.

The next step was the period that began in 1935, when the police, as well as the departments responsible for social welfare, in many cities began to forcibly transfer Roma to forced detention camps. Often they were surrounded by barbed wire. The people who were there were obliged to obey the strict camp order. For example, in July 1936, during the Olympic Games, which were held in Berlin, the gypsies were expelled from the city, they were sent to the site, which later received the name "Marzan halt site". So in the future the Nazi was called for the maintenance of these prisoners.

A few months earlier, the provisions of the "Nuremberg racial laws" that had previously applied only to Jews began to apply to the Gypsies. From now on, these peoples were officially forbidden to marry Germans, to vote in elections, they were deprived of citizenship of the Third Reich.

The Minister of the Interior, by the name of Frick, authorized the chief of police in Berlin to conduct a general round-up day for gypsies. At least 1,500 prisoners ended up in the Martsan camp. In fact, it was a drive that became the first station on the road to destruction. Most of the prisoners who fell into it were sent to the Auschwitz camp and destroyed.

In May 1938, Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler ordered the creation of a special department within the Berlin Criminal Investigation Department to deal with the "Gypsy threat". It is believed that this ended the first phase of the persecution of the gypsies. Its main results were the creation of pseudoscientific tools, the concentration and selection of gypsies in camps, the creation of a well-functioning and centralized apparatus designed to coordinate further criminal projects throughout the state at all levels.

It is believed that the first law that was directly imposed against the natives of the Indo-Aryan group was Himmler's circular on combating the gypsy threat, signed in December 1938. It contained information about the need to resolve the so-called gypsy issue, based on racial principles.

Deportation and sterilization

The destruction of the Roma actually began with their sterilization, which was massively carried out in the second half of the 30s of the XX century. This procedure was carried out by pricking the uterus with a dirty needle. At the same time, medical care was not provided after that, although serious complications were possible. As a rule, this led to a very painful inflammatory process, which sometimes led to blood poisoning and even death. This procedure was subjected not only to adult women, but also girls.

In April 1940, the first deportations of the Roma and Sinti peoples to Poland began. This is considered the beginning of the Roma genocide during World War II. There they were sent to Jewish ghettos and concentration camps.

Shortly thereafter, an order was issued for the forced departure of Polish Gypsies to a settled position. Their property was confiscated, settling in Jewish ghettos. The largest Romani territory outside of Germany was located in the Polish city of Lodz. She was isolated from the Jewish ghetto.

The first gypsies were brought here en masse in the fall of 1941. This was personally directed by the head of the Gestapo department, who was responsible for the final solution of the German question. First, almost five thousand gypsies were sent from the territory of Austria, half of whom were children. Many of them arrived in Lodz very emaciated and sick. The ghetto lasted only two months, after which the destruction of the gypsies began to be carried out in the Chelmno death camp. From Warsaw, representatives of this people, along with the Jews, were sent to Treblinka. This is how the gypsy genocide was carried out during the Second World War. However, the persecution did not end there. And they were not limited to these states.

Already in the autumn of 1941, in the occupied regions of the USSR, the beginning of the genocide of the Gypsies was laid along with the mass executions of Jews. The Einsatzkommandos destroyed all the camps that they met on their way. So, in December 1941, the Einsatzkommando, under the control of the SS Gruppenführer, staged mass executions of gypsies on the Crimean peninsula, and not only nomadic, but also settled families were destroyed.

In the spring of 1942, this practice began to be applied throughout the occupied territory, and thus began the genocide of gypsies in Russia. Punishers were mainly guided by the principle of blood. That is, the executions of gypsy collective farmers, artists or city workers did not fit into the framework of the struggle against tabor crime. In fact, the definition of nationality was enough to impose a death sentence.

Over time, the genocide of Roma in Russia was supplemented by actions carried out as part of the "anti-partisan war." So, in 1943 and 1944, representatives of this people died along with the Slavs during the burning of villages, which, as the Germans believed, provided assistance to the partisans, as well as in the fight against the underground.

During the Second World Gypsy genocide continued throughout the occupied territory of the USSR. The most massive executions were recorded in Western Ukraine, in the Leningrad, Smolensk and Pskov regions. According to authoritative sources, about 30 thousand representatives of this nationality were killed.

Massacre with German gypsies

German gypsies began to be arrested en masse in the spring of 1943. Even the soldiers of the German army, the owners of military awards, ended up in prison. All of them were sent to Auschwitz.

The genocide of the Roma during the Second World War was carried out in concentration camps. Mostly German Sinti gypsies, whom the Nazis considered more civilized, were left alive. Russian, Polish, Serbian, Lithuanian Hungarian representatives were killed in gas chambers as soon as they arrived at the concentration camp.

However, the German gypsies, who remained alive, died en masse from disease and hunger. The disabled were also driven into the gas chambers, this is how the destruction of the gypsies was carried out. The years of war became black for this people. Of course, the Jews suffered even more, against whom the Nazis launched a massive campaign designed to finally solve the Jewish question. The extermination of Jews and Gypsies is one of the most tragic pages in the history of this war.

Croatian genocide

During the Second World War, Croatia actively cooperated with Nazi Germany and was considered its ally. Therefore, all these years the genocide of the Roma continued in this country.

In Croatia, there was a whole system of death camps, which was called "Jasenovac". It was located just a few dozen kilometers from Zagreb. Here, by order of the Minister of Internal Affairs of the Croatian revolutionary movement Andriy Artukovich, not only Gypsies, but also Jews and Serbs were brought here en masse since August 1941.

Experiments on people

The destruction of the Gypsies by the Nazis was accompanied by medical experiments that were carried out on them in concentration camps. The Germans had a special interest in them, since they also belonged to the Indo-Aryan race.

So, among the gypsies, people with blue eyes were often found. At Dachau, their eyes were removed in order to understand this phenomenon and study it. In the same concentration camp, on the orders of Himmler, an experiment was set up on 40 representatives of gypsies for dehydration. Other experiments were carried out, which often led to the death or disability of the test subjects.

According to studies, half of all Roma were killed in the occupied territories in the USSR, about 70 percent of the representatives of this nationality were destroyed in Poland, 90 percent in Croatia, and 97 percent in Estonia.

Notable Roma victims of the genocide

Among the victims of the genocide were many well-known representatives of the gypsy people. For example, it was Johann Trollmann, a boxer of German nationality, who in 1933 became the country's light heavyweight champion. In 1938 he was sterilized, but the next year he was drafted into the army, leaving his parents hostage.

In 1941, he was wounded, declared unfit for military service and sent to a concentration camp in Neuengam. In 1943 he was killed.

Django Reinhardt was a French jazz guitarist. In music, he was considered a real virtuoso. When the Nazis occupied France, his popularity became incredible, as the German command did not recognize jazz. Therefore, each speech by Reinhardt became a challenge to the invaders, giving self-confidence to the French.

Despite this, he managed to survive the war. During the years of occupation, several times, together with his family, he made unsuccessful attempts to escape from the occupied country. The fact that he survived is due to the patronage of influential Nazis who secretly loved jazz. In 1945, this style of performance became a symbol of resistance, and Django's popularity skyrocketed.

But since 1946, he was out of work after the emergence of a new genre - bebop. In 1953, the guitarist died of either a stroke or a heart attack. His relatives claim that the musician's health was undermined during the famine years of the war.

Mateo Maximov was one of the most popular Romani writers who translated the Bible into Romani. He was born in Spain, but after the Civil War began there, he left for relatives in France. In 1938, he was arrested during a conflict between two gypsy clans. These events of his life are described in the story "Ursitori".

When World War II broke out, the French government accused refugees from Spain (and they were mostly Jews and Gypsies) of spying for the Nazis. In 1940 Maximov was arrested and sent to the Tarbes camp. It is noteworthy that the conditions in the French camps were milder than in the German ones. The government did not set a goal to destroy the gypsies, they were kept for what they considered useless vagrants. At the same time, they were allowed to leave the camp in search of work and food, leaving families hostage. Maximov decided that if he managed to publish his story, he would be recognized as useful to society and released. The author even managed to sign a contract with a major French publishing house, but as a result, "Ursitori" was published only in 1946.

When the war ended, Maksimov became the first of the gypsies who filed a lawsuit against Germany demanding that he be recognized as a victim of racial persecution. After 14 years, he won in court.

Bronislava Weiss, known under the pseudonym Papusha, was a famous gypsy poetess. She lived in Poland, during the war she hid in the Volyn forest. She managed to survive, she died in 1987.

Organizers of the genocide

Witnesses of the Gypsy genocide among the organizers name several people who were responsible for this area of ​​work among the Nazis. First of all, this is the German psychologist Robert Ritter. He was the first to justify the need to persecute the Roma, considering them an inferior nation.

Initially, he was engaged in child psychology, even defending his thesis in Munich in 1927. In 1936, he was appointed head of the biological research station for population and eugenics at the Imperial Health Administration. He remained in this position until the end of 1943.

In 1941, on the basis of his research, practical measures against the gypsy population were introduced. After the war, he was under investigation, but as a result he was released, the case was closed. It is known that some of its employees, who argued about the inferiority of the gypsies, managed to continue their work and build a scientific career. Ritter himself committed suicide in 1951.

Another German psychologist, the famous initiator of the gypsy genocide in Germany, is Eva Justin. In 1934, she met Ritter, who at that time was already participating in experiments on the exterminated, contributing to their genocide. Over time, she became his deputy.

Her dissertation devoted to the fate of gypsy children and their descendants, who were brought up in a foreign environment, became popular. It was based on a study of 41 children of semi-Roma origin, who were brought up without contact with the national culture. Justin concluded that it was impossible to raise full-fledged members of German society from gypsies, since they were naturally lazy, weak-minded and prone to vagrancy. According to her conclusions, adult gypsies are also not able to comprehend science and do not want to work, therefore they are harmful elements for the German population. For this work, she received a Ph.D.

After the war, Justin managed to avoid imprisonment and political persecution. In 1947, she took a job as a child psychologist. In 1958, an investigation into her racial crimes was initiated, but the case was closed due to the statute of limitations. She died of cancer in 1966.

Persecution of gypsies in culture

The issue of the genocide of the Roma is still being discussed today. It is noteworthy that the UN still does not consider representatives of this people as victims of genocide. At the same time, Russia is addressing this problem even now. For example, recently the Soviet and Russian actor Alexander Adabashyan spoke quite unambiguously about the genocide of the Roma. He drafted an appeal in which he stressed that Russia should draw the attention of the world community to these facts.

In culture, the genocide is reflected in the songs, fairy tales, stories of gypsies from different countries. For example, in 1993, a documentary film by gypsy director Tony Gatlif called "Good Way" was released in France. The picture tells in detail about the fate and wanderings of the gypsy people. In one of the most memorable scenes, an elderly gypsy sings a song dedicated to her son, who was tortured to death in a concentration camp.

In 2009, Gatlif filmed the drama "On My Own", which is entirely dedicated to the genocide. The picture is based on real events, the action takes place in France in 1943. It tells about the camp, which is trying to hide from the Nazi soldiers.

The film "Sinful Apostles of Love", which was released in 1995, is dedicated to the persecution of this people in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union.

The repertoire of the famous theater "Romen" includes the performance "We are Gypsies", in which the theme of genocide is vividly reflected in the dramatic mass scene, which becomes the climax in the work. Also in the USSR, the song of the guitarist and singer of the trio "Romen" Igraf Yoshka, popular in the 70s, sounded. It's called "Echelons of the Gypsies".

In 2012, the Romen Theater premiered another performance about the persecution of an entire nationality during the Second World War. It is called "Gypsy Paradise", based on the play by Starchevsky, based on the famous novel by the Romanian writer Zakhariy Stancu "Tabor". The work is based on real events.

The most famous example of the reflection of persecution in world cinema is the Polish military drama And the Violins Silenced by Alexander Ramati, which was released in 1988. The film tells about the Mirg family, who live in occupied Warsaw.

When the repression against the Jews intensifies, they learn that persecution of the Gypsies is also being prepared. They flee to Hungary, but hopes for a peaceful life in that country are shattered when the Nazis enter there too. The family of the main characters is sent to the Auschwitz camp, where they meet Dr. Mengele, who has been at their home in Warsaw.