Timeline
to
Genocide
July 1933
Gypsies were sterilized under the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring.
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September 1935
Gypsies included in the Nuremberg Laws (Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honour).
July 1936
400 Gypsies are rounded up in Bavaria and transported to the Dachau concentration camp.
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1936
The Racial Hygiene and Population Biology Research Unit of the Ministry of Health at Berlin-Dahlem were established, with Dr. Robert Ritter its director. This office interviewed, measured, studied, photographed, fingerprinted, and examined Gypsies in order to document them and create complete genealogical listings for every Gypsy.
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1937
Special concentration camps are created for Gypsies known as (Zigeunerlagers).
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November 1937
Gypsies are excluded from the German military.
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December 14, 1937
Law Against Crime orders arrests of "those who by anti-social behaviour even if they have committed no crime have shown that they do not wish to fit into society."
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Summer 1938
In Germany, 1,500 Gypsy men are sent to Dachau and 440 Gypsy women are sent to Ravensbrück.
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December 8, 1938
Heinrich Himmler issues a decree on the Fight Against the Gypsy Menace which states that the Gypsy problem will be treated as a "matter of race."
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June 1939
In Austria, a decree orders 2,000 to 3,000 Gypsies to be sent to concentration camps.
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October 17, 1939
Reinhard Heydrich issues the Settlement Edict which prohibits Gypsies from leaving their homes or camping places.
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January 1940
Dr. Ritter reports that Gypsies have mixed with Anti-socials and recommends to have them kept in labour camps and to stop their "breeding."
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January 30, 1940
A conference organized by Heydrich in Berlin decides to remove 30,000 Gypsies to Poland.
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Spring 1940
Deportations of Gypsies begins from the Reich to the General government.
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October 1940
Deportation of Gypsies temporarily halted.
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Autumn 1941
Thousands of Gypsies murdered at Babi Yar.
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October to November, 1941
5,000 Austrian Gypsies, including 2,600 children, deported to the Lodz Ghetto.
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December 1941
Einsatzgruppen D shoots 800 Gypsies in Simferopol (Crimea).
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January 1942
The surviving Gypsies within the Lodz Ghetto are deported to the Chelmno death camp and killed.
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Summer 1942
It was about this time when decision was made to annihilate the Gypsies.
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October 13, 1942
Nine Gypsy representatives appointed to make lists of "pure" Sinti and Lalleri to be saved. Only three of the nine had completed their lists by the time deportations began. The end result was that the lists didn't matter - Gypsies on the lists were also deported.
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December 3, 1942
Martin Bormann writes to Himmler against the special treatment of "pure" Gypsies.
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December 16, 1942
Himmler gives the order for all German Gypsies to be sent to Auschwitz.
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January 29, 1943
RSHA announces the regulations for the implementation of deporting Gypsies to Auschwitz.
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February 1943
Family camp for Gypsies constructed in Auschwitz II, section BIIe.
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February 26, 1943
The first transport of Gypsies delivered to the Gypsy Camp in Auschwitz.
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March 29, 1943
Himmler orders all Dutch Gypsies to be sent to Auschwitz.
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Spring 1944
All attempts to save "pure" Gypsies was now forgotten.
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April 1944
Those Gypsies that are fit for work are selected in Auschwitz and sent to other camps.
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August 2-3, 1944
Zigeunernacht ("Night of the Gypsies"): All Gypsies who remained in Auschwitz were gassed.
In The Beginning
On Nov. 15, 1943, Heinrich Himmler ordered that Romany be placed in Nazi concentration camps. Up to 500,000 Romany died during the Holocaust.
On June 13th in 1938, the German Police commenced a week of operations against the Roma and Sinti people in Germany, over 1,000 Roma and Sinti had been arrested and deported to concentration camps by June 18th 1938.
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This operation has since became known as the “Gypsy Clean Up Week” and was the start off an extreme programme against the Roma and Sinti communities that led to their Mass Murder in the Death camps of the Nazi Regime.
The 1937 Decree was passed on the Fight to prevent Crime, a law that the Nazis acted upon to instigate the “clean up operation” against Roma and Sinti.
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In both the Imperial and Weimar parts of Germany the Roma Sinti communities had been the victims of “Legal” persecution. The were attacked for their way of living as it did not conform to the German ways, and for allegedly being prone to criminal activities.
Once the Nazis came to power in 1933 The Roma and Sinti communities were then subjected to many restrictions that were designed to target “asocial” groups.
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As part of the same 1937 decree they were forced to register their permanent addresses, Those who failed to register or moved from a registered address were arrested and deported to the Concentration camps.
Even though some of the Roma, Sinti who were arrested during the “Clean up” week had not broken any of the laws imposed on them, they were still arrested to demonstrate a tough stance on the part of the Local German Police.
Many of those arrested were later murdered as the persecution against the Roma, Sinti population grew and spread across Europe.
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Several month after the “Clean up week” In the June of 1938 over 30,000 Jews had been arrested and deported by the Nazis during Kristallnact or “Night of Glass”.
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1938 saw a major rise in violence towards Both the Jewish and Roma Sinti communities in Germany.
It has been said that this time was the point of no return , for both the Roma, Sinti and Jewish communities, The road to the Nazi extermination programme and their “Final Solution.”
Roma Camps
The Roma and Sinti were kept and the conditions they had to try and survive under, before their lives were ended in the Gas chambers of the Nazi Death camps of WWII.
Roma Sinti from all over Europe were transferred to the so called “Gypsy Camp” situated inside part of Auschwitz Birkenau.
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An order was signed by Henrich Himmler on the 16th of December in 1942 that Roma and Sinti be arrested and transported to the concentration camps. For some the journey meant being taken to a transit camp first the being transported by train trucks or road truck to another camp either for forced labour or extermination.
Once they arrived at the camp they were taken to the showers men woman and children after which they were given a black triangle to wear on their clothing which they had to sew onto the garments themselves as unlike other prisoners they were allowed to wear their own clothing’s.
They also received a tattoo on their left hand or arm , the German name for gypsy was Zigeuner, they were all forced to obey the orders given out by the guards. Unlike the other prisoners Gypsies were not taken from the camp for forced labour but worked within the camp.
The gas chambers were not the only cause of death for the Roma Sinti , some died of starvation through lack of proper and enough food, Some succumbed to diseases due to the conditions they were forced to live under, some died due to medical experiments carried out on them ( which you will read about further on in this magazine) or they were shot in failed attempts to escape , over 80 attempts were recorded and most of the prisoners were killed.
Over 20,000 Roma were recorded imprisoned in the refugee camp that were transported to the gas chambers of Auschwitz among them were 1.700 Polish Roma who after contracting Typhus were immediately transported no record of their arrival was recorded. This was the same fate that befell a large number of German Roma some were even transported from France, Netherlands, Belgium and several other countries under the occupation of the Nazi Regime.
However, some were transported to other camps which had become their only hope of survival. On the 15th of April 1944, 883 men and 473 women were transported to Ravensbruck camp, the last transportation took place on the 2nd of August 1944 when 918 men were transported to Buchenwald camp and 490 women were sent to Ravensbruck camp the remaining 3,000 mainly sick old or children were sent to the gas chambers.
BELZEC
The camp at Belzec was an extermination centre and was two camps divided into 3 parts and was created in the November of 1941. The sections were 1) Administration 2) Barracks and storage for all the plundered goods taken from the prisoners on arrival. 3) extermination.
In the beginning there were only 3 gas chambers which were housed in a wooden hut they used Carbon Monoxide gas to murder the prisoners. Later this was replaced by 6 gas chambers that were housed in a brick and concrete building.
The extermination centre began their extermination operations on March 17th 1942 until the December of the same year. It has been estimated that over 6000,000 prisoners were murdered there.
Belzec was the model for 2 other camps that were part of the “Aktion Reinhard” Murder programme , Belzec had actually started as a labour camp in 1940 and was located in Lublin Poland it was strategically place between a large Jewish population in the South East Poland and Galicia.
The first commander of the camp was SS Colonel General Christian Wirth who was a former police officer. He had played a big part in the implementing of the T4 “Euthanasia Program” he commanded between 20 to 30 SS men and a guard company of about 90 to 120 Ukrainian guards.
By then the 3 sections had now become 2 as the camp was split into 2 main parts each part was surrounded by barbed wire fences and Guard towers were erected all around the main perimeter of the camp.
The large section of the camp now included the spur line which brought the rail trucks that transported the prisoners into the camp, an area where all prisoners would be sorted into groups men women and children, Holding barracks where they were forced to undress and had their heads shaved, a storeroom where the prisoners clothes and other personal effects taken from them were kept, and some huts for the prisoners who were forcibly made to work carrying out duties associated with the murder process.
The second part of the camp which now housed the newly built gas chambers housing 6 gas chambers in all each measuring 13x16 feet and now allowed the Nazis to murder 1,200 prisoners at one time, also the burial pits where situated there close by, prisoners had to walk down a long narrow passageway which had barbed wire running down both sides it became known as “The tube”.
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The extermination site was screened off from the rest of the camp with the use of leafy branches entwined in barbed wire.
Once the prisoners were transported in between 40 to 60 rail trucks which held about 500 prisoners packed tight and arrived at the station in Belzec the convoy was then put into smaller convoys and were then pushed into the camp.
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The prisoners would be quickly brought off the trucks, they were even reassured they were being taken to a transit camp and that they needed to be disinfected and showered before being moved to another camp.
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The gas chambers had been designed to resemble showers the object was to not alert the prisoners that they were about to meet their death.
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It has been estimated that during the camps time in operation over 600,000 people were murdered there Roma, and Jews.
During the early part of 1943 the corpses of the murdered prisoners were disinterred and burnt in open air pits, after that the camp was closed.
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Some of the locals tried to excavate the land looking for valuables that may have been buried when the camp was closed down, but they were driven off my guards to deter any other treasure hunters the area where the camp had been was ploughed over and became a farm which one of the Ukrainian guards was made the farmer of.
Dachau
Dachau will always be associated with the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime of WW2 and the Holocaust. The camp was open on 22nd of March 1933 and had been a former gunpowder factory in WW1. Situated just outside the town of Dachau in Bavaria, and was one of the first camps in the large network of concentration camps of the Third Reich.
There were many camps set up by the Nazi’s throughout Germany, but Dachau was the first to be called a “Concentration” camp and the first to use SS Soldiers as camp guards while other camps were guarded by S.A. soldiers also known as “Storm Troopers”.
Dachau was mainly set up as a male prisoner camp and was used to imprison everyone from Communists, Common Criminals, Gypsy Men, Spies, Resistance Fighters to anyone else who was considered to be an “Enemy” of the state. It was not a “Death Camp” for the killing of Roma or Jews, Although both were imprisoned there.
The History of the Dashau Camp spans 12 years in that time it recorded 206,206 arrivals at the camp and there were 32,951 certified deaths. Many of the prisoners kept there were released after they served an undetermined amount of time there.
Many high profile political opponents of the Nazi regime were held in Dashau these included Former Chancellor of Austria Kurt von Schushnigg and the former Premier of France Leon Blum, There were also 137 other V.I.,P. prisoners who were evacuated to South Tyrol in the April of 1945, shortly before the camp was liberated.
In the April of 1942 a new brick building was planned for Dachau , This was to be called Barrack X. The design housed a gas chamber which would be disguised as a shower room, There would also be 4 cremation furnaces. It would also be equipped with 4 disinfection gas chambers that would be used to kill the lice off the clothes of the prisoners by using Zyclon B gas, Which was the same gas used at the death camps in the Gas chambers of Auschwitz and Majdaneck to kill the prisoners.
In July 1942 Building work commenced on Barrack X using the Labour of the Catholic Priests as the were not forced into the factories at Dachau. The building work was completed in 1943. However some will argue that the facility was never used while others will say it may have been used.
The last Roll call at the Dachau camp was on the 26th of April, The U.S. Army reported that over 7,000 prisoners who had arrived from sub-camps were never registered as being there. During the month of May that year over 2,226 died with another 196 in the month of June.
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The overcrowding and spread of contagious disease claimed more lives in the last four months of the camps history than the whole of its 12 year existence.
The last Commandant of Dachau Concentration camp was Wilhelm Eduard Weiter who had replaced Martin Gottfried Weiss on 1st of November 1943 after Weiss was transferred to the Death camp of Majdanek. Weiter left Dachau camp on 26th April 1945 with prisoners being transported to a sub camp called Schloss Itter in Austria.
On the 6th of May 1945 Eduard Weiter committed suicide ,by shooting himself.
Today most visitors see Dachau as part of the genocide of over 6 million people in the Holocaust.
Drancy
Drancy was an internment camp for assembly and detention for Roma Sinti and Jews, They were held here until their transportation to “Extermination camps” during the Nazi occupation of France during WWII.
The camp was located in Drancy which was a North-eastern suburb of Paris, it was in operation from 22 of |June 1942 and July 31 1944 during which time over 67,000 French Polish and German Roma Sinti and Jews were transported from the camp in a total of 64 rail transports this included over 6,000 children of which only 1,542 remained alive at the camp by the time allied forces liberated it on August 17th 1944.
Drancy was first run by the French Police until 1943 when the German SS took over and placed officer Alios Brunner in charge of the camp. The war crimes case against Brunner was brought before the French courts in 2001 which sentenced him in his absence to life imprisonment for his crimes against Humanity.
Hodonin U Kunstatu
The Hodonin U Kunstatu Camp was used to incarcerate the Moravian Roma Gypsies. Roma families were transported here from August 1942, The camp was initially designed to house 800 people but that number was exceeded.
The conditions in which the Roma families were forced to live in were disgusting due to the fact that proper sanitation there was practically non- existent and there was very little food to feed the families.
Stephan Blahnka was in charge of the camp, He had , had a temporary position at the Lety camp where he had assisted with a typhus epidemic there and help with the organisation of the transportations from the Lety camp to the Auschwitz Death camp.
When his assignment was completed he returned to Hodonin. He remained the Commander of the camp until it was closed.
There was approximately over 1,300 people who passed through the camp on their way to forced labour camps or Death camps. A total of approximately 194 prisoners died in the camp due to its poor condition and diseases like Typhus.
2 Mass Transportations took place from the camp the first of these was on the 7th of December 1942 this comprised of 46 men and 29 women who were transported to the Auschwitz 1 camp.
The second mass transportation was on the 21st of August 1943 when approximately 749 prisoners were transported to the Auschwitz 2 camp Birkenau. There was only 62 prisoners left at the camp with the exception of a few the rest were transported to Auschwitz in the winter of 1944.
Soon after that transportation the camp was then closed down.
Letty U Pisku
The original use for the camp was that of an accommodation facility for construction workers, Then it was used as a disciplinary Labour camp on the orders of Josef Jezek the Interior Minister at that time. The order was given on the 15th of July 1940.
Wandering Gypsies, drifters, beggars, gamblers, prostitutes, and many more who were classed as “Un-savoury characters” were to be forcibly interned into the labour camps. Lety u |Pisku received its first detainees on the 17th July 1940.
One August the 1st 1942 the camp was turned into a “Gypsy Camp” where entire Roma Gypsy Families were forcibly transported there.The camps capacity had then been increased so as to enable it to house over 600 prisoners, but soon that number was exceeded.
During the August of 1942 more than 100 Roma Gypsy Children alongside their families were transported to the Lety u Pisku camp.With no proper bathing facilities for the Women and children they were forced to bathe in a fish pond. From the beginning of August 1942 the woman and children were left to die and rot.
It is estimated that at least 326 Roma Gypsies died within the camp with 241 of them being children, There was a mass grave near to the camp which was believed to contain over 120 bodies of victims from the camp. Another 540 prisoners from Lety U Pisku died after being transported to the Death Camp of Auschwitz. There were two mass transportations of Roma Gypsies to Auschwitz from Leyy U Pesku.
The first departed on the 3 December 1942, there were 16 men and 78 women transported to Auschwitz 1. The second transportation of Roma Gypsy prisoners comprised of 417 Roma men , women and children being sent to Auschwitz 2 Birkenau.
The remaining 198 were sent to the “Gypsy Camp” at Hodonin I Kunstatu which was also know as the “Zalov Site”. Some of the last few were sent to internment camps in Pardubice or Prague. The camp at Lety u Pisku closed on the 4th of May 1943.
Marzahn
The Berlin-Marzahn Rastplatz was a camp set up for Romani people in the Berlin suburb of Marzahn by Nazi authorities.The Nazis made use of the Nuremberg Laws related to social misfits, vagabonds, and criminals as a way to allow them to intimidate and arrest Romani and Sinti Gypsies in Germany.
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On 16 July 1936, At 4 a.m. prior to the opening of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, the police arrested approximately 600 Gypsies in Greater Berlin and forcibly relocated them via 130 caravansto Marzahn, which was an open field in eastern Berlin located between a cemetery and a sewage dump.
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Upon their arrival the men and women were separated and taken for a medical inspection. From there, the prisoners were either found to be fit for work or unfit. Those that were passed as unfit were sent for execution. Later, the prison would be surrounded by barbed wire and prisoners were subjected to forced labour in some of the nazi armament plants.
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The camp also led to involuntary sterilization being carried out on the prisoners and the loss of citizenship for the Gypsy prisoners as they were now classified as aliens or (Non-Aryans). In 1938 the men from Marzahn were sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp , However the women and children were sent to Auschwitz in 1943.