
, the Independent State of Croatia
, Horthy's Hungary and their allies to exterminate the Romani people of Europe
during World War II
. Under Hitler’s rule, both Roma and Jews
were defined as “enemies of the race-based state” by the Nuremberg laws
; the two groups were targeted by similar policies and persecution, culminating in the near annihilation of both populations within Nazi-occupied countries.
Because Eastern Europe
an Romani communities were less organised than Jewish communities, Porajmos was not well documented.

, the Independent State of Croatia
, Horthy's Hungary and their allies to exterminate the Romani people of Europe
during World War II
. Under Hitler’s rule, both Roma and Jews
were defined as “enemies of the race-based state” by the Nuremberg laws
; the two groups were targeted by similar policies and persecution, culminating in the near annihilation of both populations within Nazi-occupied countries.
Because Eastern Europe
an Romani communities were less organised than Jewish communities, Porajmos was not well documented. Estimates of the death toll of Romanies in World War II range from 220,000 to 1,500,000. According to Ian Hancock
, director of the Program of Romani Studies at the University of Texas at Austin
, there also existed a trend to downplay the actual figures. He surmised that almost the entire Romani population was killed in Croatia
, Estonia
, Lithuania
, Luxembourg
, and the Netherlands
. Rudolph Rummel, a professor emeritus of political science
at the University of Hawaii
who spent his career assembling data on collective violence by governments towards their people (for which he coined the term democide
), estimated that 258,000 must have been killed in Nazi Germany, 36,000 in Romania under Ion Antonescu
and 27,000 in Ustashe Croatia. (The Romanian government was not directly involved in the extermination of the Roma. However, it was responsible for deporting Roma to Transnistria
where many perished.)
West Germany
formally recognised the genocide of the Roma in 1982. The Roma were reluctant to acknowledge the porajmos, preferring to suppress such unpleasant memories.
Using the term
The term porajmos was introduced into the literature by Ian Hancock, in the early 1990s. According to Hancock, the term was invented by a Kalderash
Rom during an informal conversation in 1993 where several people were discussing what to call the Holocaust in Romani. Of the several suggestions, Hancock found this one particularly appropriate.
The term is used mostly by activists and is unknown to most Roma, including relatives of the victims and survivors. Some Russian and Balkan Romani
activists protest against using the word porajmos. In various dialects, "porajmos" is synonymous with poravipe which means "violation" and "rape", a term which some Roma consider to be an offensive. Balkan Romani activists prefer the term Samudaripen ("mass killing"), first introduced by linguist Marcel Courthiade. Hancock dismisses this word, arguing that it does not conform to Romani language morphology
. Some Ruska Roma
activists offer the emotive term Kali Traš ("Black Fear"). Another alternative that has been used is Berša Bibahtale ("The Unhappy Years"). Lastly, adapted borrowings such as Holokosto, Holokausto etc. are also occasionally used in the Romani language.
Linguistically, the term is composed of the verb root porrav- and the abstract-forming nominal ending -imos. This ending is of the Vlax Romani dialect, whereas other varieties generally use -ibe(n) or -ipe(n). For the verb itself, the most commonly given meaning is "to open/stretch wide" or "to rip open", whereas the meaning "to open up the mouth, devour" occurs in fewer varieties.
Recognition and remembrance

to Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, but not to the Romani. There were "never any consultations at Nuremberg or any other international conference as to whether the Sinti and Roma were entitled like the Jews to reparations.” The Interior Ministry of Wuerttemberg argued that "Gypsies [were] persecuted under the Nazis not for any racial reason but because of an asocial and criminal record." When on trial for his leadership of Einsatzgruppen
in the USSR, Otto Ohlendorf
cited the massacres of Romanis during the Thirty Years War as a historical precedent.
West Germany
recognised the genocide of the Roma in 1982, and since then the Porajmos has been increasingly recognized as a genocide committed simultaneously with the Shoah. The American historian Sybil Milton wrote several articles arguing that the Porajmos deserved recognition as part of the Holocaust. In Switzerland, a committee of experts investigated the policy of the Swiss government during the Porajmos.
Formal recognition and commemoration of the Roma persecution by the Nazis is practically difficult due to the lack of significant collective memory
and documentation of the Porajmos among the Roma, a consequence both of their oral traditions and their illiteracy, heightened by widespread poverty and discrimination that forces some Roma out of state schools. One UNESCO report put the illiteracy rate among the Roma in Romania at 30 percent, as opposed to the near universal literacy of the Romanian public as a whole. In a 2011 investigation of the state of the Roma in Europe today, Ben Judah, a Policy Fellow with the European Council on Foreign Relations
, traveled to Romania and Transylvania. Nico Fortuna, a sociologist and Roma activist, explained the distinction between Jewish collective memory of the Shoah
and the Roma experience:
There is a difference between the Jewish and Roma deportees...The Jews were shocked and can remember the year, date and time it happened. The Roma shrugged it off. They said, 'Of course I was deported. I'm Roma; these things happen to a Roma.' The Roma mentality is different from the Jewish mentality. For example, a Roma came to me and asked, 'Why do you care so much about these deportations? Your family was not deported.' I went, 'I care as a Roma' and the guy said back, 'I do not care because my family were brave, proud Roma that were not deported.'
For the Jews it was a total and everyone knew this - from bankers to pawnbrokers. For the Roma it was selective and not comprehensive. The Roma were only exterminated in a few parts of Europe such as Poland, the Netherlands, Germany and France. In Romania and much of the Balkans, only nomadic Roma and social outcast Roma were deported. This matters and has an impact on the Roma mentality.
Ian Hancock has also observed a reluctance among Roma to acknowledge their victimization by the Third Reich. The Roma "are traditionally not disposed to keeping alive the terrible memories from their history - nostalgia is a luxury for others." The impact of the illiteracy, the lack of social institutions and the rampant discrimination faced by Roma in Europe today have produced a people who, according to Fortuna, lack a "national consciousness...and historical memory of the Holocaust because there is no Roma elite."
Acts of commemoration
The first memorial commemorating victims of the Romani Holocaust was erected on May 8, 1956, in the Polish village of Szczurowacommemorating the Szczurowa massacre
. Since 1996, a Gypsy Caravan Memorial is crossing the main remembrance sites in Poland, from Tarnów via Auschwitz, Szczurowa and Borzęcin Dolny, gathering the Gypsies and well-wishers in the remembrance of the Porajmos. Several museums dedicate a part of their permanent exhibition to that memory, like the Museum of Romani Culture in Czech Republic and the Ethnographic Museum in Tarnów. However some political organisations still try to block the building up of memorials near former concentration camps, as shows the debate around Lety and Hodonin
in Czech Republic.
On October 23, 2007, Romanian President Traian Băsescu
publicly apologized for his nation's role in the Porajmos, the first time a Romanian leader has done so. He called for the Porajmos to be taught in schools, stating that, "We must tell our children that six decades ago children like them were sent by the Romanian state to die of hunger and cold". Part of his apology was in the Romani language
. Băsescu also awarded three Porajmos survivors with an Order for Faithful Services. Before recognizing Romania's role in the Porajmos, Traian Băsescu
was widely quoted after an incident on May 19, 2007, in which he insulted a journalist by calling her a "stinky gypsy." The president subsequently apologized.
On January 27, 2011, Zoni Weisz
became the first Roma guest of honour at Germany's official Holocaust Memorial Day
ceremony. Dutch born Weiz escaped death during a Nazi round-up when a policeman allowed him to escape. Nazi injustices against the Roma were recalled at the ceremony, including that directed at Sinto
boxer Johann Trollmann.
Depiction in films
In 2009, Tony Gatlif, a French
film director
of Romani ethnicity, directed a film Korkoro
, which bases an anecdote by the historian Jacques Sigot. The film traces a gypsy, Taloche's, escape from the Nazis, with help from a French notary Justes, and later, his inability to lead an immobile non-nomadic life. While it is not known if the French notary, Justes, really existed, the character Théodore in the movie is inspired by him. The film's other main character, Mademoiselle Lise Lundi, is inspired by the schoolteacher Yvette Lundy, who used to work in Gionges, La Marne. The film was shot in Loire
, Monts du Forez, Rozier-Côtes-d'Aurec
and Saint-Bonnet-le-Château
. The 1988 Polish
film And the Violins Stopped Playing
also has Porajmos as its subject, although this has been criticised for showing the killing of Roma as a method of removing witnesses to the killing of Jews.
The emergence of race pseudo-science and industrialization
In the late 19th century, the emergence of race pseudo-science and state-sponsored modernization sparked Germany’s anti-Romani policy. During this time, “the concept of race was systematically employed to explain social phenomena.” Scientific racial analysis and Social Darwinismlinked social difference to racial difference. This approach validated the idea that different races were not variations of a single species, but instead were of different biological origin. The emergence of race pseudo-science established a scientifically-backed racial hierarchy, which othered minority groups on the basis of biology.
In addition to race science, the end of the 19th century was a period of state-sponsored modernization in Germany. Industrial development altered many aspects of society. Most notably, this period shifted social norms of work and life. For Roma, this meant a denial of their traditional way of being. Janos Barsony notes that “industrial development devalued their services as craftsmen, resulting in the disintegration of their communities and social marginalization.”
Persecution under the German Empire and Weimar Republic
The developments of racial pseudo-science and modernization resulted in anti-Romani state interventions, carried out by both the German Empire and Weimar Republic. In 1899, the Information Services on Gypsies by the Security Police was created in the Imperial Police Headquarters in Munich. Its purpose was to keep records (identification cards, fingerprints, photographs, etc.) and continuous surveillance on the Roma community. Roma in the Weimar Republic were forbidden from entering public swimming pools, parks, and other recreational areas, and depicted throughout Germany and Europe as criminals and spies. By 1926, this ‘racial panic’ was transmitted into law. The Law for the Fight Against Gypsies, Vagrants and the Workshy was enforced in Bavaria. It stipulated that groups identified as ‘Gypsies’ avoid all travel to the region. Those already living in the area were to “be keep under control so that there [was] no longer anything to fear from them with regard to safety in the land.” Herbet Heuss notes that “[t]his Bavarian law became the model for other German states and even for neighbouring countries.”The demand for Roma to settle in a specific region was often the focus of anti-Gypsy policy of German Empire and Weimar Republic. Once settled, communities were concentrated and isolated in one area within a town or city. This process facilitated state-run surveillance practices and ‘crime prevention.’
Public policy increasingly targeted the Roma on the explicit basis of race following the Law for the Fight Against Gypsies, Vagrants and the Workshy. In 1927, legislation was passed in Prussia that required all Roma to carry identity cards. Eight thousand Roma were processed this way and subjected to mandatory fingerprinting and photographing. Two years later, the focus became ever more explicit. In 1929, the German state of Hussen proposed the Law for the Fight Against the Gypsy Menace. The same year the Centre for the Fight Against Gypsies in Germany was opened. This body enforced restrictions on travel for undocumented Roma and "allowed for the arbitrary arrest and detention of gypsies as a means of crime prevention.”
Legislation prior to Hitler’s rise to power was propelled by a rhetoric of racism. Policy based on the premise of “fighting crime” was redirected to “fighting a people.” Targeted groups were no longer determined by juridical grounds. Instead, they were victims of racialized policy.
Aryan racial purity
For centuries, Romani tribes were subject to antiziganistpersecution and humiliation in Europe. They were stigma
tized as habitual criminals, social misfits, and vagabonds
. Given the Nazi predilection for “racial purity”, the Roma were among their first victims. However, In the early days of Third Reich, the Romanies posed a problem for Hitler’s
racial ideologues: the Romani language
is one of the Indo-Aryan languages
, originating in northern India
. Nazi anthropologists
realized that Romanies migrated into Europe from India and were thus descendants of the Aryan occupants of the subcontinent, thought at the time to have invaded India from Europe. In other words, the Romanies are native speakers of an Aryan language.
Huttenbach argues that the Nazis planned to eliminate the Romanis, one way or another, from as early as 1933; they announced on July 14, 1933, the goal of preventing lebensunwertes Leben ( see Life unworthy of life
) from reproducing. The Department of Racial Hygiene and Population Biology began to experiment on Romanis to reach criteria for their racial classification.
Nazi racialist Hans F. K. Günther added a socioeconomic component to the theory of racial purity. While he conceded that the Romanies were, in fact, descended from Aryans, they were of poorer classes that had mingled with the various “inferior” races they encountered during their wanderings. This, he explained, accounted for their extreme poverty and nomadic lifestyle. While he conceded that there were some groups that were "purely Aryan", most Romanies posed a threat to Aryan homogeneity because of their racial mingling.

and his assistant Eva Justin, the body was mandated to conduct an in-depth study of the "Gypsy question (Zigeunerfrage)" and to provide data required for formulating a new Reich "Gypsy law". After extensive fieldwork in the spring of 1936, consisting of interviews and medical examinations to investigate genealogical and genetic
data, it was determined that most Romanies posed a danger to German racial purity and should be eliminated. No decision was made regarding the remainder (about 10 percent of the total Romani population of Europe), primarily Sinti
and Lalleri tribes living in Germany, though several suggestions were made. At one point Heinrich Himmler
even suggested the establishment of a remote reservation, where "pure Gypsies" could continue their nomadic lifestyle unhindered. According to him:
...The aim of measures taken by the State to defend the homogeneity of the German nation must be the physical separation of Gypsydom from the German nation, the prevention of miscegenationMiscegenationMiscegenation is the mixing of different racial groups through marriage, cohabitation, sexual relations, and procreation....
, and finally, the regulation of the way of life of pure and part-Gypsies.
Nine representatives of the Romani community in Germany were asked to compile lists of pure-blooded Romanies to be saved from extermination. However, these lists were often ignored and some who were named on them were still sent to concentration camps.
Loss of citizenship
On November 14, 1935, The Law for the "Protection of Blood and Honour", a supplementary extension to the Nuremberg Laws, was passed. This law forbade Aryans to marry non-Aryans. Criteria defining who is Romani were exactly twice as strict as those defining any other group. The second Nuremberg law, The Reich Citizenship Law, stripped citizenship from "non-Aryans". Blacks and Romanies, like Jews, lost their right to vote on March 7, 1936.
Extermination

(which evolved from a municipal internment camp) and Vennhausen.
The Society for Threatened Peoples
estimates the casualties at 277,100. Martin Gilbert
estimates a total of more than 220,000 of the 700,000 Romani in Europe, including 15,000 (mainly from the Soviet Union) in Mauthausen in January–May 1945. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum cites scholars that estimate the number of Sinti and Roma killed to lie between 220,000 and 500,000. Dr. Sybil Milton, a historian at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Research Institute, estimated the number of lives lost as "something between a half-million and a million-and-a-half".
They were herded into ghetto
s, including the Warsaw Ghetto
(April–June, 1942), where they formed a distinct subclass. Ghetto diarist Emmanuel Ringelblum speculated that Romanies were sent to the Warsaw Ghetto because the Germans wanted:
...to toss into the Ghetto everything that is characteristically dirty, shabby, bizarre, of which one ought to be frightened, and which anyway has to be destroyed.Initially there was disagreement about how to solve the "Gypsy Question." In late 1939 and early 1940, Hans Frank
, the General Governor of occupied Poland, refused to accept the 30,000 German and Austrian Roma which were to be deported. For his "ethnic reservation," Heinrich Himmler "lobbied to save a handful of pure-blooded Roma," but was opposed by Martin Bormann
, who favored deportation for all Roma. The debate ended in 1942 when Himmler signed the order marking the beginning of the mass deportations to Auschwitz.
The Nazi persecution of Roma varied from country to country and region to region. In France, between 3,000 and 6,000 Roma were deported to Dachau, Ravensbrück, Buchenwald, and other camps. Further east, in the Balkan states and the Soviet Union, the Einsatzgruppen
, mobile killing squads, travelled from village to village massacring the inhabitants where they lived and typically leaving little to no records of the number of Roma killed in this way. In few cases, significant documentary evidence of mass murder was generated. Timothy Snyder notes that in the Soviet Union alone there were 8,000 documented cases of Roma murdered by the Einsatzgruppen in their sweep east. In return for immunity from prosecution for war crimes, Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski stated at the Einsatzgruppen Trial
that 'the principal task of the Einsatzgruppen of the S.D.
was the annihilation of the Jews, Gypsies and Political Commissars
.' Roma in Slovakia
were killed by the local collaborating auxiliaries. Notably, Roma in Denmark and Greece were not as intensely hunted as those in the Baltics. Bulgaria and Finland, although allies of Germany, did not cooperate with the Porajmos, just as they did not cooperate with the Shoah
.
On December 16, 1942, Himmler ordered that the Romani candidates for extermination should be deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau
. To the Romani people of Europe, this order was equivalent to the January 20 decision of that same year, made at the Wannsee Conference
, at which Nazi bureaucrats decided on the “Final Solution
” to the “Jewish problem”. Himmler then ordered, on November 15, 1943, that Romanies and "part-Romanies" were to be put “on the same level as Jews and placed in concentration camps.”
Sybil Milton has speculated that Hitler was involved in the decision to deport all Romanies to Auschwitz, as Himmler gave the order six days after meeting with Hitler and Himmler had prepared for the meeting a report on the subject Fuehrer: Aufstellung wer sind Zigeuner. Organized Jewish resistance
occurred in nearly every large ghetto and concentration camp (Auschwitz, Sobibor
, Treblinka, Ravensbrück, Buchenwald, among many others), and the Roma themselves similarly attempted to resist the Nazis' extermination. In Auschwitz, in May 1944, SS guards attempted to liquidate the gypsy family camp and were "met with unexpected resistance - the Roma fought back with crude weapons - and retreated." However, a few months later the SS succeeded in liquidating the camp, and ultimately 20,000 Roma were murdered in the camp.
Persecution in other Axis countries
Romanies were also victims of the puppet regimes that cooperated with the Third Reich during the war, especially the notorious Ustašeregime in Croatia. In Jasenovac concentration camp
, along with Serbs
and Jews, tens of thousands of Romanies were killed. Yad Vashem estimates that the Porajmos was most intense in Yugoslavia, where around 90,000 Romanies were killed. The Ustashe government also deported around 26,000; Serbian Romanies are parties to the pending Class action suit against the Vatican Bank and others
currently pending in U.S. Federal Court seeking return of wartime loot.
The governments of some Nazi German allies, namely Slovakia
, Hungary
, and Romania
, also contributed to the Nazi plan of Romani extermination, but this was implemented on a smaller scale and most Romani in these countries survived, unlike those in Ustaše Croatia
or in areas directly ruled by Nazi Germany (such as Poland
). The Hungarian Arrow Cross
government deported between 28,000 and 33,000 Romanies out of a population estimated between 70,000 and 100,000.
Similarly, the Romanian government of Ion Antonescu
had its own concentration camps in Transnistria
to which 25,000 Romani people were deported, of whom 11,000 died. According to eyewitness Mrs. de Wiek, Anne Frank
, a notable Jewish Holocaust victim is recorded as having witnessed the prelude to the murder of Romani children at Auschwitz: "I can still see her standing at the door and looking down the camp street as a herd of naked gypsy girls were driven by, to the crematory, and Anne watched them going and cried."
In the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia
, Romani internees were sent to the Lety and Hodonín concentration camps
before being transferred to Auschwitz-Birkenau for gassing. What makes the Lety camp unique is that it was staffed by Czech guards, who could be even more brutal than the Germans, as testified in Paul Polansky
’s book Black Silence. The genocide was so thorough that the vast majority of Romani in the Czech Republic
today are actually descended from migrants from Slovakia
who moved there during the post-war years in Czechoslovakia
. In Nazi-occupied France, between 16,000 and 18,000 were killed.
The small Romani population in Denmark
was not subjected to mass killings by the Nazi occupiers, but classified as simply "asocial". Angus Fraser attributes this to "doubts over ethnic demarcations within the travelling population". The Romanis of Greece
were taken hostage and prepared for deportation to Auschwitz, but were saved by appeals from the Archbishop of Athens and the Greek Prime Minister.
Estimated losses by country
The following figures are from The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust.Country | Pre War Roma population | Low Estimate | High Estimate |
---|---|---|---|
Austria Austria Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the... |
11,200 | 6,800 | 8,250 |
Belgium Belgium Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many... |
600 | 350 | 500 |
Czech Republic Czech Republic The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest.... (Bohemia & Moravia) |
13,000 | 5,000 | 6,500 |
Estonia Estonia Estonia , officially the Republic of Estonia , is a state in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia , and to the east by Lake Peipsi and the Russian Federation . Across the Baltic Sea lies... |
1,000 | 500 | 1,000 |
France France The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France... |
40,000 | 15,150 | 15,150 |
Germany Germany Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate... |
20,000 | 15,000 | 15,000 |
Greece Greece Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe.... |
? | 50 | 50 |
Hungary Hungary Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The... |
100,000 | 1,000 | 28,000 |
Italy Italy Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and... |
25,000 | 1,000 | 1,000 |
Latvia Latvia Latvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden... |
5,000 | 1,500 | 2,500 |
Lithuania Lithuania Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark... |
1,000 | 500 | 1,000 |
Luxembourg Luxembourg Luxembourg , officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg , is a landlocked country in western Europe, bordered by Belgium, France, and Germany. It has two principal regions: the Oesling in the North as part of the Ardennes massif, and the Gutland in the south... |
200 | 100 | 200 |
Netherlands Netherlands The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders... |
500 | 215 | 500 |
Poland Poland Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north... |
50,000 | 8,000 | 35,000 |
Romania Romania Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea... |
300,000 | 19,000 | 36,000 |
Slovakia Slovakia The Slovak Republic is a landlocked state in Central Europe. It has a population of over five million and an area of about . Slovakia is bordered by the Czech Republic and Austria to the west, Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east and Hungary to the south... |
80,000 | 400 | 10,000 |
Soviet Union Soviet Union The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991.... (Borders 1939) |
200,000 | 30,000 | 35,000 |
Yugoslavia Yugoslavia Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century.... |
100,000 | 26,000 | 90,000 |
Total | 947,500 | 130,565 | 285,650 |
- In a 2010 publication, Ian HancockIan HancockIan Hancock is a linguist, Romani scholar, and political advocate. He was born and raised in England, and is one of the main contributors in the field of Romani studies....
stated that he agrees with the view that the number of Romanis killed has been underestimated as a result of being grouped with others in Nazi records under headings such as "remainder to be liquidated", "hangers-on" and "partisans". He notes recent evidence such as the previously obscure Lety concentration camp in the Czech Republic and Ackovic's revised estimates of Gypsies killed by the Ustashe as high as 80,000-100,000. These numbers suggest that previous estimates have been grossly underrepresented.
Medical experiments
Another distinctive feature of the Porajmos and the Holocaustwas the extensive use of human subjects in medical experiments. The most notorious of these physicians was Dr. Josef Mengele
, who worked in the Auschwitz concentration camp
. His experiments included placing subjects in pressure chambers, testing drugs on them, freezing them, attempting to change eye color by injecting chemicals into children's eyes and various amputations and other brutal surgeries. The full extent of his work will never be known because the truckload of records he sent to Dr. Otmar von Verschuer at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute
were destroyed by von Verschuer. Subjects who survived Mengele's experiments were almost always killed and dissected shortly afterwards.
He seemed particularly keen on working with Romani children. He would bring them sweets and toys, and would personally take them to the gas chamber. They would call him "Onkel Mengele". Vera Alexander was a Jewish inmate at Auschwitz who looked after 50 sets of Romani twins:
See also
- AntiziganismAntiziganismAntiziganism or Anti-Romanyism is hostility, prejudice or racism directed at the Romani people, also known as Gypsies.As an endogamous culture with a tendency to practise self-segregation, the Romanis have generally resisted assimilation with the indigenous communities of whichever countries they...
- Szczurowa massacreSzczurowa massacreThe massacre in Szczurowa was the murder of 93 Romani people , including children, women and the elderly, by German Nazi occupiers in the Polish village of Szczurowa on August 3, 1943. Between ten and twenty families of settled Romani had lived in Szczurowa for generations, alongside ethnic Poles...
- And the Violins stopped playingAnd the Violins Stopped PlayingAnd the Violins Stopped Playing is a 1988 movie depicting a real story about a group of Romani people who are forced to flee from the persecuting forces of the Nazis at the height of the Porajmos , during World War II.-Synopsis:...
- KorkoroKorkoroKorkoro is a 2009 French drama film written and directed by Tony Gatlif, starring French actors Marc Lavoine, Marie-Josée Croze and James Thiérrée. The film's cast were of many nationalities such as Albanian, Kosovar, Georgian, Serbian, French, Norwegian, and the nine Romanies Gatlif found in...
Further reading
- Bársony, János: Pharrajimos: the fate of the Roma during the Holocaust, IDEA, 2008, ISBN 9781932716306.
- Guenter LewyGuenter LewyGuenter Lewy is an author and political scientist who is a professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts. His works span several topics, but he is most often associated with his 1978 book on the Vietnam War, America in Vietnam, and several controversial works that deal with the...
, The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies, OxfordOxfordThe city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
, Oxford University Press, 2000 ISBN 0-19-512556-8 - Fonseca, Isabel: Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies And Their Journey, LondonLondonLondon is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, Vintage, 1996. Chapter 7, The Devouring ISBN 978-0-679-73743-8 - ""Gypsies" as Social Outsiders in Nazi Germany" by Sybil H. Milton in Social Outsiders in Nazi GermanySocial Outsiders in Nazi GermanySocial Outsiders in Nazi Germany is a book edited by Robert Gellately and Nathan Stoltzfus. It is a collection of essays offering the history of those branded "social outsiders" in Nazi Germany....
, edited by Robert GellatelyRobert GellatelyRobert Gellately is a Newfoundland-born Canadian academic who is one of the leading historians of modern Europe, particularly during World War II and the Cold War era. He is presently Earl Ray Beck Professor of History at Florida State University....
and Nathan Stoltzfus (2001, hardcover, ISBN 0-691-00748-9; paperback, ISBN 0-691-08684-2). - Paul PolanskyPaul PolanskyPaul Polansky is an American author and activist working for the rights of the Roma people in Eastern Europe and the Balkans. He has also lived with Roma for the past ten years in Eastern Europe, collecting their oral histories and writing several books about their lives in the Czech republic and...
, Black Silence: The Lety Survivors Speak ISBN 0-89304-241-2 - Ramati, Alexander And the Violins Stopped Playing: A Story of the Gypsy Holocaust : 1986. War time biography of Roman (Dymitr) Mirga, on which film of the same nameAnd the Violins Stopped PlayingAnd the Violins Stopped Playing is a 1988 movie depicting a real story about a group of Romani people who are forced to flee from the persecuting forces of the Nazis at the height of the Porajmos , during World War II.-Synopsis:...
is based. - Romani Rose, The Nazi Genocide of the Sinti and Roma (Heidelberg: Documentary and Cultural Centre of German Sinti and Roma, 1995)
- Parcer, Jan Memorial Book: The Gypsies at Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum of Auschwitz-Birkenau, (New York: K.G. Saur, 1993) ISBN 978-3-598-11162-4
- Klamper, Elisabeth. Persecution and Annihilation of Roma and Sinti in Austria, 1938-1945, Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society 5, Vol. 3, No. 2 (1993)
- Milton, Sybil. The Holocaust: The Gypsies, in William S. Parsons, Israel Chamy, and Samuel Totten, eds., Genocide in the Twentieth Century: An Anthology of Critical Essays and Oral History (New York, 1995), pp. 209–64.
- Tyrnauer, Gabrielle, Gypsies and the Holocaust: A Bibliography and Introductory Essay, Montreal, 1989
- Christian Bernadac (ed.), L'Holocauste oublié. Le martyre des Tsiganes, éd. France-Empire, 1979
- Heuss, H., Sparing, F., Fings, K. & Asséo, H. (Translated by Donald Kenrick). 1997. From "Race Science" to the Camps. Volume 1 of The Gypsies during the Second World War Hatfield: University of Hertfordshire Press
- Kenrick, Donald and Grattan Puxon Gypsies Under the Swastika Univ of Hertfordshire Press, 2009 ISBN 978-1-902806-80-8
- Kenrick, D. (ed. and translator). 1999. In the Shadow of the Swastika. Volume 2 of The Gypsies during the Second World War Hatfield: University of Hertfordshire Press
- Kenrick, D. (ed.). 2006 The Final Chapter. Volume 3 of The Gypsies during the Second World War Hatfield: University of Hertfordshire Press
- Sonneman, T. 2002. Shared Sorrows. A Gypsy family remembers the Holocaust Hatfield: University of Hertfordshire Press
- Winter, W. (Translated and annotated by Struan Robertson) Winter Time. Memoirs of a German Sinto who survived Auschwitz Hatfield: University of Hertfordshire Press See Map 182 p 141 (with deaths by country) & Map 301 p 232. Note: formerly The Dent Atlas of the Holocaust; 1982, 1993.
External links
- Historical Amnesia: The Romani Holocaust - DesicriticsDesicriticsDesicritics is an online magazine that explores the world from the perspective of Desis, that is, people from South Asia. It provides news and opinion with a global South Asian perspective...
- Extensive online resource on the Holocaust of the Romanies from Holocaust Survivors and Remembrance Project: "Forget You Not"
- Non-Jewish Victims of Persecution in Germany - About the Holocaust - Yad Vashem
- Histories, Narratives and Documents of the Roma and Sinti (Gypsies), Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, University of Minnesota
- sintiundroma.de (German) (English)
- A Brief Romani Holocaust Chronology
- Roma-Sinti Genocide (Parajmos) Resources, Prevent Genocide International
- Memorial of Poraimos (Romani)
- Roma and Sinti Under-Studied Victims of Nazism (Symposium Proceedings), PDF, 98 р.
- Persecution and resistance of Gypsies under Nationalsocialism (in German)
- Gypsies: A Persecuted Race
- A People Uncounted. The Untold Story of the Roma. Dir. Aaron Yeger. 2011. Film.