Introduction
The guide Studying Genocides presents nine genocides recognized by the UN, Canada, or Quebec. Here, discover the case of the genocide of the Roma and Sinti under the German Third Reich, presented through four sections: the first section provides context for the study with a map, highlights, and a timeline; the second offers a problematization of the case under study; the third examines essential elements of the historical context; and the fourth section describes the genocide according to the six stages of the genocidal process.
EXCERPT FROM AN ACCOUNT
“I can’t believe I’m still alive. My survival was a punishment. I asked God over and over: ‘Why am I the only one to have survived?’ They destroyed our lives: our love, our families, our cohesion. We no longer have families. Everything is in tatters. They took everything. People trusted each other, they were open, friendly. . . . That is all gone. I don’t even believe in myself anymore. They destroyed our faith in each other, and all the feelings that inspired it.”
Timeline
Highlights
- Hundreds of thousands of Roma and Sinti (some estimate as many as 1 million) out of a population of 1.5 to 2 million in Europe were murdered.
- In racist Nazi ideology, the Roma were unjustly seen as criminals, asocial and a danger to the Aryan race.
- The Roma were subjected to arbitrary arrests, dispossession, internment, forced sterilizations and “scientific experiments.”
- Tens of thousands of Roma and Sinti were shot and others were murdered or died of starvation in the death camps.
- In the Third Reich and annexed territories
- 1933-1945, before and during World War II
- Nazi Germany and its allies were the perpetrators.
- The Roma and Sinti were the victims.
The full Story
We have developed a comprehensive document that outlines and summarizes the entire narrative. Please download, print, and utilize it for your teaching and study purposes.
Pictures
Testimonials
“I’m in Birkenau, the Vernichtungslager, an elimination camp, and I see these Gypsies: women, wives, husbands, families together, kids, filth, everything you can imagine. They’re there, families together. So, some of the old-timers, we asked them: ‘Oh, this is the Gypsies’ camp, there are Gypsies here. They suffer the same fate as we are, but they’re together with their families. . . . One night, they tell us, everybody in the barracks, late, nine o’clock: ‘Lock the doors, nobody can get out even to go to the bathroom!’ Locked. We were able to look out through the cracks of the wood of the barracks. All the Gypsies were taken out that day. All we heard was several trucks all the way through to the boulevard, the central boulevard where the roll calls take place. The motors are going loud, hollering, crying, dadadada. They took the last of the Gypsies. And that night, they gassed them and burned them, families together.”
“1940–44: Gypsies were forced to register as members of another ‘race.’ Our campground was fenced off and placed under police guard. A year later, the Germans took my husband away; they returned his ashes a few months later. Grieving, I cut my long hair, and with the help of a priest, secretly buried his remains in consecrated ground. Finally, the Germans deported the rest of us to a Nazi camp in Birkenau for Gypsies. I watched over my children as best I could in that terrible place, but my youngest son died of typhus.”