Roma were among the groups that the Nazi regime (1933–1945) and its partner regimes singled out for persecution and murder before and during World War II. Roma are pejoratively referred to as Zigeuner in German and as “Gypsies” in English.
Drawing support from many non-Nazi Germans who harbored social prejudice towards Roma, the Nazis judged Roma to be "racially inferior." Under the Nazi regime, German authorities subjected Roma to arbitrary internment, sterilization, forced labor in concentration camps, deportation, and mass murder. German authorities murdered tens of thousands of Roma in the German-occupied territories of the Soviet Union and Serbia and thousands more in the killing centers at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka. In Germany and German-occupied territories, the SS and police incarcerated Roma in the Bergen-Belsen, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, Dachau, Mauthausen, Mittelbau-Dora, Natzweiler-Struthof, Gross-Rosen, and Ravensbrück concentration camps. Both in the so-called Greater German Reich and in the so-called General Government (Generalgouvernement), German civilian authorities managed several forced-labor camps in which they incarcerated Roma. The crimes committed against Roma remained unacknowledged all over Europe in the first decades after World War II.
On September 21, 1939, Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reich Security Main Office, met with Security Police (Sipo) and Security Service (SD) officials in Berlin. With German victory in the invasion of Poland assured, he intended to deport 30,000 German and Austrian Roma from the Greater German Reich to the General Government, the part of German-occupied Poland not annexed directly to Germany. Governor General Hans Frank, the top civilian occupation official in the General Government, foiled this plan when he refused to accept large numbers of Roma and Jews into the General Government in the spring of 1940.
German authorities did deport some Roma from the Greater German Reich to occupied Poland in 1940 and 1941. In May 1940, the SS and police deported approximately 2,500 Roma from the Rhineland and Württemberg in western Germany, as well as from Hamburg, Bremen, and the surrounding northwestern regions, to the Lublin District in the General Government. SS and police authorities incarcerated them in forced-labor camps. The conditions under which they had to live and work proved to be lethal to many of them. The fate of the survivors is unknown. It is likely that the SS murdered those who were still alive in the gas chamber of Belzec, Sobibor, or Treblinka. Continue reading from US Holocaust Memorial Museum
On 2 August, we commemorate the last 4,300 Sinti and Roma in the German Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, who were murdered by the SS on that night in 1944 despite their fierce resistance. In memory of all 500,000 Sinti and Roma murdered in Nazi-occupied Europe, the European Parliament declared this date the European Holocaust Memorial Day for Sinti and Roma in 2015. Continue reading from The Central Council of German Sinti and Roma
Forgotten Victims: The Nazi Genocide of the Roma and the Sinti (United Nations)
The Roma Genocide (Holocaust Memorial Day Trust)
Families of Roma Holocaust Victims Fight for Recognition (Time)
The Roma Holocaust (History Today)
Roma Memory: Porajmos (Holocaust Remembrance)
Targeting the Sinti and Roma (Facing History)
Porajmos: The Forgotten Gypsy Holocaust The World Ignored (All That's Interesting)
Genocide, Holocaust, Porajmos, Samudaripen: Voices of the Victims (RomArchive)
