Persecutions of Siniti and Roma, Hereditary Ills, Asocials and Homosexuals
Source: M. Burleigh and W. Wippermann, The Racial State, Germany 1933-1945 (Oxford, 1991), pp.113-122, 136-156, 167-176, 182-192.
Chapter Five
The Persecution of Sinti and Roma, and Other Ethnic Minorities
Sinti and Roma were called "Zigeuner" in Germany. The origins of this word, which has analogues in other languages ( zigenare in Swedish, cigan in Spanish), may be a matter of dispute, but the word's pejorative overtones are not. For this reason, those Sinti and Roma still living in Germany do not like being called "Zigeuner" 1 . The same applies to the equivalents in the English-speaking world, who object to the term "gypsy". This is a corruption of "Egyptian", the name by which Sinti and Roma were known in several countries from the medieval period onwards. As far as is known, concerning a history, which has never been written down, "Gypsies" had nothing to do with Egypt 2 .
Sinti and Roma first came to Germany in the late fifteenth century. They were originally from the Punjab region of north India 3 . They became Christians in the course of their migrations through Persia, Asia Minor, and the Balkans, although they were nevertheless frequently accused of leading an "un-Christian" way of life. Their appearance, language, customs, and itinerant way of life ΓÇô determined by a mystical aversion to the uncleanliness of the soil ΓÇô further distinguished them from the settled population. Soon they were accused of being beggars, thieves, spies, and practitioners of harmful magic. 4 These manifold prejudices were both the cause and the justification for the terrible persecution which Sinti and Roma experienced in Germany and elsewhere throughout the entire early modern period. 5 In the nineteenth century, there was a temporary lull in indiscriminate persecution, connected in part with a Romantic interest in this European example of the "noble savage". 6 But Verdi apart, nowhere could "Gypsies" be described as equal citizens.
When the Nazis came to power, they inherited State legislation, which in this area stood in obvious contradiction to Article 104 of the Weimar constitution, guaranteeing all Germans equality before the law . 7 The object of the resulting police harassment was to keep Sinti and Roma permanently on the move, paradoxically, as a means of forcing them to settle. The pace was set by Bavaria, where from 1899 the security police kept a central register on "Gypsies", which from 1911 contained copies of their fingerprints, and material culled from public registry offices. In 1926 the Bavarian police were further empowered by a Law for the Combating of Gypsies, Travellers, and the Workshy to send Sinti and Roma to workhouses for up to two years, if they could not prove regular paid employment. Sinti and Roma were therefore discriminated against solely and simply because they were "Gypsies". 8
FROM THE BAVARIAN LAW FOR THE COMBATING OF GYPSIES, TRAVELLERS, AND THE WORKSHY OF 16 JULY 1926
Article 1
Gypsies and persons who roam about in the manner of Gypsies ΓÇô "travellers" ΓÇô may only itinerant with wagons and caravans if they have permission from the police authorities responsible.
This permission may only be granted for a maximum of one calendar year and is revocable at all times.
The license permitting them to do so is to be presented on demand to the (police) officers responsible.
Article 2
Gypsies and travellers may not itinerant with school-age children. Exceptions may be granted by the responsible police authorities, if adequate provision has been made for the education of the children.
Article 3
Gypsies and travellers can only itinerant with horses, dogs, and animals, which serve commercial functions if they possess a license to do so from the responsible police authorities...
Article 4
Gypsies and travellers may not possess firearms or ammunition unless they have been expressly permitted to do so by the responsible police authorities.
Article 5
Gypsies and travellers may not roam about or camp in bands. The association of several single persons or several families, and the association of single persons with a family to which they do not belong, is to be regarded as constituting a band. A group of persons living together like a family is also to be regarded as a band.
Article 6
Gypsies and travellers may only encamp or park their wagons and caravans on open-air sites designated by the local police authorities, and only for a period of time specified by the local police authorities.
Article 9
Gypsies and travellers over sixteen years of age who are unable to prove regular employment may be sent to workhouses for up to two years by the responsible police authorities on the grounds of public security.
The instructions to the police on how to implement the law laid bare the racial approach towards the "Gypsy question" which was beginning to be pursued: 9 The term Gypsy is generally understood, and requires no further elucidation. Racial science provides information on who is to be regarded as a Gypsy'. It should be noted that the Law simply overlooked the fact that the Sinti and Roma were originally from North India and belonged to the Indo-Germanic-speaking, or as Nazi racial anthropologist would have it, "Aryan" people. Naturally, the racial discrimination, which the law licensed was totally unconstitutional. It was finally abrogated by the US military government on 28 July 1947. 10
After 1933, the apparatus of police harassment and persecution was centralised (along with the police itself); policy was progressively radicalised; and any (limited) possibilities of legal redress were destroyed, along with the autonomy of the courts. In 1936 a Reich Central Office for the Fight against the Gypsy Nuisance was established, within the headquarters of the Reich Criminal Police in Berlin. 11 This agency took over and developed the harmful bureaucratic detritus already collected by their colleagues in the Bavarian security police, including 19,000 files on Sinti and Roma. The latter were immediately subjected to the regime's racial legislation, although they were never specified as objects of it. This was apparent in the application of the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Progeny of 14 July 1933 and Law against Dangerous Habitual Criminals promulgated on 24 November 1933. Sinti and Roma were sterilised without any legal basis whatsoever. 12
They were first mentioned expressly in a circular issued by the Reich and Prussian Ministry of the Interior on 26 November 1935. 13 It concerned "racially mixed marriages". Registry offices were instructed to request "testimonials of fitness to marry" only if as a consequence of the betrothed belonging to different races, progeny deleterious to German blood' were to be anticipated. This would be so in the cases of marriages between those of German blood and "Gypsies, Negroes, and their bastards". Although Sinti and Roma were not mentioned specifically in any of the regime's major racial legislative enactments, Globke and Stuckart's semi-official commentary on the Nuremberg Laws was of the opinion that the laws applied to "Gypsies" as well as Jews. 14 Like Jews, they were "carriers of alien blood", and therefore could not be permitted either to marry, or to have sexual relations, with those of "German blood".
However, it would be incorrect to attribute the drive to persecute Sinti and Roma solely to a malevolently intolerant regime. Long before the Nazis came to power, there was much evidence of what might be called citizens' initiatives. The following is a letter from the residents of Seckbacherlandstrasse in Frankfurt to the Citizens' Committee (August 1930) 15 :
The undersigned residents of Seckbacherlandstrasse Roetheneck, and the eastern part of Vereinstrasse, both owners and tenants, request most urgently that the citizens' committee raise objections with the municipal administration about the Gypsy nuisance in their immediate neighbourhood.
Right opposite properties number 16 to 30, Gypsies have settled themselves for some time, who represa heavy burden the neighbourhood. The hygienic conditions in this area defy description. The settlement has neither a well nor a latrine and therefore every possible space is used as a latrine. On account of this, and through the depositing of bath- and washing-water on the open field, there are smells, which pollute the entire neighbourhood. The conditions have come to such a point that we are worried about the spread of contagious diseases. Also, with regard to sexual conduct, these people ΓÇô and even the children ΓÇô have no sense of decency; our children have to watch the Gypsy children playing with certain parts of their anatomy. What will this lead to? Almost daily there are fights and the neighbourhood has become so insecure that one has to worry about walking the streets alone after darkness. Because of the Gypsies our properties have greatly depreciated, and already in tenants have asked the house-owners for a rent rebate and surely court cases will soon follow concerning this question. From the points outlined above, you can see the miserable situation which landlords as well as tenants have to through the toleration of the Gypsy camp by the city of Frankfurt. Therefore we request you to cause the administration to alleviate the problem as quickly as possible, to prevent greater damage, particularly of a hygienic and health nature.
Gypsies who refused to stay on designated sites were denied welfare payments, as this draft letter of the Mayor of Frankfurt am Main to the welfare authorities on 27 September 1930 concerning the Gypsy camp at Friedbergerlandstrasse makes plain 16 :
Concerning this matter we would like to comment that the Gypsies have already completely left the site they were allocated on the Russengelaende, Friedbergerlandstrasse, corner of Berkersheimer Weg. The so-called Gypsy camp is at present completely empty. As we have already previously reported, we have no legal grounds to force the Gypsies into the designated camp. As the Gypsies have left the camp, they are not eligible for social security.'
Throughout Germany in the Nazi period, both the citizenry and local authorities took it upon themselves to remove Sinti and Roma from private land, depositing them in ad hoc camps which gradually assumed coercive characteristics. For example, in Berlin prior to the 1936 Olympic Games, the authorities quite illegally rounded up about 600 Sinti and Roma, corralling them on an insalubrious wasteland near a sewage dump and a cemetery at Marzahn, a site which was particularly offensive to a people hypersensitive-sensitive about cleanliness. 17 The justification for this measure was that the Sinti and Roma might sully the clean image of the Olympic host city. Many of them succumbed to diseases. Thereafter, the Berlin welfare authorities unsuccessfully tried to regularise this anomaly of their own making (while offloading the attendant costs of medical care) by pressing for the site's reclassification as a concentration camp. This practice would be emulated in several other German towns.
As yet the regime had still to determine who was a "Gypsy". Registering and classifying a group of victims was always necessary precondition for their systematic persecution. Since the Sinti and Roma had been Christian for centuries, the ecclesiastical records, which were used to discover converted Jews would shed little upon racial provenance. However, academic "science" came to the rescue in the form of Dr Robert Ritter, a juvenile psychologist working at the university of Tuebingen. 18 His specialism "criminal biology" was destined to become an academic growth area in Nazi Germany. In 1935 Ritter reorientated his research interests from proving that delinquency was the result of hereditary "feeble-mindedness" to research on Sinti and Roma. In a grant application that year, he stressed that his research would be of decisive importance for the racial-hygienic measures of the State concerning Gypsies'. 19 For once this was not a matter of calculated exaggeration. In 1936 Ritter became director of a research unit within the Ministry of Health, whose costs were partly defrayed by the Criminal Police and the Reich Main Security Office of the SS. The unit had one task: to locate and classify Germany's 30,000 Sinti and Roma to facilitate police measures against them.
Ritter's working hypothesis was that the Sinti and Roma had certainly come from India and hence had once been "Aryans". However, in the course of their migrations westwards, they had interbred with "lesser races". 20 This applied to the majority of those Sinti and Roma living in Germany, 90 per cent of whom, he claimed, were part and not pure "Gypsies". Their racial characteristics inclined them towards an "asocial" and criminal way of life. Thus while he was prepared to permit the pure "Gypsies" further pursuance of their lifestyle under carefully controlled conditions, he advocated the resettlement in closed colonies and sterilisation of the more dangerous "part-Gypsies". Only these measures would stem the transmission of their criminal characteristics. Only following such a categorisation would the "pre-conditions" exist for a solution of the "Gypsy Question" on a Reich-wide basis. To support these contentions, Ritter and his assistants scoured the archives and police files in order to reconstruct each Sinti and Roma's genealogy. They also conducted interviews with the Sinti and Roma, threatening women with having their heads shaved, or men with the concentration camps, if they could not recall the names of their great-grandparents. This, incidentally, explains why Sinti and Roma detest being interviewed ΓÇô particularly by anthropologists, well-intentioned or otherwise ΓÇô and insist that it is for them alone to record their own history.
Ritter's research unit was soon relocated to the Central Police Headquarters, and his findings began to percolate into government policy. This was no longer the concern of the individual Laender, but now came under the aegis of the Reich Criminal Police, with its subordinate Reich Central Office for the Fight against the Gypsy Nuisance. Both were part of the burgeoning Security Empire of Heinrich Himmler. Centralisation meant an end to the previous police practice of trying to shove Sinti and Roma out of their area. It became systematic. Already on 16 July 1937 Himmler instructed the Central Office to evaluate the findings of racial-biological research' on Sinti and Roma. 21 Doubtless he had the work of Ritter and his team in mind. The same point was made more explicitly in a circular on the Fight against the Gypsy Nuisance issued by Himmler on 8 December 1938. 22
Experience gained in the fight against the Gypsy nuisance, and knowledge derived from race-biological research, have shown that the proper method of attacking the Gypsy problem seems to be to treat it as a matter of race. Experience shows that part-Gypsies play the greatest role in Gypsy criminality. On the other hand, it has been shown that efforts to make the Gypsies settle have been unsuccessful, especially in the case of pure Gypsies, on account of their strong compulsion to wander. It has therefore become necessary to distinguish between pure and part-Gypsies in the final solution of the Gypsy question.
To this end, it is necessary to establish the racial affinity of every Gypsy living in Germany and of every vagrant living a Gypsy-like existence.
I therefore decree that all settled and non-settled Gypsies, and also all vagrants living a Gyspy-like existence, are to be registered with the Reich Criminal Police Office-Reich Central Office for the Fight against the Gypsy Nuisance.
The police authorities will report (via the responsible Criminal Police offices and local offices) to the Reich Criminal Police Office-Reich Central Office for the Fight against the Gypys Nuisance all persons who by virtue of their looks and appearance, customs or habits, are to be regarded as Gypsies or part-Gypsies.
Because a person considered to be a Gypsy or part-Gypsy, or a person living like a Gypsy, as a rule confirms the suspicion that marriage (in accordance with clause 6 of the first decron the implementation of the Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honour... or on the basis of stipulations in the law on Fitness to Marry) must not be contracted, in all cases the public registry officials must demand a testimony of fitness to marry from those who make such an application [to be married].
Instructions on how to execute this decree, issued by the Criminal Police on 1 March 1939, 23 said that the "requisite legal basis" for the prevention of "racial miscegenation" and for the general regulation of the Gypsies' way of life could only be established through a comprehensive "Gypsy Law". The imminence of such a law was announced on several occasions, but none was ever promulgated.
Treatment of the Gypsy question is part of the National Socialist task of national regeneration. A solution can only be achieved if the philosophical perspectives of National Socialism are observed. Although the principle that the German nation respects the national identity of alien peoples is also assumed in the fight against the Gypsy Nuisance, nonetheless 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 miscegenation, and finally the regulation of the way of life of pure and part-Gypsies. The necessary legal foundation can only be created through a Gypsy Law, which prevents further intermingling of blood, and which regulates all the most pressing questions, which go together with the existence of Gypsies in the living space of the German nation.
A conference on racial policy organised by Heydrich took place in Berlin on 21 September 1939, which may have decided upon a "Final Solution" of the "Gypsy Question". 24 According to the scant minutes which have survived, four issues were decided: the concentration of Jews in towns; their relocation in Poland; the removal of 30,000 "Gypsies" to Poland; and the systematic deportation of Jews from German incorporated territories using good trains. An express letter sent by the Reich Main Security Office on 17 October 1939 to its local agents mentioned that the Gypsy Question will shortly be regulated throughout the territory of the Reich'. 25 Thenceforth, Sinti and Roma were confined to designated sites and encampments. Those who attempted to leave were sent to concentration camps. Many Sinti and Roma were actually in camps already, on account of activities deemed to be "criminal" or "asocial"
References:
1 See Romani Rose, Buergerrechte fuer Sinti und Roma. Das Buch aum Rassismus in Deutschland (Heidelberg, 1987), pp.9ff. For a description of the present situation of Sinti and Roma in West Geramny see the article by Annelie Stankau in the Koelner Stadt-Anzeiger , 18 February 1989, reprinted and translated as 'Living at the Edges of Society: Life Remains Tough for the Modern Gypsy', in The German Tribune (1989), No. 1362, p.15.
2 According to another version, the term "Egyptian" refers to the Peloponnese, which in the later Middle Ages was known as "Little Egypt". There was apparently a Sinti and Roma settlement near the town of "Gyppe", or Methone as it is called today.
3 Ruediger Vossen, Zigeuner, Roma, Sinti, Gitanos, Gypsies zwischen Verfolgung und Romantisierung (Frankfurt am Main, 1983).
4 For collected contemporary chronicles see Reimer Gronemeyer, Zigeuner im Spiegel frueherer Chroniken ubd Abhandlungen. Quellen vom 15. Bis 18. Jahrhundert (Giessen, 1987).
5 See Joachim S. Hohmann, Geschichte der Zigeunerverfolgung in Deutschland (Frankfurt am Main, 1981), pp. 13ff.
6 See Hohmann, Geschichte der Zigeuneverfolgung , pp. 48ff.; on the persecution of Sinti and Roma in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, see Wolfgang Guenther, Zur preussichen Zigeunerpolitik seit 1871. Eine Untersuchung am Beispeil des Landkreises Neustadt am Ruebenberge und der Haupstadt Hannover (Hanover, 1895); Rainer Hehemann, Die 'Bekaempfung des Zigeunerunwesens' im Wilhelminischen Deutschland und in der Weimarer Republik 1871-1933 (Frankfurt am Main, 1987).
7 See the contemporary dissertation by Werner-Kurt Hoehne, 'Die Vereinbarkeit der deutschen Zigeunergesetze und Verordnungen mit dem Reichsrecht, insbesondere der Reichsverfassung' (University of Heidelberg, 1929). Hoehne came to the conclusion that the "Gypsy" legislation of the various Laender was not compatible with the constitution of the Weimar Republic. See also Hehemann, Die 'Bekaempfung des Zigeunerunwesens', and Bernhard Streck , ' Die "Bekaempfung des Zigeunerunwesens". Ein Strueck moderner Rechtsgeschichte', in Tilman Zuelch (ed.), In Auschwitz vergast, bis heute verfolgt. Zur Situation der Roma (Zigeuner) in Deutschland (Reinbeck, 1979), pp. 64-88.
8 Bavarian 'Gesetz zur Bekaempfung von Zigeunern, Landfahrern und Arbeitsscheuen vom 16 Juli 1926', Gesetz- und Verordnungsblatt fuer den Freistaat Bayern 1926, pp. 359ff.
9 'Ausfuehrungsbestimmungen zum (bayerischen) Zigeuner- und Arbeitsscheuen-Gesetz vom 16 Juli 1926', reprinted in Hoehne, 'Die Vereinbarkeit der deutschen Zigeunergesetze', pp. 146-53. See also the contemporary legal commentary by Hermann Reich, 'Das bayerische Zigeuner- und Arbeitsscheuengesetz', Juristische Rundschau, 2 (1926), pp. 834-7.
10 Streck, 'Die "Bekaempfung des Ziegeunerunwesens"', p.85.
11 The first moves towards this were made in 1936. See 'Runderlass des Reichsund Preussischen Ministers des Innern vom 5 Juni 1936, betr. "Bekaempfung der Zigeunerplage"', Ministerialblatt fuer die Preussisce Innere Verwaltung, 1, no. 17 (1936) p. 783. See also Michael Zimmermann, Verfolgt, vertrieben, vernichtet. Die nationalsozialistische Vernichtungspolitik gegen Sinti ubd Roma (Essen, 1989), pp. 23f.
12 For examples see Wolfgang Wippermann, Das Leben in Frankfurt zur NS-Zeit, vol. 2: Die nationalsozialistische Zigeunerverfolgung (Frankfurt am Main, 1986), pp. 66f.; Zimmermann, Verfolgt, vertrieben, vernichtet, pp. 19f.
13 'Runderlass des Reichs- und Preussichen Ministers des Innern vom 26 November 1935 ueber das "Verbot von Rassenmischehen"', Ministerialblatt fuer die innere Verwaltung, 49 (1935), pp. 1429-34.
14 Wilhelm Stuckart, Hans Globke, Kommentar zur deutschen Rassengesetzgebung (Munich, 1936), vol. 1, pp. 55f.
15 Reprinted in Wippermann, Das Leben in Franfurt, vol. 2, pp. 55f
16 Oberbuergermeister of Frankfurt am Main, draft letter dated 27 September 1930, reprinted in Wippermann, Das Leben in Frankfurt, vol. 2, pp. 55f.
17 For a detailed account see Ute Brucker-Boroujerdi, Wolfgang Wippermann, 'Gutachen ueber den Zwangscharakter des "Zigeunerlagers" Berlin-Marzahn in der NS-Zeit' (MS, Freie Universitaet, Berlin, 1988), and their 'Nationalsozialistische Zwangslager in Berlin III. Das "Zigeunerlager" Marzahn', in Wolfgang Ribbe (ed.), Berlin-Forschungen II (Berlin, 1987), pp. 189-201; Wippermann, 'Das "Zigeunerlager" Berlin-Marzahn 1936-1945', Pogrom. Zeitschrift fuer bedrohte Voelker, 18 (1987), pp. 77-80.
18 On Ritter see Benno Mueller-Hill, Murderous Science: Elimination by Scientific Selection of Jews, Gypsies, and Others, Germany 1933-1945 (Oxford, 1988); Ute Brucker-Boroujerdi, Wolfgang Wippermann, Die ΓÇ£Rassenhygienische und Erbbiologische ForschungsstelleΓÇ¥ im Reichsgesundheitsamt', Bundesgesundheitsblatt, 32 (1989), pp. 13-19. This essay is largely based upon publications by Ritter, his personal file in the Berlin Document Centre and the so-called Forschungsakte Ritter' in the Bundesarchiv Koblenz, R 73/ 14.005. See also Zimmermann, Verfolgt vertrieben, vernichtet, and Reimar Gilsenbach, Die Verfolgung der Sinti ΓÇô ein Weg, der nach Auschwitz Fuehrte' and Wie Lolitschai zur Doktorwuerde kam', Beitraege zur nationalsozialistischen Gesundheits- und Sozialpolitik, vol. 6: Feinderklaerung und Praevention. Kriminalbiologie, Zigeunerforschung und Asozialenpolitik (Berlin, 1988), pp. 11- 41 and 101-34.
19 Bundesarchiv Koblenz R 73/ 14.005
20 For Ritter's working hypotheses see Robert Ritter, Ein Menschenschlag. Erbaertzliche und erbgeschichtliche Untersuchungen ueber die ΓÇô durch 10 Geschlechterfolgen erforschten ΓÇô Nachkommen von Vagabunden, Jauern und Raeubern' (Leipsig, 1937), Zigeuner und La', Der nichtsesschafte Mensch. Ein Beitrag zur Neugestaltung der Raum- und Menschenordnung im Grossdeutschen Reich (Munich, 1939), pp. 71-88, Zur Frage der Rassanbiologie und Rassenpyschologie der Zigeuner in Deutschland', Reichsgesundheitsblatt, 12 (1938), pp. 425ff., Die Zigeunerfrage und das Zigeunerbastardproblem', Fortschritte der Erbpathologie, 3 (Leipzig, 1939), pp. 1-10, Die Bestandsaufnahme der Zigeuner und Zigeunermischlinge in Deutschland', Der Oeffentliche Gesundheitsdienst (5 February 1941), 6, pp. 477-489, Arbeitsbericht' (MS), BDC, Ritter file, and in Bundesarchiv Koblenz BA ZSg 142/ 2.923.
21Letter from Himmler dated 16 July 1937 cited by Hans-Joachim Doering, Die Zigeuner im nationalsozialistischen Staat (Hamburg, 1964), p. 33.
22 Runderlass des Reichsfuehrers-SS und Chefs der Deutschen Polizei im Reichsministerium des Inneren vom 8 Dezember 1938, betr. ΓÇ£Bekaempfung der ZigeunerplageΓÇ¥', Ministerialblatt des Reichs- und Preussichen Ministers des Innern, 99, no. 51 (1938), 14 December 1938, p. 2105, partially reprinted in Wippermann, Das Leben in Frankfurt, vol. 2, pp. 70f.
23 Ausfuehrungsanweisungen des Reichskriminalpolizeiamt vom 1.3.1939 zum Runderlass des Reichsfuehrers-SS und Chefs der Deutschen Polizei im Reichsministerium des Innern vom 8 Dezember 1938', Deutsches Kriminalpolizeiblatt, 12 (1939), reprinted in Wippermann, Das Leben in Frankfurt, vol. 2, pp. 72-5.
24 Unfortunately the detailed minutes of this meeting have not been found. For what was discussed see Ritter's letter to the DFB dated 15 June1940, BA R 73/ 14.005, and the testimony of Adolf Wuerth in Mueller-Hill, Murderous Science , p. 145.
25 Schnellbrief des Reichssicherheitshauptamtes vom 17. Oktober 1939 an die Staatlichen Kriminalpolizei leit stellen, bez. ΓÇ£ZigeunererfassungΓÇ¥', Erlassammlung des Reichskriminalpolizeiamtes ΓÇô Vorbeugende Verbrechensbekaempfung, Institut fuer Zeitgeschichte, Munich, Dc 17.02, reprinted in Wippermann, Das Leben in Frankfurt, vol. 1 pp. 80f.
