What preceded World War II

Daniel is a sociologist from Nis, who is also a student of the Baravlipa Academy, who has previously written on the topic of the suffering of Roma in the Second World War.

From January 1934, the Roma were sent to the Dachau, Dieselstrasse, Sachsenhausen, Marzahn and Vennhausen camps, where they were sterilized by injection or castration. In September 1935, two laws were passed in Nuremberg on "the protection of German blood and the German part," which forbade Germans from marrying Jews, blacks, and Gypsies.

By order of the SS Reichsführer and the head of the German police, Heinrich Himmler, a central office for the management and coordination of the registration and persecution of Roma was established in the Reich Criminal Police Office in Berlin in 1938. In December, Himmler issued a basic decree "resolving the gypsy issue on the basis of race" with the aim of finding a "final solution to the gypsy issue." By the end of World War II, the Office for the Study of Racial Hygiene, which was tasked with registering Roma, had prepared about 24,000 “racial expert opinions”. They provide an essential basis for deportation to killing centers.

Tasks for Solving the "Gypsy Question", Munich 1840.

In 1940, on Himmler's orders, the deportation of entire families from Germany to occupied Poland began: "The first transport of Gypsies, with 2,500 people ... will move out in mid-May." In labor camps, as well as in ghettos, Roma are forced to work under impossible conditions. They had to carry special identification documents or a tape marked Z (as Zigeuner).

The systematic mass shooting of Roma began in 1941 in the occupied Soviet Union and other occupied territories of Southeast Europe. A mobile killing unit, the so-called Einsatzgruppe reports from Crimea: "The gypsy issue has been resolved." About 5,000 Roma were deported from the Burgenland region of Austria to the ghetto at Litzmannstadt in occupied Poland, where more than 600 died. Survivors were gassed in specially equipped vans at a killing center in Chelmno in January 1942. Near Smolensk, on a farm, about 1,000 Roma were shot dead and buried alive in one day. In Greece, 50 Roma were killed for every German victim. In Croatia, between 80,000 and 100,000 Roma died in the Jasenovac camp. It is estimated that in Jasenovac, Roma mostly suffered from the Ustashas.

According to the "Auschwitz Erlass" order issued by Heinrich Himmler on December 16, 1942, the deportation of about 23,000 Roma from all over Europe began in February. The destination is the Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center, which the SS described as a "gypsy camp." Within a few months, most of them die of hunger, disease or violence by the SS. Numerous children fall victim to Dr. Josef Mengele's experiment.

On the night of August 2, and in the early morning hours of August 3, 1944, 2,897 Roma in Auschwitz were killed and cremated in a mass action called the Zigeunernacht (Gypsy Night). On September 26, another 200 Roma, mostly children, were shipped from Buchenwald to Auschwitz, and suffocated by gas two weeks later.

The Holocaust did not happen all at once. All of the above preceded the Holocaust, which could realistically be expected. In the period from 1500 to 1800, the German authorities passed over 150 laws, orders, publications, decrees… which, together with literary descriptions of Roma as spies, Egyptians, traitors to Christianity, thieves, carriers of the plague, restricted human rights and freedoms. . Somehow it is the end of a long process of propaganda of hatred and terror against Roma and Jews. The Holocaust is a planned attempt to physically kill every single member of a targeted ethnic, national or "racial" group, the deliberate systematic destruction of Jews, Gypsies and "undesirables" by Nazi Germany and its associates between 1933 and 1945.

How could anyone do that? What kind of brutal inhumanity can someone have to bring children into the oven? Are their motives believing in Germany, fighting for Germany and killing for Germany? Believing in the superiority of the Germans and the Führer to kill so many people in order to achieve their national goal? And who are the Nazis in general who are mentioned in all the documents as the only culprits for the Holocaust?

The German people chose the Nazis (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei) as the largest party in the Reichstag. Even twice. In 1933, they received 43.9 percent of the vote, making them the most popular German party. After the death of President Hindenburg, in August 1934, Hitler announced a referendum to the German people approving his takeover of supreme power. More than 88 percent of the population voted for the Führer. In the German elections of 1936, 98.8 percent of the German population supported Hitler. Support that has not been recorded in history. The support received immediately after the adoption of the infamous and discriminatory Nuremberg laws, which deprived Roma and Jews of their human rights. And worst of all, the German people stood by him and his atrocities.

And that is why the Holocaust was not a crime committed only by the Nazis, or a political party, but by the entire nation that chose such an ideology, supported it, carried out the orders of the murderous government, and remained silent on all the brutal crimes committed.

The fact that the Holocaust happened does not mean that was destiny and could not be avoided. It happened because individuals, groups and nations chose and decided to act or not. Many people in Nazi Germany did not support the ideas of the Nazis, but they did nothing but be silent observers.

Bibliography:

“O Porrajmos: The Romani Holocaust,” Ian Hancock;

“The Forgotten Holocaust,” Christian Bernadac;

Holocaust, a publication of the Council of Europe.