Romani arrivals in the Bełżec extermination camp await instructions

The Porajmos (Romani: [ˈpɔʁmɔs]^{[citation needed]}) (also Porrajmos or Pharrajimos, literally, devouring or destruction in some dialects of the Romani language) was the attempt made by Nazi Germany, 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.^[1]

Because Eastern European 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.^[2] 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.^[3] 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,^[4] 36,000 in Romania under Ion Antonescu^[5] and 27,000 in Ustashe Croatia.^[6]

West Germany formally recognised the genocide of the Roma in 1982.

Using the term[link]

The term porajmos was introduced into the literature by Ian Hancock, in the early 1990s.^[7] 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.^[8]

The term is used mostly by activists and is unknown to most Roma, including relatives of the victims and survivors.^[7] Some Russian and Balkan Romani activists protest against using the word porajmos.^[9] In various dialects, "porajmos" is synonymous with poravipe which means "violation" and "rape", a term which some Roma consider to be offensive. Balkan Romani activists prefer the term Samudaripen ("mass killing"),^[10] first introduced by linguist Marcel Courthiade. Hancock dismisses this word, arguing that it does not conform to Romani language morphology.^[8] Some Ruska Roma activists offer the emotive term Kali Traš ("Black Fear").^[11] Another alternative that has been used is Berša Bibahtale ("The Unhappy Years").^[8] 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).^[12] 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.^[13]

Recognition and remembrance[link]

Sinti and Roma about to be deported from the German town of Asperg - 22 May 1940

The German government paid war reparations 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.”^[14] 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."^[15] 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.^[16]

West Germany recognised the genocide of the Roma in 1982,^[17] and since then the Porajmos has been increasingly recognized as a genocide committed simultaneously with the Shoah.^[18] The American historian Sybil Milton wrote several articles arguing that the Porajmos deserved recognition as part of the Holocaust.^[19] In Switzerland, a committee of experts investigated the policy of the Swiss government during the Porajmos.^[20]

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.^[21]

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."^[22] 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."^[21]

Acts of commemoration[link]

Plaque in Rome (Italy) in memory of Romani people who died in extermination camps.

The first memorial commemorating victims of the Romani Holocaust was erected on May 8, 1956, in the Polish village of Szczurowa commemorating 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.^[23] 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.^[24] 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.^[25]

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.^[26][27]

Depiction in films[link]

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 Romani, 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.^[28] The film's other main character, Mademoiselle Lise Lundi, is inspired by the schoolteacher Yvette Lundy, who used to work in Gionges, La Marne.^[29] The film was shot in Loire, Monts du Forez, Rozier-Côtes-d'Aurec and Saint-Bonnet-le-Château.^[30] 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.^[31]

History[link]

Romani discrimination prior to 1933[link]

The emergence of race pseudo-science and industrialization[link]

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.”^[32] Scientific racial analysis and Social Darwinism linked 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.^[32] 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.”^[33]

Persecution under the German Empire and Weimar Republic[link]

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.^[22] 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.”^[34] Herbet Heuss notes that “[t]his Bavarian law became the model for other German states and even for neighbouring countries.”^[35]

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.^[36] 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.^[37] 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.”^[38]

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.”^[35] Targeted groups were no longer determined by juridical grounds. Instead, they were victims of racialized policy.^[35]

Aryan racial purity[link]

For centuries, Romani tribes were subject to antiziganist persecution and humiliation in Europe.^[39] They were stigmatized as habitual criminals, social misfits, and vagabonds.^[39] 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.^[40] The Department of Racial Hygiene and Population Biology began to experiment on Romanis to reach criteria for their racial classification.^[41]

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.

Romani woman with German police officer and Nazi psychologist Dr. Robert Ritter

To study the problem further, the Nazis established the Racial Hygiene and Demographic Biology Research Unit (Rassenhygienische und Bevölkerungsbiologische Forschungsstelle, Department L3 of the Reich Department of Health) in 1936. Headed by Dr. Robert Ritter 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 miscegenation, 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.^[42]

Loss of citizenship[link]

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^[43] and Romanies, like Jews, lost their right to vote on March 7, 1936.

Extermination[link]

The Brown Triangle. Romani prisoners in German concentration camps such as Auschwitz were forced to wear the inverted triangle on their prison uniforms to distinguish them from other inmates.^[44]‎

The persecution of the Roma by the Third Reich government began as early as 1936 when they began to be transferred to municipal internment camps on the outskirts of cities, a prelude to their deportation to extermination camps. Notable internment and concentration camps include Dachau, Dieselstrasse, Marzahn (which evolved from a municipal internment camp) and Vennhausen. The Society for Threatened Peoples estimates the casualties at 277,100.^[45] 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.^[46] 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.^[47] 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".^[2][48]

They were herded into ghettos, including the Warsaw Ghetto (April–June, 1942), where they formed a distinct subclass.^{[citation needed]} 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.^[49]

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.^[22] 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.^[22] 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.^[50] 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.^[51] 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.'^[52] Roma in Slovakia were killed by the local collaborating auxiliaries.^[22] Notably, Roma in Denmark and Greece were not as intensely hunted as those in the Baltics.^[53][54] 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.”^[55]

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.^[56] 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.^[22]

Persecution in other Axis countries[link]

Romanies were also victims of the puppet regimes that cooperated with the Third Reich during the war, especially the notorious Ustaše regime 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.^[53] The Ustashe government also deported around 26,000;^[57] 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.^[58]

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.^[59]

The Romanian government of Ion Antonescu did not systematically exterminate Roma on its territory. Instead, resident Roma were deported to Romanian-run concentration camps in occupied Transnistria^[60]. Of the estimated 25,000 Romani inmates of these camps,11,000 died.^[61] 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." ^[62]

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.^[53]

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".^[63] 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.^[64]

Estimated losses by country[link]

The following figures are from The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust.^[65]

• In a 2010 publication, Ian Hancock 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".^[66] He notes recent evidence such as the previously obscure Lety concentration camp in the Czech Republic and Ackovic's revised estimates^[67] of Gypsies killed by the Ustashe as high as 80,000-100,000. These numbers suggest that previous estimates have been grossly underrepresented.^[68]

Medical experiments[link]

Another distinctive feature of the Porajmos and the Holocaust was the extensive use of human subjects in medical experiments.^[69] 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.^[69] 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.^[70] Mengele's own journals, consisting of some 3,300 pages, are likely never to be published, and they are suspected to contain denials of the Holocaust.^[71] 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".^[72] Vera Alexander was a Jewish inmate at Auschwitz who looked after 50 sets of Romani twins:

See also[link]

• Antiziganism
• Szczurowa massacre
• And the Violins stopped playing
• Korkoro

References[link]

• Barsony, Janos. “Facts and Debates: The Roma Holocaust.” In Pharrajimos: The Fate of the Roma During the Holocaust, ed. Janos Barsony and Agnes Daroczi, 1-12. New York: International Debate Education Association, 2008.
• Hancock, Ian. “Gypsy History in Germany and Neighboring Lands: A Chronology Leading to the Holocaust and Beyond.” In The Gypsies of Eastern Europe, edited by David Crowe and John Kolsti, 11-30. Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 1991.
• Heuss, Herbert. “German policies of Gypsy persecution (1870-1945).” In From “Race Science” to the Camps: The Gypsies during the Second World War, by Karola Fings, Herbert Heuss and Frank Sparing, 15-37. Hertfordshire: University of Hertfordshire Press, 1997.
• Jessee, Erin. "Nazi Atrocities: The Genocide of the Roma/Sinti." Lecture at Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, February 3, 2010.
• Sparing, Frank. “The Gypsy Camps: The creation, character and meaning of an instrument for the persecution of Sinti and Romanies under National Socialism.” In From “Race Science” to the Camps: The Gypsies during the Second World War, by Karola Fings, Herbert Heuss and Frank Sparing, 40-70. Hertfordshire: University of Hertfordshire Press, 1997.
• Wolfgang Wippermann. “Compensation withheld: The denial of reparations to the Sinti and Roma.” In The Gypsies during the Second World War: The Final Chapter, ed. Donald Kenrick, 171-177. Hertfordshire: University of Hertfordshire Press, 2006.

Further reading[link]

• Bársony, János: Pharrajimos: the fate of the Roma during the Holocaust, IDEA, 2008, ISBN 978-1-932716-30-6.
• Guenter Lewy, The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000 ISBN 0-19-512556-8
• Fonseca, Isabel: Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies And Their Journey, London, 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 Germany, edited by Robert Gellately and Nathan Stoltzfus (2001, hardcover, ISBN 0-691-00748-9; paperback, ISBN 0-691-08684-2).
• Paul Polansky, 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 name 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
• Gilbert, Martin (2002). The Routledge Atlas of the Holocaust. Routledge, London & New York. ISBN 0-415-28145-8. http://books.google.com/books?id=pYs5OSnsrHwC&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+Routledge+Atlas+of+the+Holocaust..  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[link]

• Historical Amnesia: The Romani Holocaust - Desicritics
• 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.

This article may be expanded with text translated from the corresponding article in the German Wikipedia. (January 2011) Don't speak German? Click here to read a machine-translated version of the German article. Click [show] on the right to review important translation instructions before translating. Google's machine translation is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into English Wikipedia. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. After translating, {{Translated|de|Ceija Stojka}} must be added to the talk page to ensure copyright compliance. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Ceija Stojka during a book presentation at the Camineum of the Austrian National Library in Vienna, 2008

Ceija Stojka (born 23 March, 1933, Kraubath^[1], Styria) is an Austrian-Romani writer, painter and musician, survivor of the Holocaust.

She is from the Lovari caste, the fifth of six children, sister of Karl Stojka and Mongo Stojka, also writers and musicians. Together with her mother and four of the five brothers she survived the Holocaust and the internment at Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. Her father was sent to the Dachau concentration camp, then to Schloss Hartheim, where he was killed.

After the end of the World War II their family saw the lack of acknowledgement of the Porajmos in Austria, the population’s ignorance concerning this suffering and the continuation of some anti-Romani policies. The publication of her first autobiographic book in 1988, We Live in Seclusion. The Memories of a Romni made public the issues concerning the Nazi persecution of the Austrian Romani people (later continued in 1992, when Travellers on This World was published).

Works[link]

• Wir leben im Verborgenen. Erinnerungen einer Rom-Zigeunerin "We Live in Seclusion. The Memories of a Romni" (1988)
• Reisende auf dieser Welt "Travellers on This World" (1992)
• Meine Wahl zu schreiben - ich kann es nicht (2003 - Gedichte)
• Me Diklem Suno "I dreamt" (Audio-CD)
• Träume ich, dass ich lebe? Befreit aus Bergen-Belsen (2005)

External links[link]

• The Stojka family
• A Holocaust survivor (article at The Hindu)
• Presentation at Jewish Museum Vienna

References[link]

Heinrich Himmler
Reichsführer-SS
In office 6 January 1929 – 29 April 1945
Leader	Adolf Hitler
Preceded by	Erhard Heiden
Succeeded by	Karl Hanke
Chief of German Police in the Reich Ministry of the Interior
In office 17 June 1936 – 29 April 1945
Leader	Adolf Hitler
Preceded by	Office established
Succeeded by	None
Reich Commissioner for the Strengthening of German Nationhood
In office 7 October 1939 – 29 April 1945
Leader	Adolf Hitler
Preceded by	Office established
Succeeded by	None
Director of the Reich Main Security Office (acting)
In office 4 June 1942 – 30 January 1943
Preceded by	Reinhard Heydrich
Succeeded by	Ernst Kaltenbrunner
Reich Minister of the Interior
In office 24 August 1943 – 29 April 1945
Chancellor	Adolf Hitler
Preceded by	Wilhelm Frick
Succeeded by	Wilhelm Stuckart
Personal details
Born	Heinrich Luitpold Himmler 7 October 1900 Munich, Bavaria, Germany
Died	23 May 1945(1945-05-23) (aged 44) Lüneburg, Lower Saxony, Germany
Political party	National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP)
Spouse(s)	Margarete Bode
Children	Gudrun, Helge, Nanette Dorotha
Alma mater	Technical University Munich
Profession	Agronomist
Cabinet	Cabinet Hitler
Religion	Roman Catholic (early)
Signature
Military service
Allegiance	German Empire
Service/branch	Heer
Years of service	1917–1918
Rank	Fahnenjunker
Unit	11th Bavarian Infantry Regiment
Battles/wars	World War I

Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (pronounced [ˈhaɪnʁɪç ˈluˑɪtˌpɔlt ˈhɪmlɐ] ( listen) 7 October 1900^[1] – 23 May 1945) was Reichsführer of the Schutzstaffel (SS), a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party (NSDAP). As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo (Secret State Police). Serving as Reichsführer and later as Commander of the Replacement (Home) Army and General Plenipotentiary for the entire Reich's administration (Generalbevollmächtigter für die Verwaltung), Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and one of the persons most directly responsible for the Holocaust.^[2][3][4]

As overseer of the concentration camps, extermination camps, and Einsatzgruppen (literally: task forces, often used as death squads operating to the rear of frontline troops to murder Jews, communists and 'untermensch' in occupied territories), Himmler coordinated the killing of some six million Jews, between 200,000 and 500,000 Roma,^[5][6] many prisoners of war,^[7] and possibly another three to four million Poles, as well as other groups whom the Nazis deemed unworthy to live, including people with physical and mental disabilities, Jehovah's Witnesses, members of the Confessing Church, and homosexuals. Shortly before the end of the war, he offered to surrender both Germany and himself to the Western Allies if he were spared prosecution. After being arrested by British forces on 22 May 1945, he committed suicide the following day before he could be questioned.

Early life[link]

Himmler in 1907

Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was born in Munich on 7 October 1900 to a conservative Roman Catholic middle-class family. His father was Gebhard Himmler, a teacher, and his mother was Anna Maria Himmler (née Heyder), a devout Roman Catholic. He had an older brother, Gebhard Ludwig Himmler, who was born in July 1898, and a younger brother, Ernst Himmler, born in 1905.^[8]

Heinrich was named after his godfather, Prince Heinrich of Bavaria of the royal family of Bavaria, who was tutored by Gebhard Himmler.^[1][9] Himmler attended a grammar school in Landshut where his father was deputy principal. It was there that the young Himmler made friends with Karl Gebhardt, a friendship that would last to the end of World War II. While he struggled in athletics, he did well in his schoolwork. Initially at the behest of his father, Himmler kept a diary from age 10, and continued to do so even after his father stopped checking.^[10] His health was poor, with lifelong stomach complaints and other ailments.^[11] He trained daily with weights as a youth and took other exercise in an attempt to grow stronger.^[12]

Himmler's diary entries show that he took a keen interest in the events of World War I.^[13] In 1915 he began training with the Landshut Cadet Corps. His father made attempts to get Heinrich accepted as an officer candidate, using his connections with the royal family, and he was finally accepted with the reserve battalion of the 11th Bavarian Regiment in December 1917.^[14] His brother, Gebhard, served on the western front and saw combat; he received the Iron Cross and was eventually promoted to lieutenant.^[15] In November 1918—while Himmler was still in training—the war ended with Germany's defeat, finishing any chance for Himmler to become an officer or see combat. On 18 December, he was discharged and returned to Landshut.^[16]

After the war, Himmler completed his grammar-school education, and was a member of the Freikorps at the time of the defeat of the Bavarian Soviet Republic. Again he missed out on a military career when his unit was not one of those incorporated into the Reichswehr.^[17] From 1919–1922, Himmler studied agronomy at the Munich Technische Hochschule (now Technical University Munich) following a short-lived apprenticeship on a farm and a subsequent illness.^[18][19] He had still not given up his desire to have a military career, and this field of study enabled Himmler to maintain contacts with former army officers who were attending university as a way to prepare for employment until the next war broke out.^[20]

Himmler was antisemitic by the time he went to university, though not yet radically so.^[21] He remained a devoted Catholic while a student, but enjoyed drinking with members of his fencing fraternity, the "League of Apollo". He joined a Reichswehr reserve unit.^[22] In 1920, when Count Arco—the man who had murdered Bavarian Prime Minister Kurt Eisner—was sentenced to death, Himmler was immediately ready to work with right-wing elements to protest. He was both pleased and disappointed when the sentence was commuted to imprisonment, as a group of students had by then formulated rescue plans and a possible putsch.^[23] After the Reichswehr reserves were disbanded in 1920, he joined the Einwohnerwehr (Residents' Reserve) and a rifle club.^[24] During his second year at university, Himmler redoubled his attempts to pursue a military career. Although he was not successful, he was able to extend his involvement with the paramilitary scene in Munich. It was at this time, via his rifle club, that he first met Ernst Röhm.^[25]

Despite an active social life, Himmler struggled to gain the acceptance he craved. He was unable to fully connect with people, and found his interpersonal relationships unrewarding.^[26] While he was able to form good friendships with women, he had little success in terms of relationships and clung to antediluvian, prudish views regarding men, women, sex, and marriage.^[27][28] He was critical of himself and his perceived social inadequacies, which included a tendency to talk too much,^[25] and made efforts to compensate for them, in part by learning to control his emotions with his strength of will.^[29] Nevertheless, these interpersonal problems, and his attempts to counterbalance them, would plague Himmler his whole life,^[30] and were the key reasons—along with his craving for order—for his enthusiasm for the military.^[29]

Diary entries for 1922 furnish increasing evidence of interest in the 'Jewish question'.^[31] After the murder of Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau on 24 June, Himmler's political views veered towards the radical right, and he took part in demonstrations against the Treaty of Versailles.^[32] Hyperinflation was raging that summer, and his parents could no longer afford to keep all three sons in school.^[33] Disappointed by his failure to make a career in the military and his parents' inability to finance his doctoral studies, he was forced to take a low-paying office job after obtaining his agricultural diploma. He remained in this position until September 1923.^[34]

Nazi activist[link]

Himmler joined the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in August 1923.^[35] He also joined Röhm's Reichskriegsflagge, a paramilitary unit involved in the event that would set Himmler on a life of politics: the Beer Hall Putsch—an unsuccessful attempt by Hitler and the NSDAP to sieze power in Munich.^[36] Himmler was questioned about his role in the putsch, but he was not charged, as there was insufficient evidence.^[37] But he lost his job, and had to move in with his parents, then living in Munich; he was unable to find employment as an agronomist.^[35][38] Frustrated by these failures in his personal, professional, and political life, he became ever more irritable, aggressive, and opinionated, alienating both friends and family members.^[39]

In 1923–24, Himmler began searching for a world view, moving away from Catholicism^[40] and furthered his interest in the occult and antisemitism.^[41] Germanic mythology, reinforced by occult ideas, would eventually become a kind of substitute religion for him.^[42] After the failed putsch, he read about Hitler through two books.^[43]

From mid-1924, he became a secretary and propaganda assistant under Gregor Strasser. Himmler traveled all over Bavaria agitating for the Nazi party,^[44][45] Possibly as a reward for his work, the commencement of 1925 saw Himmler in charge of Nazi affairs for Lower Bavaria, and for integrating the area's membership with the NSDAP under Hitler when the party was re-founded in February 1925,^[46] though Himmler was not swept into Hitler's inchoate Führer cult.^[47] In April 1926 he met Joseph Goebbels for the first time.^[48] Still with Strasser, Himmler was made his deputy in January 1927 after Strasser had been appointed the NSDAP's propaganda chief in November 1926.^[49] His role at Munich HQ was blessed from the outset with considerable freedom of action that increased still further after 1928.^[50] As deputy propaganda chief, Himmler's unquenchable thirst for control, his extraordinary arrogance, and his inability to tolerate criticism, opposition or minor deviations from his instructions did not make him a popular figure with Party subordinates and the rank and file.^[51] His attitude to superiors, on the other hand, was nothing short of obsequious.^[52]

Marriage and family[link]

In 1926, he met his future wife in a hotel lobby while escaping a storm. Margarete Siegroth (née Boden) was seven years his senior, divorced, and Protestant. On 3 July 1928, the two were married. During this time Himmler worked unsuccessfully as a chicken farmer.^[53] On 8 August 1929, the couple had their only child, Gudrun. Himmler adored his daughter, and called her Püppi (English: "dolly"). Margarete later adopted a son, in whom Himmler showed no interest. Heinrich and Margarete Himmler separated in 1940 without seeking divorce. At that time, Himmler became friendly with a secretary, Hedwig Potthast, who left her job in 1941 and became his mistress. He fathered two children with her: a son, Helge (born 1942), and a daughter, Nanette Dorothea (born 1944).^[54]

Rise in the SS[link]

Himmler joined the SS in 1925 as an SS-Führer (SS-Leader). His NSDAP number was 14,303 and his SS number was 168.^[55] Himmler's first leadership position was that of SS-Gauführer (District Leader) in Bavaria. In 1927, he became Deputy–Reichsführer-SS, with the rank of SS-Oberführer, and upon the resignation of SS commander Erhard Heiden, in 1929, Himmler was appointed Reichsführer-SS (Reichsführer was, at that time, simply a title for the National Commander of the SS). The SS only had 280 members and was merely an elite battalion of the much larger Sturmabteilung (SA). Over the next year, Himmler began a major expansion of the organization and, in 1930, he was promoted to the rank of SS-Gruppenführer.^{[citation needed]}

Himmler was also very interested in agriculture and the "back to the land" movement.^[56] He and his wife, Margarete had romantic ideals of making a farming life. He joined the Artamanen society, a sort of idealistic back-to-the-land youth group, but mixed with racist ideology. He became one of the leaders of this movement. Through this movement, he also apparently met Rudolf Höss,^[57] who would later preside over Auschwitz, and Richard Walther Darré, who would later work in the RuSHA (race and resettlement office) of the SS.^[58] Darre's views on restoring racial purity to Germany, by breeding programs, were a deep influence on Himmler's view of the SS as a core of breeding men.^[59]

By 1933, the SS numbered 52,000 members. The organization at that time enforced strict membership requirements ensuring that all members were of Hitler's Aryan Herrenvolk ("Aryan master race"). Applications had been scrutinized for Nordic qualities, in Himmler's words, "like a nursery gardener trying to reproduce a good old strain which has been adulterated and debased; we started from the principles of plant selection and then proceeded quite unashamedly to weed out the men whom we did not think we could use for the build-up of the SS."^[60] (Few dared mention that by his own standards, Himmler did not qualify as an ideal Nordic.)^[61]

Himmler and his deputy Reinhard Heydrich began an effort to separate the SS from SA control. Black SS uniforms replaced the SA brown shirts in July 1932 and by 1934 enough quantities were manufactured for general use by all.^[62] In 1933, Himmler was promoted to SS-Obergruppenführer. This made him an equal of the senior SA commanders, who by this time loathed the SS and envied its power.^{[citation needed]}

Himmler, Hermann Göring, and General Werner von Blomberg agreed that the SA and its leader Ernst Röhm posed a threat to the German Army (Wehrmacht Heer) and the Nazi leadership. Röhm had socialist and populist views, and believed that the real revolution had not yet begun. Röhm felt that the SA should become the sole arms-bearing corps of the state with the army being absorbed by the SA under his leadership. This left some Nazi, military and political leaders believing Röhm was intent on using the SA to undertake a coup.^[63]

Persuaded by Himmler and Göring, Hitler agreed that Röhm had to be eliminated. He delegated this task to Reinhard Heydrich, Kurt Daluege, and Werner Best, who ordered Röhm's execution (carried out by Theodor Eicke), along with the purge of the entire SA leadership and other political adversaries (including, Gregor Strasser and Kurt von Schleicher). These actions took place from 30 June to 2 July 1934, in what became known as the Night of the Long Knives.^[64] The great beneficiaries of the action were the SS and the German Army. They both celebrated the demise of their mutual rival, Röhm's SA. Officially, from 20 July 1934 forward, the SS became an independent organization responsible only to Hitler, and Himmler's title of Reichsführer-SS became the highest formal SS rank.^[65]

Consolidation of power[link]

On 20 April 1934, Göring formed a partnership with Himmler and Heydrich. Göring transferred authority over the Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei)—the Prussian secret police—to Himmler, who was also named chief of all German police outside Prussia. On 22 April 1934, Himmler named Heydrich the head of the Gestapo. Heydrich continued as head of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD: security service), as well.^[66]

On 17 June 1936, Himmler was named Chief of German Police after Hitler announced a decree that was to "unify the control of Police duties in the Reich".^[67] Traditionally, law enforcement in Germany had been a state and local matter. In this role, Himmler was nominally subordinate to Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick. However, the decree effectively merged the police with the SS, making it virtually independent of Frick's control.^[68]

Himmler gained authority as all of Germany's uniformed law enforcement agencies were amalgamated into the new Ordnungspolizei (Orpo: "order police"), whose main office became a headquarters branch of the SS. Despite his title, Himmler gained only partial control of the uniformed police. The actual powers granted to him were some that were previously exercised by the ministry of the interior. It was only in 1943, when Himmler was appointed Minister of the Interior, that the transfer of ministerial power was complete.^{[citation needed]}

With the 1936 appointment, Himmler also gained ministerial authority over Germany's non-political detective forces, the Kriminalpolizei (Kripo: crime police), which he merged with the Gestapo into the Sicherheitspolizei (SiPo: security police) under Heydrich's command, thus gaining operational control over Germany's entire detective force.^[69] This merger was never complete within the Reich, with Kripo remaining mainly under the control of its own civilian administration and later the party apparatus (as the latter annexed the civilian administration). However, in occupied territories not incorporated into the Reich proper, SiPo consolidation within the SS line of command proved mostly effective. In September 1939, following the outbreak of World War II, Himmler formed the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA: Reich Main Security Office) wherein the SiPo (Gestapo and Kripo) along with the SD became departments under Heydrich's command therein.^[70]

Himmler (front right, beside prisoner) visiting the Dachau Concentration Camp in 1936.

Himmler oversaw the entire concentration camp system. Once World War II began, however, new internment camps, which were not formally classified as concentration camps, were established over which Himmler and the SS did not exercise control. In 1943, following the outbreak of popular word-of-mouth criticism of the regime as a result of the Stalingrad disaster, the party apparatus, professing disappointment with the Gestapo's performance in deterring such criticism, established the Politische Staffeln (political squads) as its own political policing organ, breaking the Gestapo's monopoly in this field.^{[citation needed]}

The SS during these years developed its own military branch, the SS-Verfügungstruppe (SS-VT), which later evolved into the Waffen-SS. Even though nominally under the authority of Himmler, the Waffen-SS developed a fully militarized structure of command and operations. It grew from three regiments to over 38 divisions during World War II, and served alongside the Heer (regular army) but was never formally part of it.^[71] Its units were involved in a number of notorious incidents of murdering civilians and prisoners of war. This was one of the reasons the International Military Tribunal declared the SS to be a criminal organization.^[72]

Himmler and the Holocaust[link]

Part of a series on
The Holocaust
Part of: German history and Jewish history
Responsibility Nazi Germany People Major Perpetrators Adolf Hitler Heinrich Himmler Reinhard Heydrich Adolf Eichmann Odilo Globocnik Theodor Eicke Richard Glücks Ernst Kaltenbrunner Rudolf Höss Christian Wirth Joseph Goebbels Organizations Nazi Party Gestapo Schutzstaffel (SS) Sturmabteilung (SA) Verfügungstruppe (VT) Wehrmacht Collaborators during World War II Nazi ideologues
Early policies Racial policy Nazi eugenics Nuremberg Laws Haavara Agreement Madagascar Plan Forced euthanasia
Victims Jews in Europe Jews in Germany Romani people (Gypsies) Poles Soviet POWs Slavs in Eastern Europe Homosexuals People with disabilities Serbs Freemasons Jehovah's Witnesses
Ghettos Białystok Budapest Kovno Kraków Łódź Lublin Lwów Minsk Riga Vilna Warsaw Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Poland List of selected ghettos
Atrocities Pogroms Kristallnacht Bucharest Dorohoi Iaşi Jedwabne Kaunas Lviv (Lvov) Tykocin Vel' d'Hiv Wąsosz Einsatzgruppen Babi Yar Bydgoszcz Częstochowa Kamianets-Podilskyi Ninth Fort Odessa Piaśnica Ponary Rumbula Erntefest "Final Solution" Wannsee Conference Operation Reinhard Holocaust trains Extermination camps End of World War II Wola massacre Death marches
Camps Nazi extermination camps Auschwitz-Birkenau Bełżec Chełmno Jasenovac Majdanek Maly Trostenets Sobibor Treblinka Nazi concentration camps Bergen-Belsen Bogdanovka Buchenwald Dachau Gonars (Italy) Gross-Rosen Herzogenbusch Janowska Kaiserwald Mauthausen-Gusen Neuengamme Rab Ravensbrück Sachsenhausen Sajmište Salaspils Stutthof Theresienstadt Uckermark Warsaw Transit and collection camps Belgium Breendonk Mechelen France Gurs Drancy Italy Bolzano Netherlands Amersfoort Westerbork Divisions SS-Totenkopfverbände Concentration Camps Inspectorate Politische Abteilung Sanitätswesen Extermination methods Inmate identification Gas van Gas chamber Extermination through labor Human medical experimentation Inmate disposal of victims
Resistance Jewish partisans Bricha Ghetto uprisings Warsaw Białystok Łachwa Częstochowa
Allied response Joint Declaration by Members of the United Nations Auschwitz bombing debate Nuremberg Trials Denazification
Aftermath Bricha Displaced persons Reparations Agreement between Israel and West Germany
Lists Holocaust survivors Deportations of French Jews to death camps Survivors of Sobibor Timeline of Treblinka Victims of Nazism Rescuers of Jews
Resources The Destruction of the European Jews Functionalism versus intentionalism
Remembrance Days of remembrance Memorials and museums
v t e

After the Night of the Long Knives, the SS-Totenkopfverbände organized and administered Germany's regime of concentration camps and, after 1941, extermination camps in occupied Poland as well. The SS—through its intelligence arm, the Security Service (Sicherheitsdienst, or SD)—dealt with Jews, Gypsies, communists and those persons of any other cultural, racial, political or religious affiliation deemed by the Nazis to be either Untermensch (sub-human) or in opposition to the regime, and placed them in concentration camps. Himmler opened the first of these camps at Dachau on 22 March 1933. He was the main architect of the Holocaust, using elements of mysticism and a fanatical belief in the racist Nazi ideology to justify the murder of millions of victims. Himmler had similar plans for the Poles; intellectuals were to be killed, and most other Poles were to be only literate enough to read traffic signs. On 18 December 1941, Himmler's appointment book shows he met with Hitler. The entry for that day poses the question "What to do with the Jews of Russia?", and then answers the question "als Partisanen auszurotten" (exterminate them as partisans").^[73]