Gypsy Roma Traveller Leeds
The permanent site of the Gypsy Roma Traveller Communities
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- Travellers in Leeds
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Achievements
Read about the achievements of the Gypsy Roma Traveller Achievement Service since its inception in 1975.
By Freda Matthews
Gypsies Victims
After the Nazis came to power in 1933
The Nazis established a racial hierarchy with the Aryan Germans at the top. A leading Nazi theoretician Dr Korber wrote in 1936:
"The Jew and the Gypsy are today far removed from us because their Asiatic ancestors were totally different from our Nordic forefathers."
1935 onwards
Gypsies and Germans were not allowed to intermarry.
The Gypsy camp set up at Gelsenkirche in 1935. It was surrounded with barbed wire and the vans were numbered. It was guarded day and night by the S.A. (Nazi storm troopers).
1936
An institute later called the Research Unit for Racial Hygiene and Population Biology was established.
The Director was Dr Ritter Eva Justin was one of the research team.
1936
400 Gypsies were sent to Dachau Concentration Camp.
1937
More Gypsies sent to Concentration Camps, in particular Buchenwald.
1938
A law entitled "The Fight against the Gypsy Menace" was passed:
- All Gypsies had to be registered with the Police
- So-called pure Gypsies were given brown passes.
- Those of mixed race were given blue passes
- No more foreign Gypsies were allowed to enter Germany
- The Police directed Gypsies to where they could camp.
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A Nazi magazine about the struggle against the "Gypsy Plague" (Zigeunerplage) in 1939. |
During the Second World War 1939-45
A group of Norwegian Gypsies. They were refused permission to cross Denmark on their way back to Norway in 1934. They were later arrested in Belgium and deported to Auschwitz where the majority were killed.
In 1940
2,500 German Gypsies were put on trains to German occupied Poland. They were mainly housed there in primitive camps. Sinti Gypsies from Stuttgart were sent to camps in Poland in April 1940.
1941 onwards
Gypsies in Germany were excluded from schools.
1942
The Germans started to collect information about the numbers of Gypsies in Britain prior to an invasion.
December 18th 1942
Himmler signed a decree saying that all Gypsies from Germany should be sent to Auschwitz. Similar decrees for Belgium and Holland followed.
Stefania Holomek, a Czech Gypsy woman. Concentration camp photograph, Auschwitz 1943.
More history
Anti-Gypsy Laws before Hitler Came to Power
A short history from 1899 when the Bavarian Police created a special Gypsy Affairs Unit onwards.
Ambiguous relationships
Follow the link below to see info on Gypsy experience of Holocaust by Eve Rosenhaft, a historian at the Liverpool University’s School of Modern Languages
More history
Anti-Gypsy Laws before Hitler came to power
A short history from 1899 when the Bavarian Police created a special Gypsy Affairs Unit onwards.
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