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By Freda Matthews

Gypsies Victims

The German Occupation of Europe

Line upIn Auschwitz it is estimated that 17,000 Gypsies died from the poor conditions or were killed when the camp was liquidated in August 1944.

Gypsy men and women were sterilized - often under the pretext that they would be set free from the Concentration Camps if they volunteered for this.

Medical experiments involving injections of salt, the use of mustard gas and typhus took place in Sachenhausen, Natzweller, Buchenwald and other camps.

The total number of Gypsies killed may never be known. The fate of over 200,000 has been recorded.

Tattoo Child Gypsy prisoners wearing the striped prison uniform with the inverted triangle marking them as Gypsies and above a Gypsy child, a survivor of Auschwitz, with her tattoo number on her arm.

Serbia

The German authorities forced Gypsies to wear armbands with the letter ‘Z’ (for ‘Zigeuner’), German for Gypsy on them.

Gypsy men were imprisoned and later killed as hostages alongside Serbs, in reprisal for any German soldiers killed by partisans. The widows and children were sent to a camp at Zemun where many were murdered in specially constructed mobile gassing vans.

Croatia

Arrival

Gypsy prisoners arriving at a Concentration Camp

Nomadic and settled Gypsies were taken to the Concentration Camp at Jasenovac, where they were killed by the Fascist Croatian Ustashi.

Hungary

The Germans took full control in 1944 with the help of local Fascists. Gypsies, men, women and children were made to march for days towards the death camps in Poland. 28,000 died.

Roumania

Gypsies were deported to the east to land taken from the Soviet Union . Here they lived in primitive huts with little food and many perished.

Czechoslovakia

Gypsies from the Czech lands (Bohemia and Moravia) were sent to two camps. Those who survived the poor conditions were sent to Auschwitz. Almost the whole Gypsy population of the Czech lands was wiped out. The puppet state of Slovakia forced Gypsies to move from their houses into the forests. They were forbidden to use public transport or enter public places such as cafes.

Local fascists in Slovakia killed many Gypsies by locking them up in huts and then setting fire to the huts. 112 Gypsies were killed in this way in Illja.

Poland

Belzac

Gypsies in the Belzec concentration camp.
Nazi photographer, July 1940.

Treblinka and Chelmo were built as extermination camps. Gypsies were killed on arrival.

The Occupied Soviet Union

The so-called Einsatzgruppen (the invading German task forces) killed any nomadic Gypsies they met during their advance east.

Around the site

Gypsies in England

From the First record of Gypsies in Britain in 1505 to the Criminal Justice Act abolishing Caravan Sites Act in 1994 leaving Gypsy families homeless. See the whole history here.

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How Gypsies and Travellers have fared around Europe.

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