November 15: The Gypsy Holocaust

Gypsies were declared by Heinrich Himmler to be “on the same level as Jews and [to be] placed in concentration camps” on this date in 1943. This intensified the incarceration and obliteration of Romani and Sinti people that Himmler had ordered the previous December. Gypsy losses in the Porajmos (“Devouring” in the Romani language) are estimated by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to number between 220,000 and half a million. (Other estimates go as high as 1.5 million.) Thousands were gassed at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Yet Nazi racial “science” had considered the Gypsies, who were descended from migrating peoples from northern India, to be “Aryan,” which slowed their persecution until various Nazi studies determined that only 10 percent were “pure” Gypsies. It was proposed that these were to be resettled on a reservation; instead, all Gypsies became vulnerable to genocide.

“Without full acknowledgment that Gypsies were victims of the Holocaust, too little attention is paid to the current situation in Europe where Gypsies are frequently victims of prejudice and racially motivated mob attacks.” —Toby F. Sonneman, Shared Sorrows