III. B. The Roma and the Holocaust  

ADELSBERGER, Lucie. Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Story. Translated from the German by S. Ray, with an introduction by D. Lipstadt, and annotations and historical advice by A. J. Slavin. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1995.
This memoir of a female Jewish Holocaust survivor, who worked as a physician in the infirmary of the Gypsy Camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, describes the conditions faced by the Roma and Jews there.
ARAD, Yitzhak. Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987.
In this in-depth exploration of the three death camps set up in 1942-1943 that resulted in the murder of 1.5 million Jews, the author has a brief chapter on the Roma, “The Extermination of the Gypsies.”
ARAD, Yitzhak, Shmuel Krakowski, and Shmuel Spector, eds. The Einsatzgruppen Reports: Selections from the Dispatches of the Nazi Death Squads Campaign Against the Jews in Occupied Territories of the Soviet Union, July 1941-January 1943. New York: Holocaust Library, 1989.
These first-hand accounts of the deadly sweeps of Einsatzgruppe A, B, C, and D in the first 19 months of the Soviet-German conflict provide ample information on the Roma.
BAUER, Yehuda. Jews, Gypsies and Slavs: Policies of the Third Reich. In UNESCO Yearbook on Peace and Conflict Studies. New York and London: Greenwood, 1985.
This is an account of Nazi atrocities and their victims, of which the most targeted were Jews, Roma, and Slavs.
BEDNARZ, W. Oboz stracen w Chelmnie. Warsaw: Panstwowy Institut Wydawniczy, 1946.
This book provides general information about the genocide wrought at Chelmno and details the extermination of the Roma, which started in January, 1942 with groups numbering 200-300.
BEHRENDT, Johannes. Die Wahrheit ueber die Zigeuner. NS Partei Korrespondenz 10, no. 3 (1939).
In this article, the author, a physician in the Office of Racial Hygiene under Hitler, offers that all Gypsies should be eliminated without hesitation, as a defective element in the population.
BERENBAUM, Michael. The World Must Know: The History of the Holocaust as Told in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1993.
This richly illustrated volume provides a solid overview of the Holocaust, and pays some attention to Romany victimization.
BERNADAC, Christian. L. Holocauste oublie: Le Massacre des Tsiganes. Paris: Editions France-Empire, 1979.
This extensive study focuses on the mistreatment of the Roma during the Holocaust, and details total Romany losses in an appendix. It also includes information on the mistreatment of the Roma in Europe after the war.
BIESTER, Johann E. Ueber die Zigeuner: besonders im Koenig-reich Preussen. Berlinische Monatsschrift 21 (1973): pp. 108-65.
This study provides information on the Roma in Prussia, once an independent state.
BINDING, Karl, and Alfred HOCHE. Die Freigabe der Vernichtung Vernichtung Lebensunwertesleben. Leipzig: F. Meiner Verlag, 1920.
This work by two racial scientists in the years immediately after the end of World War I called for the ‘destruction of lives unworthy of life’. The demands of the lawyer and psychiatrist who wrote this book caused an uproar in Weimar, Germany, and later had deadly implications for the Roma and other genocidal victims of the Germans during the Holocaust.
BLOCK, Martin. Zigeuner: Ihre Leben und Ihre Seele. Leipzig: Bibliographisches Institut, 1936; Gypsies: Their Life and Customs, translated by Barbara Kuczybski and Duncan Taylor. New York: Appleton-Century, 1939.
 An overview of the Romany presence in Europe, this work is seriously marred by the author’s conclusion that the Roma have no history and have made no contribution to Western civilization. He felt that the Roma were a group to be distrusted and despised. This volume does have a unique collection of Romany photographs.
BOCK, Gisela. “Racism and Sexism in Nazi Germany.” Signs 8, no. 3 (1983): pp. 400-21.
In this article the author addresses Hitler’s 1933 eugenics laws against the Roma and other Germans of color, which mandated sterilization of ‘lives not worthy of life’.
BRANDIS, Emil. Ehegesetze von 1935 erlautet. Berlin, 1936.
The author defends racism against non-Aryans, showing that in 1935 the Roma, along with Jewish and Black Germans, became subject to the Nuremberg laws forbidding sexual relations between them and Aryan-Germans.
BROAD, P. Zigeuner in Auschwitz. Auschwitz-Hefte 9 (1959): pp. 41-2.
This brief article traces the origins of the Gypsy Family Camp at Auschwitz until its liquidation during the Zigeunernacht in early August 1944.
CARGAS, Harry James. “The Continuum of Gypsy Suffering.” In Reflections of a Post-Auschwitz Christian. Wayne State University Press, 1989.
This article looks at the traditional mistreatment of the Roma in European society and ties such behavior to German Nazi victimization of this group. He pays particular attention to German practices towards the Roma in Auschwitz. He concludes with a glance at contemporary prejudices towards the Roma.
CZECH, Danuta. Auschwitz Chronicle, 1939-1945. From the Archives of the Auschwitz Memorial and the German Federal Archives. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1997.
This comprehensive documentary study is organized on a day-to-day basis and has numerous references to the Roma in the Auschwitz complex. This excellent study also has a good bibliography and detailed biographical sketches of the principle perpetrators at Auschwitz.
CZERNIAKOW, Adam. The Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniakow. Chelsea, MI: Scarborough House, 1978.
The diary of the head of the Warsaw ghetto Judenrat (Jewish Council) has some modest references to the Roma in the ghetto.


Day of Rembrance in Memory of the Gypsy Victims of Nazi Genocide. Washington, D.C.: United States Holocaust Memorial Council, 1986.

This publication contains the various speeches and prayers of this memorial service that took place in 1986. Most moving are the speeches by several prominent Romany scholars and activists such as Ian Hancock and John Tene. Elie Wiesel provided opening remarks.
DIMRING, Hans-Joachim. Dire Zigeuner im Nationalsozialistischen Staat. Hamburg: Kriminalistik Verlag, 1964.
This excellent study traces the origins of Nazi racial policy towards the Roma. The author looks at the evolution and practice of such policies in several German states and elsewhere, and describes the plight in Germany of the Sinti, the Roma, the Lalleri, and other Romany groups during the Holocaust. There is also some discussion of the Holocaust in the Balkans and the General Government in Poland. He also describes the role of important Nazi German leaders in the implementation of anti-Romany policies, and discusses the role of the principle concentration and death camps.
EZERGAILIS, Andrew. The Holocaust in Latvia, 1941-1944. Riga: The Historical Institute of Latvia in association with The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C., 1996.
This fresh look at the Holocaust in Latvia is based on newly available Latvian primary source material as well as more traditionally available war crimes records, memoirs, and secondary sources. It has numerous references to the Roma throughout the study.
FICOWSKI, Jerzy, “The Fate of Polish Gypsies.” In Jack Nusan Porter, ed., Genocide and Human Rights: A Global Anthology. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1982.
This essay by one of Poland’s most prominent Romany scholars traces the history of the Roma in Poland, and their deadly mistreatment at the hands of the Germans during World War II.
FREIBERG, Dov. Testimony. Yad Vashem Archives, Microfiche A-361.
Along with general information about Nazi mass killings of the Roma, this witness adds that an unknown number of Roma are believed to have been killed in Sobibor.
FRIEDLANDER, Saul. “Nazi Germany and the Jews.” Volume I: The Years of Persecution. New York: HarperCollins, 1997.
This recent study of the plight of the Jews in Nazi Germany in the years before World War II has a modest section on the Roma. It looks briefly at the plight of the Roma after the issuance of the Nuremburg Laws, and the work of Robert Ritter, the Third Reich’s most prominent Gypsy specialist.
FRIEDMAN, Ina R. The Other Victims: First-Person Stories of Non-Jews Persecuted by the Nazis. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990.
This collection of first-person survivor accounts from non-Jewish victims includes the testimony of Anton Bubili Fojn, an Austrian Sinti, who now lives in Germany. Arrested as a 15 year-old soon after the Austrian Anschluss in 1938, Bubuli escaped and fled with his father first to Yugoslavia, and then to Slovakia. He was later arrested and sent to Dachau and then to Gusen, a forced labor camp in Austria. In Gusen, he was instrumental in saving 16 children from certain death.
FRIEDMAN, Philip. “The Extermination of the Gypsies,” In Jack Nusan Porter, ed., Genocide and Human Rights: A Global Anthology. Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1982.
This essay looks at the evolution of Nazi German racial policies towards the Roma and efforts by the Roma to gain recognition of their fate during the Holocaust.
GILBERT, Martin. The Holocaust. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1985.
This overview of the Holocaust, which relies very heavily on survivor testimony, has quite a bit of information on the Roma, particularly their experiences in the Lodz ghetto as well as in Chelmno, Auschwitz, and Mauthausen.
GUTMAN, Yisrael and Michael BERENBAUM, editors. Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp. Bloomington: Indiana University Press in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1994.
This fine collection of essays from prominent American, Israeli, Polish, and European scholars provides a fresh look at the inner workings of the sprawling Auschwitz camp network. Yehuda Bauer has a strong essay on the Roma in Auschwitz, and they are also discussed in other chapters, particularly those that relate to Josef Mengele’s experiments with the Roma and twins.
GUTMAN, Israel, ed. Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, 4 vols. New York: Macmillan, 1989.
The only article on the Roma in this definitive work is in Volume 2, pp. 634-638. This entry by Yehuda Bauer has a small bibliography. The Roma are also mentioned in other articles throughout the rest of the encyclopedia.
HACKETT, David A., editor. The Buchenwald Report. Boulder: Westview Press, 1995.
This important primary source is a collection of interviews of survivors done at the end of World War II by a specially trained team of American intelligence offficers. The book is divided into two parts. The Main Report consists of the findings of the U. S. Army intelligence team, while the Individual Reports are made up of survivor testimony. Information on Romany inmates at Buchenwald is scattered throughout this important collection.
HANCOCK, Ian. “Gypsies, Jews, and the Holocaust.” Shmate: A Journal of Progressive Jewish Thought, Vol. 17 (1987), pp. 6-15; Vol. 18 (1987), pp. 14-17.
The author does a comparative analysis of the plight of the two main victims of the Holocaust—the Jews and the Roma. He argues for greater recognition for the fate of the Roma during the Holocaust. His two-part article is accompanied by a fine selection of endnotes.
HANCOCK, Ian. “Uniqueness of the Victims: Gypsies, Jews and the Holocaust.” The Eaford International Review of Racial Discrimination, Vol. 1, No. 2 (1988): pp. 45-67.
This article begins with a recounting of efforts to bring the plight of the Roma during the Holocaust into the mainstream of American Holocaust memory. He details what he feels are slights in efforts to equate Romany suffering in the Holocaust with that of Jewish victimization. He discusses in some depth the roots of Romany discrimination in the Western world, and looks at the evolution of Nazi German policies towards this group. He feels that the Roma case has been slighted by the West German government, and argues anew for greater recognition of the Roma’s plight throughout Europe and the United States.
HANCOCK, Ian. “Responses to the Porrajmos: The Romani Holocaust.” In Alan S. Rosenbaum, ed., Is the Holocaust Unique?: Perspectives on Comparative Genocide. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996.
In this controversial collections of essays, the author argues in detailed bibliographic essays for greater recognition of the tremendous losses suffered by the Roma during the Holocaust. This prominent Romany scholar feels that such acknowledgement has contemporary significance, since the Roma are still heavily persecuted in Eastern Europe, and continue to suffer from age-old stereotypes throughout the world.
HILBERG, Raul. The Destruction of the European Jews. 3 vols. New York: Holmes and Meier, 1985. Original 1 volume edition: New York; Quadrangle Books, 1961; New York: Harper & Row, 1979; student edition, New York: Holmes & Meier, 1981.
Considered one of the classic works on the Holocaust, the Roma are mentioned with some infrequency throughout the three volume or single volume editions.
HILBERG, Raul, Stanislaw Staron, and Josef Kermisz, eds., The Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniakow. New York: Stein and Day, 1979.
This diary of the chairman of the Warsaw ghetto Judenrat (Jewish Council) covers the period from the fall of 1939 until the eve of Czerniakow’s suicide in the summer of 1942. It contains a number of important references to Roma in the ghetto.
Hitler’s Ten Year War against the Jews. New York: Institute of Jewish Affairs of the American Jewish Congress/World Jewish Congress, 1943.
This study of Hitler’s victims also includes information about the Roma targeted by the Third Reich.
HOHMANN, Joachim S. Zigeuner und zigeuner-wissenschaft: Ein Beitrag zur Grundlagenforschung und Dokumentation des Volkermords im Dritten Reich. Marburg/Lahn: Frankfurt: Verlag Guttandin & Hoppe, 1980.
This historical and documentary study deals with the evolution of Nazi German racial policies towards the Roma, and highlights in some detail the Final Solution as it was applied to the Roma during the Holocaust. This fine overview of the Romany Holocaust is accompanied by a detailed bibliography, followed by a rich collection of documents that trace the evolution of German and Nazi racial policies towards the Roma from 1926 to 1943.
International Military Tribunal. Nuremberg Documents: NG-558; PS-682; Vol. 33. Henceforth, IMT.
These extracts tell, in the words of the Nazis’ official doctrine, about the annihilation of all the asocials and the objective that the Jews and Gypsies be exterminated unconditionally.
HIMSS, Rudolf. Death Dealer: The Memoirs of the SS Kommandant at Auschwitz. Edited by Peter Paskuly. New York: Da Capo Press, 1996.
This rather defensive memoir by one of Auschwitz’s most villainous commandants has a short chapter on the Roma housed in the Gypsy family camp at Auschwitz. He begins the chapter with a brief overview of the plight of the Roma before the beginning of the war. Throughout this modest look at the Roma in his camp in Poland he adopts the same critical tone towards what he saw as stereotypical Romany behavior.
HUTTENBACH, Henry R. “The Romani Porajmos: The Nazi Genocide of Gypsies in Germany and Eastern Europe,” in David M. Crowe and John Kolsti, eds., The Gypsies of Eastern Europe (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1991).
This overview of the Holocaust is drawn from German and other Western sources. It concentrates on domestic German policies towards the Roma, particularly their categorization into various racial groups. It also looks at the treatment of the Roma in various ghettos and concentration camps, and discusses the mounting German effort to murder them in Central and Eastern Europe. The author estimates that Romany Holocaust deaths numbered from 250,000 to 500,000.
KENRICK, Donald and Grattan PUXON. The Destiny of Europe’s Gypsies. New York: Basic Books, 1972. Roma translation, revised and updated: Bibahtade Bersa. London: Romanestan Publications, 1990.
This is the classic study of the Romany Holocaust. It begins with a valuable overview of the persecution of the Roma since they entered Europe from India during the Middle Ages, but concentrates on the plight of the Roma during the German Nazi era in Europe from 1933-1945. Though it touches on all countries occupied by the Germans during this period, it is particularly strong in its coverage of the persecution of the Roma in Central and Eastern Europe.
KENRICK, Donald and Grattan PUXON. Gypsies Under the Swastika. Hertfordshire: Gypsy Research Centre and University of Hertfordshire Press, 1995.
This completely reorganized and freshly researched update of their 1972 study on the Holocaust differs somewhat from the original and should be used in conjunction with it.
KOLSTI, John. “Albanian Gypsies: The Silent Survivors,” in David M. Crowe and John Kolsti, eds., The Gypsies of Eastern Europe. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1991.
This excellent study of the Holocaust in Albania underscores the dearth of information on the subject. The author begins with an excellent overview of the Romany presence in Albania, and their ability to blend in with the larger Albanian Muslim population during the Holocaust.
Levy, Alan. The Wiesenthal File. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1993.
This biography of the world’s most prominent Nazi hunter discusses Wiesenthal’s concern for the plight of the Roma and other non-Jewish victims of the Germans during the Nazi era. He pays particular attention to the work of Josef Mengele with Romany victims in Auschwitz.
Lifton, Robert Jay. The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide. New York: Basic Books, 1986.
This innovative study looks at the plight of the Roma as victims of various German killing programs during the Holocaust. It includes Romany victims of Einsatzgruppe mass executions, euthanasia gassings, and medical experimentation, particularly at the hands of Josef Mengele.
L’HUILLIER, Madame G. “Reminiscences of the Gypsy Camp at Poitiers (1941-1943).” Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society. Third Series, Vol. XXVII, Nos. 1-2 (1948), pp. 36-40.
This brief memoir looks at the plight of the Roma in the French Gypsy camp at Poitiers in France. The author volunteered to work among the Romany children there and helped open a school. She also conducted religious education classes. Over time, all of the adult males were taken from the camp and all that remained at war’s end were the women and children.
LIPA, Jiri. “The Fate of Gypsies in Czechoslovakia under Nazi Domination,” in Michael Berenbaum, ed. A Mosaic of Victims: Non-Jews Persecuted and Murdered by the Nazis. New York: New York University Press, 1990, pp. 207-216.
This study of the Holocaust in the German-controlled Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and German-allied puppet state of Slovakia is drawn partly from Ctibor Necas’ Nad osudem ceskych a slovenskych Cikanu (Brno, 1981). Lipa’s brief study provides an important overview of the plight of the Roma, and the network of forced labor camps set up to imprison them.
LUTZ, Brenda Davis and James M. “Gypsies as Victims of the Holocaust,” in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Vol. 9, No. 3 (Winter 1995), pp. 346-359.
This modest look at the Holocaust, drawn from secondary sources, tries to estimate Romany losses according to SS administrative zones. It is unfortunately flawed by references to the Roma as a race, and by rather low estimates of Romany death rates. On the other hand, it does conclude that the Roma were victims of genocide and thus should be included with the Jews as Holocaust victims.
MAUR, Wolf in der. Die Zigeuner: Wanderer zwischen den Welten. Vienna, Munich, and Zurich: Molden, 1969.
This scholar addresses the statistics of those who perished in the Nazi genocide, stating that 70% of all Roma living in European countries under fascist rule were murdered.
MAX, Frederic. “Le Sort des Tsiganes dans les Prisons et les Camps de Concentration de L’Allemagne Hitlerienne.” Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society. Third Series, Vol. XXV, Nos. 1-2 (January-April 1946), pp. 24-34.
This is one of the earliest accounts of the Holocaust. It is based principally on Jewish survivor testimony. It is particularly valuable for information on the fate of the French Roma, but also has information on the Roma in Buchenwald and Auschwitz. It includes parts of several Romany songs from Buchenwald.
MAXIMOFF, Mateo. “Germany and the Gypsies: From the Gypsies’ Point of View.” Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society. Third Series, Vol. XXV, Nos. 3-4 (July-October 1946), pp. 105-108.
This early post-Holocaust article underscores the Romany claim that 500,000 Roma died in the Holocaust. It decries Allied insensitivity to Romany claims before the International Military Tribunal trials going on in the four occupation zones of Germany after World War II. Looking at the long tradition of Romany persecution in the West, the article is also an emotional appeal for more tolerance for what the author calls the freest people in the world.
MILTON, Sybil. “The Context of the Holocaust.” German Studies Review. Vol. XIII, No. 2 (May 1990), pp. 269-283.
This excellent historiographical article discusses the status of non-Jewish victims, particularly the Roma, in the broader field of Holocaust studies. In this context, the author traces the evolution of Nazi German policies towards the Roma throughout the Holocaust. This fine article is anchored by a valuable body of footnotes.
MULLER-HILL, Benno. Murderous Science: Elimination by Scientific Selection of Jews, Gypsies, and Others, Germany, 1933-1945. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. Hebrew edition, Jerusalem: 1992.
Beginning with a chronological overview of German scientific theories of racism dating back to 1900, this study looks at the evolution of the theory and practice of German Nazi racial theories, particularly as applied to the three groups designated ultimately for genocidal murder during the Third Reich—the handicapped, the Jews, and the Gypsies. A considerable part of the book is comprised of interviews with relatives of some of the principle advocates of deadly Nazi German racial practices.
NOVITCH, Myriam. Le Genocide des Tziganes sous Le Regime Nazi. Paris: AMIF Publication No. 164 (Comite pour l’erection en memoire des Tsiganes assassines en Auschwitz), 1968. English translation, Budapest: Romani Union Publication, 1987.
This classic work by a Jewish Holocaust survivor details the victimization of the Roma. It looks at Romany persecution throughout German-occupied Europe and discusses Romany resistance to such policies.
PIPER, Franciszek. How Many Perished: Jews, Poles, Gypsies... Krakow: Poligrafia, 1991.
This smallish study, which first appeared in Vol. XXI of Yad Vashem Studies, discusses the various opinions and estimates regarding the number of Roma, Jews, and other groups that died in Auschwitz. It provides an overview of German and scholarly estimates and also looks at death estimates according to country of origin. It estimates that 23,000 Roma were deported to Auschwitz and that 21,000 died there.
PORTSCHY, Tobias. “Kein Schulbesuch fuer Zigeuner”. Grenzmark-Zeitung, 4 September 1938, p. 1.
The author, one of the criminal Nazi doctors and Area Commander in Styria, urged mass sterilization of the Roma to stop contamination of the blood of German peasantry with non-Aryan blood.
PROCTOR, Robert N. Racial Hygiene: Medicine under the Nazis. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988.
This excellent study of the role of the German medical profession during the Holocaust looks briefly at the status of the Roma in Nazi Germany and the work of Robert Ritter, the regime’s most prominent Gypsy specialist and head of the Racial Hygiene and Population Biology Research office.


PROESTER, F. Vrazdeni Cs. Cikanu v Buchenwaldu. Document No. UV CSPB-K-135 of the Archives of the Museum of the Fighters against Fascism, Prague, 1940.

This document tells about the first mass genocidal action of the Holocaust: the killing of 250 Gypsy children at Buchenwald, in a test of the gas Zyklon B.
PUXON, Grattan. Gypsies: The Holocaust’s Forgotten Victims. Los Angeles: Publication of the U.S. Romani Council, 1984.
Speaking about the Roma as the forgotten victims of the Holocaust, the author reveals little-known historic facts about their European flight.
RAMATI Alexander. And the Violins Stopped Playing: A Story of the Gypsy Holocaust. New York: Franklin Watts, 1986.
This is the story of one Romany Holocaust survivor, Roman Mirga, and his family. In 1942, the Mirga family began an odyssey of escape and survival that constantly brought them close to death through the end of World War II.
REINHARTZ, Dennis. “Aryanism and the Independent State of Croatia, 1941-1945”. The South Slav Journal, Vol. 9 (Autumn-Winter 1986): pp. 19-25.
This article is about the influence of German Nazi ideology on the leadership of the Independent State of Croatia during the Holocaust. It underscores the impact of these influences on the treatment of the Roma during this period.
RITTER, Robert. “Die Bestandsaufnahme der Zigeuner,” in Der öffentliche Gesundheitsdienst, Vol. 6 (January 1941).
This is one of a number of articles written during the Holocaust by the Third Reich’s principal Gypsy expert. Ritter headed the Racial Hygiene and Population Biology Research office. For a complete list of Ritter’s work on the Roma, see Hans-Joachim Döring’s Die Zigeuner in Nationalsozialistiche Staat cited elsewhere in this bibliography.
RUMMEL, R. J. Democide: Nazi Genocide and Mass Murder. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1992.
This thorough examination of most major studies of the Holocaust centers on various estimates of Holocaust losses. Extensive coverage is given to the Roma in most of the major death, forced labor, and concentration camps. This is an excellent study of losses during the Holocaust.
SCHMEMANN, Serge. “Case of the Missing Millions.” New York Times, 26 May 1988, A5.
This article discloses that the first Western money designated for war crimes compensation to the Roma was embezzled and never paid to the legitimate recipients.
SCHUCKENAK, J. Sie sind auch umgekommen: Polen, Homosexuellen, Juden, Zeugen Jehovahs und andere nicht-Zigeunerische Opfern Hitlers Gewaltherrschaft. Tuebingen: Klaffende Tur, 1988.
This is a comparative survey of how Nazi ideology varied according to its victims, such as the Roma.
SERENY, Gitta. Into that Darkness. New York: Vintage Books, 1974.
This study is made up of a collection of interviews with Franz Stangl, the infamous commandant of the Treblinka death camp. There are some references to the Roma in the interviews.
TENENBAUM, J. Race and Reich. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1956.
A history of the evolution and application of Nazi racial science, this study has a small but important section on the Romany Holocaust in the appendix. There are also scattered references to the Roma elsewhere in this work.
THURNER, Erika. Kurzgeschichte des nationalsozialistischen Zigeunerlagers in Lackenbach, 1940-1945. Eisenstadt, 1984.
This book makes it clear that the Roma were a direct target of Nazi genocide, which mandated not only extermination through work, Vernichtung durch Arbeit, but also direct executions, Sonderbehandlung.
TYRNAUER, Gabrielle. The Fate of the Gypsies during the Holocaust. Washington: Special Report to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, 1985.
This report describes Romany life under the Nazi regime, including the claim by Auschwitz Commander Hoss that the purest of them were his favorite prisoners.
TYRNAUER, Gabrielle. “Germany and Gypsies.” In Jack Nusan Porter, ed., Genocide and Human Rights: A Global Anthology. Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1982.
Because the Nazis saw the Roma as a concern of public health, a parasite on the body of the German people, they subjected them to mass sterilization and death by exhaustion.
TYRNAUER, Gabrielle. Gypsies and the Holocaust: A Bibliography and Introductory Essay. Montreal: Montreal Institute for Genocide Studies, 1991.
This work documents such stories as the one that claimed that once the Roma had a friend in Himmler and a foe in Lohse. (Himmler lost his ideological struggle of protecting the Roma, and they shared the Jews’ fate of extermination).
TYRNAUER, Gabrielle. “Mastering the Past: Germans and Gypsies,” in Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn, eds. The History and Sociology of Genocide: Analyses and Case Studies.
This essay, which is drawn from the author’s earlier essay on the same subject in Jack Nusan Porter’s Genocide and Human Rights: A Global Anthology, begins by bemoaning the fact that the plight of the Roma during the Holocaust is almost a forgotten footnote in the history of the Nazi genocide. The author briefly surveys the history of anti-Roma prejudice and the heritage of mistreatment in Europe, and looks at its contemporary manifestations. The article has an excellent end note section.
VRISSAKIS, Yoannis. “Nazis and the Greek Roma: A Personal Testimonial”. Roma 30 (1988): pp. 15-17.
This narration recounts the 1942 murders of hundreds of Roma by Nazi death squads in Greece.
WIESENTHAL, Simon. Justice Not Vengeance. Translated by Ewald Osers. New York: 1989; London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989. French edition, Juifs et Tsiganes, in Idem, justice n’est pas vengence: Une autobiographie. Paris: Editions Robert Laffont, 1989.
In this quasi-memoir, the famed Nazi hunter argues that it is important to remember that there were also non-Jewish genocidal victims of the Nazis during the Holocaust. He estimates that 500,000 Roma died during the Holocaust, and argues that if there had been more Roma in Europe, their death totals could have been as high as that of the Jews. Wiesenthal is proud of his long advocacy of equal treatment for Romany victims of the Holocaust and notes at the end of his chapter on Jews and Gypsies that many Roma protested Elie Wiesel’s receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, feeling that the award should have gone to Wiesenthal.
WIESENTHAL, Simon. “Tragedy of the Gypsies.” Bulletin of Information 26 (1986): p. 6. Vienna: Dokumentationszentrum des Bundes Judische Verfolgter des Naziregimes.
Wiesenthal denounces the mistake made by the then Darmstadt city mayor who, having addressed the Sinti and Roma council, said that their request of recognition ‘insults the honor of the memory of the Holocaust victims by aspiring to be associated with them’.
WYTWYCKY, Bohdan. The Other Holocaust: Many Circles of Hell: A Brief Account of 9-10 Million Persons Who Died with the 6 Million Jews under Nazi Racism, foreword by S. Siegel. Washington D.C.: The Nowak Report on the New Ethnicity, 1980.
This book has an entire chapter devoted to the Nazi efforts to rationalize the genocide of the Jews, Slavs, and Roma, considered by Hitler to be subhumans and asocials, which thus justified their extermination. It also includes some discussion on German Nazi racial theories as related to the Roma. The appendix has some information of Romany losses during the Holocaust.
YAHIL, Leni. The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jewry. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
This classic study of the Holocaust gives modest coverage to the plight of the Roma.
YATES, Dora E. “Hitler and the Gypsies: The Fate of Europe’s Oldest Aryans,” in Jack Nusan Porter, ed. Genocide and Human Rights: A Global Anthology. Lanham, MD: University Press of American, 1982.
This brief look at the fate of the Roma during the Nazi era puts a human face on their mistreatment.
YOORS, Jan. Crossing: A Journal of Survival and Resistance in World War II. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1988.
The author, a Belgian from a prominent academic family, ran away from home when he was 12 years old, and was subsequently adopted by a nomadic Romany clan, the Lovara, who called him Putzina. When World War II broke out, Yoors (Putzina) was recruited by British intelligence in Paris for resistance works behind Germans lines, where he worked organizing resistance activities among Sinti Roma. This memoir details the dangerous work with the Roma, and discusses Yoors’ arrest, torture, and imprisonment by the Gestapo.
YOORS, Jan. The Gypsies. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1987.
According to the author, this book was written as a protest against oblivion. It blends his own account of his experiences during the Holocaust with a more introspective look at the dynamics of Romany life, culture, and anti-Roma prejudice.
ZIMMERMANN, Michael. “From Discrimination to the Family Camp at Auschwitz,” in Dachau Review, Vol. 2 (1990), pp. 87-113.
This excellent article traces the evolution and implementation of Nazi German policies towards the Roma, particularly in the Greater Reich. The coverage is broken down into sections dealing with the 1933-1938 period, the era of detention in 1939, followed by deportation to Poland in 1940-1941. It takes an extensive look at the Roma Family Camp in Auschwitz, and the elimination of this camp on August 2-3, 1944.
ZIMMERMAN, Michael. Verfolgt, vertrieben, vernichtet: Die nationalsozialistische Vernichtungspolitik gegen Sinti and Roma. Essen: Klartext Verlang, 1989.
This excellent study of the evolution of Nazi German racial policies towards the Roma and Sinti deals with their initial incarceration and deportation, followed by sterilization, and then extermination in Auschwitz and elsewhere. The author puts the development of these policies into the broader context of German racial hygiene theories, and includes an excellent collection of documents. This work also has a solid essay on the historiography of the Roma question in Nazi Germany, and a bibliography of all applicable works.
ZÜLCH, Tilman. In Auschwitz Vergast, bis heute Verfolgt: Zur Situation der Roma (Zigeuner) in Deutschland und Europe. Hamburg: Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, 1979.
This is official testimony about the Roma under the Nazis in Germany as well as other European countries, addressing their displacement and extermination.


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