On 13 June 1938 German police began a week of operations against Roma and Sinti people in Germany.

By 18 June over 1,000 Roma and Sinti had been arrested and deported to concentration camps.  What has now become known as ‘Gypsy Clean-up Week’ was the beginning of an increasingly extreme programme against the Roma and Sinti community that led ultimately to their mass murder in Nazi death camps.

The impetus for the ‘clean-up’ action against the Roma and Sinti people had come from the Decree on the Fight to Prevent Crime, a 1937 law enacted by the Nazis.  Both in Imperial and Weimar Germany, Roma and Sinti people had often been the victims of legal persecution.  

They were attacked for their itinerant way of living that did not conform to German norms, and for allegedly being prone to criminal activities.  After the Nazis came to power in 1933, Roma and Sinti people were subject to a host of restrictions that targeted ‘asocial’ groups.  As part of the 1937 Decree, they were forced to register permanent addresses.  Failure to do so, or migration from a registered address, would result in arrest and deportation to concentration camps.

In the event, some of the Roma and Sinti people arrested during the ‘clean-up’ week had complied with laws imposed on them; they were arrested simply to demonstrate a tough stance on the part of local police.  Many would later be murdered as Nazi persecution of the Roma and Sinti population intensified and spread across Europe.  

In Germany, several months after ‘Gypsy Clean-up Week’, in June 1938, the Nazis arrested and deported over 30,000 Jews during Kristallnacht.  For both Jews and Roma and Sinti people, the year 1938 witnessed a major escalation of violence against them in Germany, to such an extent that it may be seen as a point of no return on the path to the Nazi extermination programme.

"Croats do not like neighbors, they do not give us jobs," Roma from 12 Roma settlements complain.

We need rehabilitation of the places where we live, to make children's playgrounds, to build cultural homes, kindergartens ... says Adam Orshosh, 48, who has completed his four-year term as president of the local board in the village of Pushkroviets in Medjugorje. It summarizes the work done, is not ashamed of the results, and concludes that it could have been much more done.

How satisfied he was that he was the president of a neighborhood that beat a "bad voice" in Croatia where it often had police intervention and which very rarely entered if they were not under complete military equipment.

- These are two or three who make the problems, but all of us, therefore, are responsible for the Roma. I know those guys who are delinquent I know their name and surname. They are always the same. This is also known by the police And these are juvenile delinquents aged 14 to 17 years.

Daily talk to them! I told them that it is necessary to punish parents. If parents were to be executed, that parent would not let that child commit a crime.

Every parent should know where his children are at all times. But crime is all around us, and so among the majority population, "Adem told the village where some 300 Roma live.

Link: https://www.vecernji.hr/premium/ne-bi-svi-romi-bili-na-zlu-glasu-da-sud-zatvori-kriminalce-nema-ih-puno-1324746