In 1943, the Nazis created a specific section of the Auschwitz-Birkenhau camp designated the “Zigeunerlarger” or “Gypsy” camp. Around 23,000 Roma were deported to Auschwitz, of whom 21,000 were murdered in shootings and gas chambers.
The policy of genocide was made clear in a letter written by Himmler in 1944 stating that “the accomplished evacuation and isolation” of “Jews and Gypsies” meant that the initial directives against them were no longer necessary.
In part because so many Roma deaths went unrecorded, many families don’t know what happened to their relatives. Every week, the Wiener Holocaust Library’s researcher in charge of overlooking the ITS is contacted by people hoping to find out what happened to their loved ones.
What did happen to them was often gruesome. In 1938, Dr. Robert Ritter, head of the Racial Hygiene Research Center at the Reich Bureau for Health, began a project with the aim of analyzing the “racial characteristics” of Roma.
