The start of the Second World War meant a significant escalation for all people not part of the National Socialist ‘people’s community’, including the Sinti/Sintize and Roma/Romnja of Munich. Their rights and living conditions had already been drastically reduced in the preceding years by, among other things, the so-called ‘Nuremberg race laws’ and the decree for ‘Combating the Gypsy Plague’ (in October 1938). On September 21, 1939, Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reich Security Main Office which included the Reich Criminal Investigation Department and the ‘Reich Headquarters for the Fight Against the Gypsy Nuisance’ convened a conference. Since the Nazi Police classified the Sinti/Sintize and Roma/Romnja living in the Third Reich as an ‘uncertainty factor’, it was decided to deport them to occupied Poland, the so-called ‘General Government’ as soon as possible. In the meantime, Sinti/Sintize and Roma/Romnja were no longer allowed to leave their hometown – as stipulated by Heinrich Himmler’s ‘Festsetzungserlass’ (Arrest decree) issued on October 17, 1939, under the threat of being sent to a concentration camp.
‘Arrest Decree’ and Tighter Control
While entire families of approximately 2,800 Sinti/Sintize and Roma/Romnja primarily from the Western border areas of the Third Reich were sent to the General Government in May 1940, the planned deportation in the remaining Reich territory faced delays. In a concerted operation from October 25-27, 1939, officers of the ‘Office for Gypsy Affairs’ of the Munich Criminal Investigation Department collected the information of all Sinti/Sintize and Roma/Romnja living in Munich without exception. As in the entire Reich territory, persons considered to be ‘Gypsies’ by the Nazis were registered like criminals and their photographs and biometric information were taken.
Contrary to what the Reich Security Main Office actually intended and unlike the practice in other cities, the Criminal Investigation Department did not set up ‘Gypsy camps’ in Munich. Such “consolidation” in a camp, argued Criminal Director and SS Assault Unit Leader Werner Katto, would only “stimulate the migratory instinct again”. The officers were able to surveil the nearly 200 Sinti/Sintize and Roma/Romnja in Munich without this coercive means. They were subjected to the same racist policies as the Jews of Munich: they were excluded from the Wehrmacht, used to perform forced labor, had to pay a special tax of 15%, and received fewer food rations than the rest of the population. Their children were expelled from normal schools or had to go to special schools; some youths were placed in institutions. Sinti/Sintize and Roma/Romnja were threatened with being immediately sent to a concentration camp for any violation of the strict reporting requirements as well as for being classified as a criminal or an ‘asocial element’ due to multiple prior convictions or supposed ‘reluctance to work’. There were at least seven men from Munich, who were persecuted as ‘Gypsies’; they were detained for various reasons, especially throughout 1942, and sent to the Dachau, Flossenbürg, and Sachsenhausen Concentration Camps, among others.
The Deportation of Sinti/Sintize and Roma/Romnja from Munich and the Surrounding Area to the Auschwitz-Birkenau ‘Gypsy camp’ in the Spring of 1943
Late in 1942, Himmler decided to deport all ‘Gypsy half-breeds’ living in the Third Reich to a specially built ‘Gypsy camp’ in the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration and Extermination Camp. According to the ‘Auschwitz Decree’ issued by Himmler on December 16, 1942, and the subsequent implementing provision of the Reich Criminal Investigation Department from January 29, 1943, ‘socially-adapted’ Sinti/Sintize and Roma/Romnja were excepted from this insofar as they were willing to be sterilized. Additionally, the deportation effort should focus primarily on ‘Gypsy half-breeds’. This was attributed to the theory formulated by the ‘Racial Hygiene Research Center’ that, contrary to ‘purebred Gypsies’, ‘Gypsy half-breeds’ especially tended toward criminal activity. According to a letter dated April 7, 1942, from the Criminal Investigation Department in Munich to the Reich Headquarters in Berlin, the ‘Racial Hygienic Research Center’ had provided assessments for all of Bavaria on 64 ‘Gypsies’ and 484 ‘Gypsy half-breeds’ in 1942; another 340 persons were classified as ‘non-Gypsies’. The exact criteria used by the responsible criminal investigators to make their assessment are not known. It is likely that the ‘adapted’ way of life, consent to “voluntary” sterilization, or marriage to an “Aryan” partner played a role, and connections to the police and Nazi Party may have as well.
With the support of the uniformed police, officers of the Criminal Investigation Department arrested 136 Sinti/Sintize and Roma/Romnja on March 6-8, 1943, in Munich and the surrounding areas. Nearly half of those arrested were under the age of 18. First, they were held for several days at the police prison on Ettstraße. The director of the bureau, Senior Criminal Secretary August Wutz along with Criminal Secretary Josef Zeiser and other officers personally accompanied the people crammed into freight cars to Auschwitz-Birkenau. During the tribunal proceedings against Wutz, those who survived the war unanimously testified that the detainees were beaten and abused both during their arrest and while being transported. In the following days and weeks, several other Sinti/Sintize and Roma/Romnja from the Munich region were deported to the ‘Gypsy camp’. The conditions during their transport and in the camp itself were catastrophic. Disease spread rapidly. In addition to systematic malnourishment, hard forced labor especially while setting up the camp, and the lack of drinkable water, the inmates also suffered from the brutality of the guard units.
Of the over 22,000 Sinti/Sintize and Roma/Romnja deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau ‘Gypsy camp’ from the Third Reich, approximately 19,000 were murdered or died from the inhuman conditions in the camp. More than a few were victims of unethical medical experiments performed even on children and sometimes without anesthesia by the SS doctor, Dr. Josef Mengele, as Hugo Höllenreiner, among others, reported in his memoirs. In addition, the SS organized transports that were sent to other concentration camps specifically for such experiments.
In the spring of 1944, many inmates still considered ‘fit for work’ were taken from the ‘Gypsy camp’ and sent as forced laborers to the Buchenwald, Ravensbrück, and Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camps, and their satellite camps. In May 1944, the SS planned the so-called ‘liquidation’ of the ‘Gypsy camp’. They intended to murder the Sinti/Sintize and Roma/Romnja remaining in the camp in the gas chambers, but the prisoners resisted the SS with stones, tools, and self-made weapons. Inmates from Munich also participated in the mutiny in the ‘Gypsy camp’. For the time being, the inmates were able to avert impending destruction. In the following weeks, the SS sent those still classified as ‘fit for work’ and former soldiers of the Wehrmacht with their relatives, who were supposedly ‘privileged’, to the other concentration camps such as Buchenwald, Flossenbürg, and Ravensbrück. The nearly 3,000 remaining Sinti/Sintize and Roma/Romnja were murdered by the SS in the gas chambers on August 2-3, 1944.
At the Ravensbrück Concentration Camp, where some inmates from Munich were taken in the summer of 1944, SS doctors performed “voluntary” sterilization on Sinti/Sintize and Roma/Romnja over the course of twelve years. The freedom promised the Sinti/Sintize and Roma/Romnja in return for the surgery never materialized. In March 1945, the women and children were sent on a multi-day transport to Mauthausen Concentration Camp and to Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp only a few days later. Their transport lacked both sufficient food and water and sanitary facilities. The SS brought the men to the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. Some “volunteered” for military service there since they were promised the release of their family members in return. In this way, at least three inmates from Munich were coerced into fighting in the ranks of the Dirlewanger unit. Nevertheless, their family members were not released from the concentration camp.
In total, at least 99 of the 141 people deported in the spring of 1943 to Auschwitz from Munich and the surrounding area lost their lives in the Nazi camps.
Individual Deportations, Nazi Justice System
Those Sinti/Sintize and Roma/Romnja from Munich who were not sent to Auschwitz often had to agree to sterilization. Until the end of the war, they lived in constant fear of being deported to the concentration camps, which could result from the most minor transgression of the strict reporting requirements. At least five people persecuted as ‘Gypsies’ managed to escape arrest and deportation by disappearing and they lived intermittently in the city under a false identity.
In addition, Sinti/Sintize and Roma/Romnja had to fear the Nazi justice system, which became extremely radicalized over the course of the war. For example, 16-year-old Eduard Herzenberger was sentenced to a month in prison by a juvenile court for stealing a pair of shoes from a co-worker in 1940. Two years later, Herzenberger, who had left home after several conflicts with his father and was utterly destitute, committed multiple thefts. The Munich Special Court regarded him as a ‘racially inferior person’, and sentenced the 18-year-old to death on November 11, 1942, as a ‘parasite of the people’ and a ‘serious habitual offender’. The execution in Stadelheim Prison took place on March 26, 1943.
After the War
The majority of the Sinti/Sintize and Roma/Romnja from the Munich region were murdered in Nazi concentration camps or died there due to the poor conditions of the camps. The few who survived frequently returned to Munich and the surrounding region at first. However, their reintegration was extremely difficult because the majority of families were wiped out and discrimination against them did not stop even after the war. The property of those deported had also been confiscated by the Nazis and Sinti/Sintize and Roma/Romnja had to fight for decades to receive appropriate restitution. It wasn’t until 1982 that the Federal Republic of Germany acknowledged the Nazi crimes against the Sinti/Sintize and Roma/Romnja as genocide for reasons of ‘race’ thanks to the protest campaigns of a civil rights movement. This led to fundamental changes in the government’s approach to compensating those who had been persecuted by the Nazis as ‘Gypsies’.
By contrast, the perpetrators did not face any serious consequences in Germany. All of the Munich criminal inspectors who took part in the persecution of the Sinti/Sintize and Roma/Romnja remained unpunished for their involvement.
