The European Roma were deemed racially inferior by the Nazi Regime and tens of thousands were killed during the Holocaust. Their treatment during the Holocaust is sometimes paralleled to the Jews. A common misconception is that the Nazis were originators of the hatred towards the Roma. The truth is that the Christian Church was the first to persecute the Gypsies, it spread from there to the Britons. In the 19th century some Gypsy families were herded in to a forest area of England and forced to live in horrible conditions. Sounds familiar right?
Persecution of Gypsies had been around at least one hundred years before the Nazis took it to the extreme. In fact anti-Gypsy laws were in place long before the anti-Jew laws were enforced. As early as 1933 were the Gypsies being sterilized. That same year Gypsy concentration camps were established. In 1936, the movement against European Roma was globalized, European governments were supporting Nazi Germany in identifying the Roma in other European countries. Also in that year the Nazi party proclaimed that the problem with the Roma was one of race and should be taken care of in that manner.
The Roma were subjected to random imprisonment, forced labor, and eventually mass murder. Auschwitz, Dachua, and Ravensbrook were all possible concentration camps for the European Roma. One of the most gruesome experiences the Roma were put through were medical experiments by the infamous Josef Mengele. Gypsy twins were especially targeted and so were dwarves. The most common way the Gypsies were murdered was by gassing, the Nazis would load them on to vans and then pump carbon monoxide gas inside until they died. Conditions in the camps were the cause of many diseases, such as typhus, smal...
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...e worked, gassed, experiment on until death during the Holocaust. We will never know what children like Johan Stojka could have been if it wasn't for the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Roma. Stories of their treatment are nearly unbearable to read but shouldn't ever be forgotten. The one thing everyone can learn from their stories is that genocide is real and shouldn't ever be tolerated.
Works Cited
"Confront Genocide." — United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Nov. 2013.
"Gypsies: A Persecuted Race." : Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies : University of Minnesota. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Nov. 2013.
"Gypsies: A Persecuted Race." : Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies : University of Minnesota. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Nov. 2013.
"JOHANN (HANSI) STOJKA." Http://www.ushmm.org/. UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM, n.d. Web. 19 Nov. 2013.
...upying Poland in 1939, the policy of forced emigration became untenable for the Nazi regime. It was simply unrealistic to make more than 3 million Polish Jews emigrate. This led to ambitious Nazi plans for a solution to the ’Jewish Question’.” The Nazis wanted to keep their place to themselves, and they disliked the Jews. They tried moving the Jews to another place, but the amount of time it would take was too long. Therefore, they thought of the Final Solution. They sent Jews to concentration camps, where they killed many Jews. They though that this solution would keep their place to themselves, not to share with any other race. This reminds me of the Rwandan Genocide, because both genocides wanted to remove a specific group or race. In the Holocaust, they wanted to remove all Jews, and in the Rwandan Genocide, the Hutus wanted to wipe the whole Tutsis population.
Throughout history, Jews have been persecuted in just about every place they have settled. Here I have provided just a small ...
My essay focuses on discrimination as one of the main challenges that refugees face. I discuss some instances of discrimination that occurred in the book, whether based on race or culture,
The Holocaust took a great toll on many lives in one way or another, one in particular being Vladek
Living conditions in these camps were absolutely horrible. The amount of people being kept in one space, amongst being unsanitary, was harsh on the body.
"Victims." A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust. University of South Florida, 1 Jan. 1997. Web. 19 May 2014. .
The concentration camps and labor camps, also referred to as “extermination sites,” were scattered all across Europe (Hunt 865). While a few in Poland were designed strictly for the immediate genocide of certain groups of Jews, such as Auschwitz, other camps were designated for labor from the captured Jews, until their services were no ...
...he human depravity one can imagine. Even though Genocide did not begin with the Holocaust, Germany and Adolf Hitlers’ heartless desire for “Aryanization” came at the high cost of human violence, suffering and humiliation towards the Jewish race. These warning signs during the Holocaust, such as Anti-Semitism, Hitler Youth, Racial profiling, the Ghettos, Lodz, Crystal Night, Pogroms, and Deportation unraveled too late for the world to figure out what was going on and help prevent the horrors that came to pass. The lessons learned from all of this provide a better understanding of all the scars genocide leaves behind past and present. In spite the ongoing research in all of these areas today, we continue to learn new details and accounts. By exploring the various warning signs that pointed toward genocide, valuable knowledge was gained on how not to let it happen again.
Graham, Randolph L. "The Politics of Genocide." The Holocaust in Hungary, Volume 1. New York: The Rosenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies, 1994. 686.
In the article, “Columbus’s Legacy: Genocide in the America’s,” by David E. Stannard, the theme can be identified as contrary to popular belief that the millions of native peoples of the Americas that perished in the sixteenth century died not only from disease brought over by the Europeans, but also as a result of mass murder, as well as death due to working them to death.
Without a doubt, one of the darkest episodes in the history of mankind involved the systematic extermination of Jews, Gypsies, Slavs and gays by Nazi Germany. In order to get a good sense of the horror and despair that was felt by the interned, one simply needs to read the memoirs of Elie Wiesel in his “Night”, as translated from French by Stella Rodway and copyrighted by Bantam Books in 1960.
According to A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust, the Roma (Gypsies) and African-Germans were attacked because of their ethnicity. These two groups fell into the category of being “asocial” and too undesirable. The gypsies had pre-existing prejudices against them before Hitler’s rise which he just expanded on by creating laws against them. They had their civil rights taken away. Many were deported or sent to forced labor camps, and murdered. In 1933, the "Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Defects," was put into effect which gave doctors and physicians the ability to take away the choice and ability for the Roma and others to reproduce. The Romani and Negroes were considered minorities with “alien blood” so they were no longer allowed to marry those of the Aryan race (“Sinti and Roma”). The Gypsies and African-Germans foreign appearance, and customs were viewed as a threat to the “superior” race. They were under extreme scrutiny and judgment by researchers and scientists. They were measured, tested and became part of experiments to p...
"Final Solutions: Murderous Racial Hygiene, 1939–1945." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Council, 10 June 2013. Web. 27 May 2014.
The term ‘gypsy’, the slang term for the Roma, is considered derogatory for many and is not favored as a means to identify themselves, as the word came about to describe these travelers as being from Egypt, which was a mistaken assumption. The Roma actually historically originate as descendants from India. Though no one is quite sure on the time frame, it is estimated at being around 1000 A.D. when they left for new land and are documented as the first people of color to immigrate to Europe in such large numbers (bearspace article). They are a nomadic people and prefer to move and relocate when and where they please and while the ...
The holocaust is a horrible tragedy that occurred during World War two, when the Nazi’s persecuted the Jews throughout Europe. The poem ‘Refugee Blues’ and the extract ‘The Last Night’ are both about the recrimination and persecutions of Jewish people. They are both about facing cruelty and prejudice however the writers portray this in different ways. They both show us that the death of Jewish people is inevitable. In my essay I will show how persecution and suffering is conveyed.