Martin Holler
THE GEBIETSKOMMISSAR (Regional Commissioner) in Brest-Litovsk, Franz Burat, wrote in his June 24, 1943, situation report:1 “The presence of the Gypsies, who were sent to me last year from the Białystok administrative district, has a very devastating effect. Begging and stealing are the main occupation of this rural plague. I consider it urgently necessary that these idlers be treated as the Jews are and request the appropriate authorization.”2 These “Gypsies” were in fact hundreds of East Prussian Sinti who had been deported to Białystok at the beginning of 1942 and later on, in spring and late summer of the same year, transferred to Brest, where most of them were kept in a “Gypsy camp” (Zigeunerlager). The severity of the quoted remark stands in stark contrast to the dominating image of Burat among scholars. In his groundbreaking study on anti-Jewish policy in occupied Brest-Litovsk, Christopher R. Browning has shown that both the Gebietskommissar and the SS and Police Garrison Commander (SS- und Polizeistandortführer) tried to save Jewish workmen from annihilation in their area of responsibility. After the first mass shootings of Jews conducted by task forces (Einsatzgruppen) and police battalions under German military administration at the beginning of the war, the area of Brest went through a relatively calm period of several months under civil administration, even when the second wave of extermination reached the General District (Generalbezirk) Volhynia and Podolia in 1942. Ultimately, however, the higher authorities enforced the mass killing of all remaining Jews in Brest, which they prioritized over the economic concerns of the local administration.3
The deportation of East Prussian Sinti to Brest as such was, in two respects, a unique event in the course of Nazi occupation: On the one hand, it was the only deportation of German Sinti and Roma into the occupational zone subordinated to Alfred Rosenberg’s Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories (Reichsministerium für die besetzten Ostgebiete, hereafter RMbO).4 On the other hand, it was the only deportation of German citizens to the Reich Commissariat Ukraine (Reichskommissariat Ukraine, hereafter also RKU), insofar as corresponding plans for the deportation of German Jews were not implemented.5
In this chapter, I will analyze the reactions of the civil administration of Brest-Litovsk to the unannounced transfer of Sinti from Białystok and its “Gypsy policy” between May 1942, and April 1944. In order to critically scrutinize the perspective of the perpetrators on the alleged “Gypsy problem,” it is furthermore necessary to take the background and the conditions of the deportations from East Prussia to Białystok and from Białystok to Brest into account. Finally, I will describe the survival strategies of the affected Sinti on their forced odyssey through Eastern Europe.
The body of source material on the “Gypsy policy” in Brest is exceptionally good, since the situation reports of the Gebietskommissar in Brest-Litovsk and his subordinated administrative offices are largely preserved from late 1941 to the beginning of 1944.6 Personal statements of Sinti survivors at Brest are rare, but in combination with the documents it is nevertheless possible to reconstruct the reactions of the victims.
In relation to Białystok, however, the situation is the exact opposite. The body of perpetrator files on the treatment of the East Prussian Sinti is limited, while numerous testimonies of survivors—most of them had escaped before the deportation to Brest—and Polish eyewitnesses provide a detailed insight into the horrible conditions in the prison of Białystok.
Sinti had lived in East Prussia for centuries and spoke Romanes as well as the local Low German. For several generations, the vast majority of the ethnic minority led a sedentary life and dealt with agriculture.7 A large part of the approximately two thousand East Prussian Sinti worked as simple farm hands paid in kind, while several successful horse traders and farmers among them possessed their own house and farm. Further typical professions of local Sinti were bricklayer, bootmaker, artist, market trader, and vermin exterminator.8 The landless usually lived in rented rooms or small rural huts; emergency shelters or caravans were the exception.9 The director of the Research Center for Racial Hygiene and Population Biology (Rassenhygienische und bevölkerungsbiologische Forschungsstelle, hereafter RHF) in the Reich Ministry of Health, Dr. Robert Ritter, experienced severe difficulties in integrating the East Prussian Sinti, whose number he estimated at around 2,500,10 into his pseudoscientific concept of especially inferior “Gypsy half-castes” (Zigeunermischlinge).11 In particular, the obvious social integration of the “Gypsy bastard population” contradicted his racial theories. Hence, Ritter described the “Gypsies” of East Prussia as an exception to the rule, suggesting that they must have “absorbed the blood of sedentary and industrious people in the course of many centuries” and therefore seem to be despite “their racially foreign appearance . . . little ‘authentic,’” even though they still know the “romani chib” (Romani language). In order to substantiate his allegation, he named three purported distinguishing marks of “Gypsies” in other parts of Germany: defiance of traditional Romani taboos, regular school attendance of the children, and low musical talent.12 Nevertheless, the East Prussian Sinti also came into the focus of the “complex of science and police” (Zimmermann). Responsible for their genealogical registration and anthropological examination at the RHF was the scientific assistant Dr. Sophie Ehrhardt,13 who conducted two special expeditions for this purpose in 1940 and 1941. The Sinti were obliged by police summons—and in case of refusal by police force—to gather for the examination, in the course of which Ehrhardt and her assistants took photos, measured the body and head, and asked about family relations and ancestors. Furthermore, the police provided Ehrhardt’s commission with church registers, statistics, and “Gypsy files.”14
Altogether, the RHF examined and registered 1,087 East Prussian “Gypsies,” divided into men (nos. 1–548) and women (nos. 549–1087).15 The collected material included three-part portrait photo series (profile, frontal, and diagonal), morphological measuring cards, finger- and handprints, and genealogies. Both the morphological material and the extensive genealogical tables contained classifications of the mix degree (Mischlingsgrad), which followed in a slightly simplified manner the categories elaborated by Ritter for his race-diagnostic expert reports (rassendiagnostische Gutachten): “Z” meant pure Gypsy (Vollzigeuner); “ZM (+)” Gypsy half-caste with predominantly Gypsy blood (Zigeuner-Mischling mit vorwiegend zigeunerischem Blutsanteil); “ZM” “Gypsy half-caste with equal parts of German and Gypsy blood”; “ZM (–)” “Gypsy half-caste with predominantly German blood”; and “NZ” non-Gypsy (Nicht-Zigeuner). In case of doubt, categories such as “preliminary non-Gypsy” (vorl. NZ) were used.16
The practical initiative for repressive measures against the minority came from the Criminal Police Head Office of Königsberg (Kriminalpolizeileitstelle Königsberg), which applied to the Reich Criminal Police Office (Reichskriminalpolizeiamt, hereafter RKPA) of the Reich Security Main Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt, hereafter RSHA) in April and May 1941 for the permission to deport the East Prussian “Gypsies” from their area of responsibility. In July 1941, the RSHA only authorized the establishment of a “Gypsy communal camp” (Zigeunergemeinschaftslager) in cooperation with the district leadership of the NSDAP (Gauleitung), since “a general and final solution of the Gypsy question . . . currently cannot take place.”17 Subsequently, the local authorities surrounded existing “Gypsy” barracks at Contiener Weg in the southwest of Königsberg with barbed wire and delegated several policemen as guards.18 A part of the adult inmates fit for work were compulsorily employed for minimal remuneration outside the camp. Later, the Sinti of Königsberg shared the fate of the other “Gypsies and Gypsy half-castes” in the German Reich: On March 28, 1943, a transport with 352 Sinti (192 women and girls, 160 men and boys) from Königsberg arrived at the newly established Gypsy Family Camp (Zigeunerfamilienlager) of the concentration camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau.19 About 200–250 Sinti, however, remained in the Königsberg camp up to the end of the war. Between 1942 and 1945, several of the adult inmates underwent forced sterilization. In regard to East Prussia, however, the fate of the Sinti from Königsberg was an exception.20
The majority of Sinti and Roma in the East Prussia Province remained unaffected by internment measures up to the end of 1941. In the first two months of 1942, however, the local authorities started a large wave of arrests, whereby the police intruded around four or five o’clock in the morning into the houses of Sinti families and ordered them to pack their bags for resettlement to Poland. In some cases, the police officers tried to calm the situation by promising them that every family would receive a farm with a good piece of land.21 At the railway station, where they had to enter cattle trucks, the affected Sinti understood that all the promises were completely meaningless.22
Between January and February 1942, district after district of the East Prussia Province was made “free of Gypsies” (zigeunerfrei) by deporting the Sinti to Białystok,23 where they were concentrated in the prison of the town. In two cases, an escort command of the First Company of Reserve Police Battalion 13 met the arriving transports—around 100 Gypsies on January 5 and 125 Gypsies on January 31—at the station of Białystok and led the Sinti to the prison. The escorts took place “without incident,” as the war diary of the company mentioned.24 What the policemen perceived as proven routine, the unsuspecting victims experienced as traumatic shock. Amanda Dambrowski describes the reception in Białystok with the following words: “Around ten o’clock in the evening the train stopped. The doors were opened. SS men shouted: ‘Out, out and on to the lorry!’ We climbed them like crazy, the children cried. . . . As the lorry stopped, it was dark, we couldn’t see anything. Polish SS men [sic] stood there with rubber truncheons, they drove us, beat us and the children, no matter where. Crying and screaming began.”25 When the transport from Allenstein (Olsztyn) arrived, the deportees had to line up in the knee-deep snow, while the guards ransacked their luggage for valuables. If an adult moved or a child began to cry, they were beaten with sticks; it took three hours, before the group was directed to the prison.26
Conditions inside the prison of Białystok were at that time disastrous. Besides starvation and cold, the hygienic conditions were life-threatening. In the overcrowded cells, dozens of people had to share a single wooden bucket instead of a lavatory. Dambrowski continues: “Ice and snow were on the walls; the windows had been knocked out. No heating stove. No water to drink. No bed. Nothing. . . . Nobody wanted to go on the bucket, many wept from shame. But they had to go anyway. And so it went day in, day out. . . . The children had diarrhoea. We lay so close to each other. When they wanted to go to the bucket, they had to step over the others. Thereby they lost their faeces and everybody, sometimes the one, sometimes the other, got some of it.”27
In the wake of the unsanitary prison conditions in combination with malnutrition, diseases like typhus, spotted fever, and noma began to spread, which in particular took the lives of small children and elderly people.28 Former Polish prisoners confirm the high mortality among the Gypsies from Germany caused by hunger and epidemic typhus. According to postwar statements of eyewitnesses, on some days up to twenty Sinti died. Polish inmates had to carry the corpses to the vegetable garden behind the prison walls and bury them in mass graves.29
As of spring 1942, some of the Sinti were used for clearing work outside the prison area, which enabled them to make contact with the local population and to ask for help or barter for foodstuffs, which they could smuggle into the prison.30 Individual Sinti inmates even managed to escape.31
According to the Sinto Robert Adler, three months after his arrival in Białystok on February 14, 1942, approximately in mid-May, a commission came into the prison, headed by two female staff members of the RHF in the company of several police officers. One of the women interrogated the Sinti about their name, age, origin, and the like. Afterward, she carried out a physical examination by extensively scrutinizing the hands, the face (frontal and profile), and the back of the head, as Adler remembers. During the next day, the witness saw how three families, whom he knew from the daily yard exercise, were transferred to another cell block, and shortly afterward they were taken away from the prison.32 The point in time at which the examination took place indicates that the selection of the RHF commission must have taken place in connection with the first transport of Sinti to Brest-Litovsk in May 1942, which will be described in detail below. Most likely, the head of the commission was Anna Tobler, since Sophie Ehrhardt had left the RHF by the end of March 1942. In a postwar witness statement, Tobler admitted that Ritter had sent her “in 1943 [sic] to the Gypsy Camp [sic] Białystok, in order to tell him about the conditions there.” She could not tell, however, whether Ritter wrote to the RSHA about the bad conditions or not.33
A further selection took place in September 1942, immediately before the transfer of the remaining Sinti to Brest. Previously, individual families, especially landowners and relatives of Wehrmacht soldiers, had sent written petitions to German authorities, in which they asked for release or at least better prison conditions. Subsequently, single families, who had been rated “socially adapted” and whose home authorities agreed, were indeed allowed to return to East Prussia under certain prerequisites. The Dambrowski family, for example, was told that they would be released for “good behaviour, good repute among the neighbors in Goldap, and because they were farmers.” The precondition for their return to East Prussia was, however, their “agreement” to sterilization. Shortly after their return, every family member from the age of twelve up was sterilized. Amanda Dambrowski, who was pregnant at that time, had to undergo a forced abortion. Furthermore, the house and farmland of the Dambrowskis was occupied by other families, so that the returnees had to live in wooden barracks.34
Anna Tobler was the only former RHF staff member who confessed after 1945 that she had been aware of the dramatic situation of the East Prussian Sinti in the prison of Białystok. Yet, the recorded genealogies of Ritter’s Research Center show clearly that at least the high mortality rate among the imprisoned children must have been known to the staff, since cases of birth and death were added in some of the genealogical tables (Sippentafeln) up to the summer of 1942, partly with an exact date. Thus, the RHF must have been supplied with vital record changes, either by the prison authorities and the civil registry office of Białystok or by the RKPA and the East Prussian authorities. So far, the following picture emerges: In fifty-one cases we find the entry “† in Bialystok,” including twenty children aged under five years alone, and a further five children up to the age of sixteen years. In two cases, we find the additional remark “court-martialed and shot” (standrechtlich erschossen), indicating failed attempts to escape.35
Białystok was only a stopover of several months on the odyssey of the East Prussian Sinti. During the year 1942, the survivors of the extreme prison conditions were transferred to the town of Brest. The Gebietskommissariat in Brest-Litovsk was established in September 1941, as part of the Generalkommissariat Volhynia and Podolia in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine.36 Hence, like the Province of East Prussia and the Białystok district, Brest-Litovsk was subordinated to the authority of Gauleiter and Reichskommissar Erich Koch. The most important civil policymakers were Mayor Franz Burat,37 who was Stadtkommissar in Brest-Litovsk (town commissioner, from September 1942 also Gebietskommissar), and Major Friedrich Wilhelm Rohde of the Urban Police, who was SS- und Polizeistandortführer Brest-Litovsk and SS-Standartenführer.38 Until September 1942, Gebietskommissar Curt Rolle39 also had a certain influence on the administration of the town, since he headed the employment office in Brest during the first months of the German civil administration. Responsible for security police matters was Ernst Berger, who headed the Außenstelle Brest-Litowsk of the Brest-Litovsk Branch of the KdS Rovno (Kommandeur der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD Rowno).40
As Christopher R. Browning has demonstrated, the local civil administration of Brest tried in 1942 by all means to preserve parts of the Jewish ghetto, in order to continue to exploit the manpower of skilled Jewish artisans. When in May 1942, the second and final wave of extermination of the Jewish population reached the Generalbezirk Volhynia and Podolia, Burat, Rolle, and Rohde began to emphasize in their situation reports to their superior authorities the extraordinary economic value of the Jewish workers in the ghetto, who, at the same time, caused no danger and showed a great willingness to work, despite their extremely low food rations. Furthermore, the Jewish craftsmen were irreplaceable for the extended workshop complex, which was under continuing construction in 1942. While Stadtkommissar Burat intended to spare only Jews capable of work, SS- und Polizeistandortführer Rohde argued for keeping the entire Jewish community of the ghetto. According to Browning, the efforts and pragmatic arguments of the civil administration could only delay the killing wave in the Brest area for a certain time, but they were not able to stop it, since the higher authorities prioritized a complete annihilation for ideological reasons. In mid-October 1942, the Security Police liquidated the ghetto of Brest-Litovsk by killing all remaining Jews, including the skilled workers. During the previous six weeks, the Security Police had already liquidated the smaller ghettos of the regional towns around Brest.41
As described below, the attitude of the civil administration in Brest-Litovsk toward the East Prussian Sinti was the exact opposite compared to the case of the Jews in the ghetto. Both Burat and—at least at the beginning—Rohde complained about the unannounced transfer of the “Gypsies from Białystok,” who had to be supplied with food and accommodated in the town. Burat, especially, described this task as an extraordinary burden and tried everything to get rid of the deportees, but his attempts to convince the higher authorities remained unsuccessful. The treatment of the East Prussian Sinti in Brest can be divided roughly into four phases: Already in spring 1942, a first transport from Białystok with 150 Sinti arrived in Brest, apparently as a kind of test run. After a short time in prison and the checking of their identities, the deportees were released and treated like second-class Reich citizens; they received housing in the town, food supplies, and—although hesitantly—wages in accordance with German standards under civil administration. Shortly after the arrival of a second transport with a further 800 Sinti in September 1942, the norms for wages and supply were drastically reduced, and a guarded “Gypsy camp” was established. In early 1943, the Sinti were resettled to the former Jewish ghetto and partly used as forced laborers, while Burat in June 1943 openly demanded a radical “solution to the Gypsy problem,” without receiving the permission for mass murder from his superior authorities. Finally, in April 1944, the remaining East Prussian Sinti were deported from Brest-Litovsk to the concentration camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, where most of them were suffocated in the gas chambers in August 1944.
The German authorities in Brest-Litovsk were quite surprised when the first transport of Sinti arrived from Białystok in May 1942, since they had not been informed about it.42 What puzzled them even more was the circumstance that the deported Gypsies turned out to be citizens of the German Reich. Rohde stated in June 1942, that among the inmates of the prison in Brest-Litovsk were momentarily “around 150 apprehended Gypsies who declare to be Reich Germans (Reichsdeutsche). As far as they could prove this, they were in the meantime released and directly integrated into the labour process. The combing through of these Gypsies is not yet completed, so that the release of a further part has to be expected.”43
The assertion that the “Gypsies” were “apprehended” reflects the traditional language standard of the police in regard to Sinti and Roma, although the Urban Police had simply met the deportees at the railway station and brought them to the prison.44 Stadtkommissar Burat used a comparably stereotypical expression by stating that the “Gypsies” had been “expelled” (abgeschoben) from East Prussia via Białystok, and he called the deportees an “extraordinary nuisance.”45 Burat used similar coarse expressions in connection with disabled Jews, whose sustenance he described as “an extraordinary burden.”46 The second department of the Stadtkommissariat, in its turn, considered the behavior of the deported Sinti to be presumptuous and was worried about the German image among the local population:
The settlement of Gypsies in Brest-Litovsk is a nasty thing. They threaten the reputation of Germanness (Deutschtum) per se. The provision of accommodations proceeded with some strange accompaniments. They demanded, for instance, decent apartments and dared to explain in the presence of locals that they have come to Ukraine in order to provide cultural and pioneering work. The locals who witnessed this remark could not resist grinning slightly, and they certainly had good reason to do so. When you meet these people on the street, they openly greet with the Hitler salute (mit Deutschem Gruß), which is anything but pleasant.47
Several details of this description are remarkable: First of all, the East Prussian Sinti of the first transport seem to have had a special status in Brest-Litovsk. The transfer from Białystok is no longer described as “expulsion,” but as “settlement,” and the German authorities helped the newcomers find lodgings in the town. Apparently, the Sinti were also allowed to move about freely. Secondly, the comments on the alleged behavior of the Gypsies have to be treated cautiously due to the stereotypical anti-Gypsyism of the German authorities. After the humiliating experience of the deportation and the horrible conditions in the prison of Białystok, it seems rather unlikely that the Sinti harbored any illusions about their actual status in Brest-Litovsk, even if the racial experts would have made corresponding promises during the selection in Białystok. On the other hand, it is possible that the ostentatious display of Germanness, including making the Hitler salute and giving a self-confident appearance by demanding decent apartments, was a consciously chosen survival strategy. The complaining words of SS- und Polizeistandortführer Rohde from the same period of time corroborate this impression:
Meanwhile, I have released the so-called German Gypsies from prison and integrated them into the labour process. New difficulties appear insofar as the Gypsies assert on their own accord to be German subjects (Reichsangehörige). They demand, rightly or wrongly, ration cards for Germans, whereas so far they have been issued ration cards for the locals, which admittedly allowed them only to receive bread, since other foodstuff is not available. Furthermore, it is not yet clarified, whether pensions of German Gypsies unable to work can be payed further on here, since they have no means at all and therefore have to rely on begging and charity.48
Rohde’s insertion of “so-called German Gypsies” reveals his doubts and reluctance in regard to the identity of the deportees. On the other hand, he gives a rational explanation for the begging of Gypsies unfit for work, without any stereotypical interpretation. The SS- und Polizeistandortführer finally had no choice but to comply with the demands of the 150 East Prussian Sinti. Shortly after their release from prison, they received wages and food rations like other Germans in the town.49 Unfortunately, the period of relative safety lasted only for a short while.
The main deportation of East Prussian Sinti from Białystok followed in September 1942. Shortly after, the Urban Police of Brest-Litovsk reported on the “establishment of a Gypsy camp” with eight hundred inmates.50 The local resident and food supply registers of the town administration indicate that the 150 Sinti of the May transport were not put into the camp, but remained in their apartments.51 In any case, the total number of 950 Sinti deportees from Białystok suggests that a large part of the estimated two thousand Sinti deported from East Prussia had either not survived the disastrous conditions in the prison of Białystok or stayed back for other reasons.52 The “Gypsy camp” was situated on the grounds of a former prisoner of war (POW) camp, in which two-story wooden barracks served as accommodation.53 It was surrounded by a barbed wire fence and guarded by ten local—presumably Polish—members of the Urban Police under the leadership of two German commanders.54 According to eyewitnesses, a Sinto named Dombrowski became the camp elder. The newcomers had to work in various places, among them a cement factory and a dairy.55 Three East Prussian Sinti can be found on the municipal vehicle fleet’s list of drivers, and a further Sinto was even employed at the office of the major of the Urban Police.56 Most of the able-bodied Sinti, however, were used for important construction projects, as a November 1942 report of the Generalkommissar for Volhynia and Podolia reveals: “At present, 2,200 workers are employed in various road and bridge construction works, among them 400 Gypsies and 200 forced laborers.”57 Some survivors have described their work for the German Railways (Reichsbahn) under the guard of armed railway policemen,58 which might have taken place after the resettlement to the former ghetto in 1943, when the status of the East Prussian Sinti in Brest-Litovsk decreased.
The arrival of the Sinti transport from Białystok took place at a very critical moment in time. In the course of the second and final wave of extermination against the Jewish population in the RKU, the German Security Police had systematically liquidated the remaining ghettos of the district towns around Brest-Litovsk in August and September 1942. On October 15 and 16, 1942, finally, more than seventeen thousand Jews from the ghetto in Brest-Litovsk were murdered.59 For this purpose, the local security police, Gendarmerie, and Urban Police had gathered together with the newly arrived members of Police Battalion 310, Police Company Nuremberg (Polizeikompanie Nürnberg), and the Forty-Eighth Motorized Police Battalion. All Jews remaining in Brest, including around two thousand highly skilled craftsmen, were rounded up and divided in groups. The Jews unfit for transport were selected and shot in the area of the ghetto, among them a lot of children and elderly people. The other Jews were transferred in freight trains around a hundred kilometers to the northeast, where they were shot and buried in prepared pits in a forest near Bronnaia Gora. After the operation, the grounds of the ghetto were combed through several times in order to find any last hidden Jews, who were then murdered as well.60 Most likely, the East Prussian Sinti in Brest-Litovsk became to a certain extent witnesses of the horrible events in October 1942.
For the Sinti themselves, the situation also deteriorated, since they were made responsible for a typhus fever epidemic. In this context, Gebietskommissar Burat61 complained in his situation report for October and November 1942 about the behavior of the SS- und Polizeiführer,62 since the latter took—in disregard of the Gebietskommissar—the decision to allow some of the Gypsies to settle in the town instead of the camp. This led to, according to Burat, a spread of the disease throughout the whole town.63 The Gebietskommissar managed, nevertheless, to contain the center of infection “with the available primitive means.”64 What these primitive means looked like is not explained in the situation report, but it is notable that at the side of the paragraph, two exclamation marks are added with a blue pencil, apparently by the Generalkommissar for Volhynia and Podolia or his deputy, to whom the report was submitted. This might indicate that the Sinti affected with typhus fever were not only isolated from other inmates, but shot. The Soviet survivor Georgii Mikhailovich Karbuk, who was incarcerated in the prison of Brest-Litovsk during the German occupation, witnessed one day how “a large group of German Gypsies were shot in the prison yard.” Among the victims, he stated, were men, women, and children.65
In retrospect, Gebietskommissar Burat described the events differently: “The Gypsies who were expelled from the Białystok district, imported typhus fever (Fleckfieber). Especially in the prison, where the Gypsies had been temporarily accommodated, many cases of typhus fever (Flecktyphus) occurred, so that I was forced to place the so-called women’s prison, which is situated separately from the main prison, exclusively at the disposal of those affected with typhus fever.”66
Given the catastrophic hygienic conditions in Białystok’s prison, where many East Prussian Sinti had already died of typhus fever, the spread of this infectious disease to the deportees in Brest-Litovsk is not surprising. At the same time, typhus fever was in any case widespread in the town of Brest, particularly in the often-overcrowded camp for (unfit) laborers repatriated from the Reich (Arbeiterrückführerlager). In these cases, the local administration also resorted to the isolation of affected inmates in order to contain the spread of infection.67
The situation report of the employment office of Brest-Litovsk for November 1942, reveals that the Sinti ran the risk of ultimately losing their status as nationals of the German Reich: “At the moment, the wage-setting for Gypsies causes some difficulties. Thus far, wages typical in the [General] Government or the East Prussian rates have been payed. The reduction of the wage rates to those of the local population led to considerable dissatisfaction, which is unfortunately often even stirred-up by the employers, who take sides with the Gypsies.”68
The solidarity of the German employers in Brest-Litovsk indicates that they regarded the East Prussian Sinti as their own compatriots, and also that they were content with the performance of their employees. Meanwhile, it must have been clear to both sides—civil administration officials as well as employers—that the reduction of the wage rates to the level of locals would have life-threatening consequences for the affected Sinti. In the very same report, the employment office openly admitted how precarious the situation for local workers really was: “Every effort was made to ensure that the wages laid down in decrees and collective agreements are not exceeded. However, these wages do not offer any incentive for regular labour to the local workforces, since they are insufficient to cover the subsistence due to the extremely high prices on the free market. . . . It has a very negative impact on the population’s willingness to work, if you earn more money by selling two eggs on the black market than a skilled worker does for a day’s work.”69
For the inmates of the guarded Gypsy camp, the situation was even worse, since they were cut off from the local population of Brest and could not even take part in the unofficial barter trade in order to organize some additional food.
With the beginning of 1943, the Gebietskommissariat Brest-Litovsk intensified its efforts to get rid of the East Prussian Sinti. Particularly interested in such a solution was the employment office, which demanded the site of the Gypsy camp in order to establish a forced labor camp for “work-shy” locals. It was planned to deport the Sinti to eastern Ukraine: “The transfer of theses Gypsies to Dnepropetrovsk is now authorized by the Generalkommissariat, but the transport failed so far due to the missing provision of heating stoves for the railway wagons.”70 Seemingly, the German Reich nationality had—probably for the last time—saved the East Prussian Sinti from this transport under life-threatening conditions in freezing cold. Meanwhile, the destination of the planned deportation was a rather logical choice. The Generalkommissariat Dnepropetrovsk was industrially the most valuable part of the RKU, particularly because of the hydroelectric dam “Dneproges.” In the course of the “Ivan programme” and due to the large-scale deportations of forced laborers to the German Reich, the civil administration of this area had to face permanent shortages of manpower.71 Thus, the attempt to resettle the Sinti from Brest to Dnepropetrovsk might also have been based on economic concerns. In any case, the deportation plans as such meant a further aggravation of their situation. Finally, these plans were abandoned, potentially because of the negative development on the eastern front. After the defeat at Stalingrad, the German Wehrmacht was on the retreat, and in February 1943, the front approached eastern Ukraine. In autumn 1943, the Red Army already reached the Generalbezirk Dnepropetrovsk.
Meanwhile, in February 1943, the civil administration found a new temporary accommodation for the Sinti: “During the reference month, the original forced labour camp could at last be used again, after the Gypsies, who had been living here so far, had been resettled to the previous ghetto after consultation with the SD [actually Security Police; MH].”72 From the employment office’s point of view, an appropriate solution was found in this way, but for the Sinti the resettlement to the “blood-warm ghetto”73 was a bad omen. Furthermore, it seems that the surveillance was strengthened, since according to witnesses the Sinto Hermann Klein was shot for leaving the ghetto site.74
In reaction to the growing partisan activity and the disastrous supply situation, the Gebietskommissar in Brest-Litovsk radicalized his policy toward the local population under his control step by step, especially in connection with work demands and forced labor.75 With regard to the Sinti, the Gebietskommissar in Brest-Litovsk wanted to adopt an even more radical line. After the plans to deport them eastward had ultimately failed, Burat openly demanded their physical annihilation: “The presence of the Gypsies, who were sent to me last year from the Białystok administrative district, has a very devastating effect. Begging and stealing are the main occupation of this rural plague. I consider it urgently necessary that these idlers be treated as the Jews are and request the appropriate authorization.”76
The murderous intention behind the expression “be treated as the Jews are” is obvious, since the Jewish population of Brest and its surroundings had been murdered long before. At the same time, Burat’s enumeration of traditional anti-Gypsy stereotypes—“begging and stealing,” “rural plague” (Landplage), “idlers” (Tagediebe)77—in order to legitimize his demand is ideologically connoted with traveling Gypsies, although the East Prussian Sinti were sedentary and lived under conditions (barbed wire, armed guards) in which traveling, stealing, and begging were not even imaginable. Actually, the argumentation of the Gebietskommissar tells us more about himself than about the affected inmates of the Gypsy camp in the Brest ghetto. Burat’s image of “typical Gypsies” is obviously rooted in his professional activity as mayor of a provincial town in East Prussia of the prewar period and shaped the frame of reference of his administrative correspondence on Gypsies with his superior authorities, even when it comes to applications for physical extermination. In this particular case, however, his argumentation is extremely perfidious and even cynical, since he himself caused the development he criticizes: the gradual reduction of wage payments, social benefits, and supply rates, which Burat had enforced against the will of German employers on the ground, created a desperate situation for the affected Sinti. Yet, the Gebietskommissar interprets the increasing incapacity for work not as a consequence of permanent exploitation and malnutrition, but rather ascribes it to “the Gypsies” as alleged essential characteristics—“[work-shy] idlers.” Most likely, Burat’s real motivation was based on economic concerns, the more so as the supply of the local population—and even of the German officials—became more and more difficult to ensure. Furthermore, in 1943 the Urban Police in Brest was thinned out to the maximum, so that the guarding of the “Gypsy ghetto section” was hard to manage.78
Burat did not succeed with his radical demands, but the situation of the East Prussian Sinti in the former ghetto of Brest remained fragile. It took another six to eight months, however, before a definite decision about their further fate was made. At that time, in early 1944, the security situation in the district of Brest-Litovsk, which meanwhile belonged to the Generalkommissariat White Ruthenia, was already largely out of control. Due to the strong partisan activity, most individual district regions had lost their direct connection, since streets were mined, bridges destroyed, phone and electricity lines cut off, and so on. Even in the town of Brest, the German control over the local population decreased inexorably. The thinned-out police forces were no longer able to prevent or punish escapes or refusals to work.79
Hence, the final decision to deport the East Prussian Sinti to Auschwitz-Birkenau was, in my opinion, less connected with the mass deportations of Sinti and Roma from the Reich since 1943—or, as Michael Zimmermann asserts, the internal discussions at the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories and the Reichskommissariat Ostland about an official decree on sending all “roaming Gypsies and Gypsy half-castes” to concentration camps,80—than with the German preparatory measures in reaction to the approaching front: the Red Army recaptured Brest already in July 1944. On March 21, 1944, Burat wrote in his situation report to the Generalkommissar for White Ruthenia under the heading “Judentum (Jewry)” very briefly about the upcoming deportation of the Sinti from Brest-Litovsk: “There are no [more] Jews in the district, but only around a thousand Gypsies. These shall be deported in the near future to the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, as the SD informs.”81 The exact number of “Gypsies” remaining in Brest was at that time 880 persons, as a “list of evacuees” of the urban registration office later showed.82 Assuming a total number of 975 “Gypsies” in Brest-Litovsk (950 arrivals in May and September 1942, 13 arrivals in 1943,83 12 childbirths),84 the number decreased until April 1944 by 95 persons. We can conclude that these persons died in Brest-Litovsk between May 1942, and April 1944.85 In the current case, however, such statistics can only provide a rough approximation, since the numbers given in the German situation reports could be rounded figures, whereas the registration lists of the town’s administration are not completely recorded.
In fact, a train with the remaining East Prussian Sinti left Brest in April 1944, and was directed to the concentration camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau. At that time in the Gypsy Family Camp (Zigeunerfamilienlager) of Auschwitz II, Section B II e, which had been established in late February 1943, around six thousand of originally nineteen thousand inmates were living; the others had died in the course of a year due to permanent malnutrition and catastrophic hygienic conditions.86 On April 16, 1944, the new arrivals from Brest-Litovsk were added to the “Camp Register of Gypsies,” separated by gender: 445 women and girls received the numbers Z-10086 to Z-10530, while 407 men and boys were given the numbers Z-9384 to Z-9790.87 The total number of 852 newly registered Gypsies from Brest means that twenty-eight of the 880 deportees did not arrive (alive) at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Whether they died on the way or—less likely—managed to escape, is not recorded.
According to the “Camp Register,” thirty-five “Polish Gypsies” were among the East Prussian Sinti.88 The names of these Polish Roma can also be found in various documents of the town’s administration in Brest, including the deportation list.89 Judging from the birthplaces, most of them originated from the Białystok district and adjacent areas,90 thus there are grounds for the assumption that these Polish Roma had also been deported from Białystok to the Gypsy camp in Brest-Litovsk, whether together with the German Sinti or separately.
Apparently, the administration of Birkenau had prepared the camp section for the transfer from Brest-Litovsk. On April 15, 1944—one day before the arrival of the East Prussian Sinti—1,317 inmates of the Zigeunerfamilienlager, who had been selected as fit for work, were deported to other concentration camps in the Reich.91 It seems obvious that this transfer had the purpose of making room for new inmates at Section B II e. Furthermore, due to the negative course of the war, it was no longer possible to recruit enough forced laborers from the occupied eastern territories, so the German industry and the labor camps increasingly had to resort to concentration camp prisoners.92 Karola Fings and Frank Sparing, however, interpret the transfer of Sinti and Roma from Birkenau to other camps as a clear sign for the German preparation to liquidate the Zigeunerfamilienlager, implying a corresponding order in April 1944,93 but their argumentation does not include the arrival of the East Prussian Sinti during the same period. It is definite, in any case, that in mid-April 1944, the—relative—“special status of the Sinti in Auschwitz ended,” since selections for work deportations had never taken place before in Section B II e, as Martin Luchterhandt correctly emphasizes.94
Most scholars assume that the decision to liquidate the Zigeunerfamilienlager completely was not made until mid-May 1944, and that it was connected to the upcoming arrival of the first transports with Jews from Hungary. Rudolf Höß, who had already been the camp commander of Auschwitz-Birkenau from May 1940 to November 1943, returned on May 8, 1944, to his former domain in order to prepare for the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews. Wherever the capacity of the gas chambers and crematoria was not sufficient for an extermination measure of such massive scale, the SS had to organize temporary accommodation facilities inside the camp for some of the arriving Jews. Apparently, the barracks of Section B II e were regarded as one of the appropriate sites.95 The first attempt to liquidate the Zigeunerfamilienlager failed, however, due to the resistance of the Sinti and Roma, who had been warned by prisoner functionaries, as the Polish former political prisoner and office clerk at the Gypsy camp, Tadeusz Joachimowski, remembered after the war: On May 16, 1944, the SS imposed a block detention at B II e, and in the evening, several lorries entered the Zigeunerfamilienlager. SS men surrounded the barracks and ordered the Gypsies to come out in groups, block by block. However, the inmates, who were armed with metal tools and stones, refused to leave the barracks and entrenched themselves. Some of the adult Sinti, who had served in the Wehrmacht at the beginning of the war, threatened that they would not die without a struggle but rather take some of the killers with them. The SS men were completely confused about this reaction, and after consultation with the camp commander they decided to withdraw.96
During the following days, the camp administration conducted new selections of Sinti and Roma. More than 1,500 persons, among them many former Wehrmacht soldiers and their families, were transferred to the base camp Auschwitz I on May 23, 1944. One day later, a further deportation of young and able-bodied Sinti and Roma (aged between seventeen and twenty-five years) from the Zigeunerfamilienlager took place: eighty-two “Gypsy men” were transferred to Flossenbürg concentration camp,97 among them thirty-four East Prussian Sinti and four Polish Roma, who had arrived from Brest-Litovsk in April 1944.98 One hundred sixty-one “Gypsy women” were deported to the concentration camp Ravensbrück,99 among them twenty-two East Prussian Sintizze and one Polish Romni from Brest.100
At the beginning of August 1944, the SS started its second attempt to liquidate the Zigeunerfamilienlager. Prior to the liquidation, a last selection of young inmates took place, and these inmates were transferred to the earlier selected families at Auschwitz I. The SS told them that they would be brought to Hindenburg (Zabrze) in order to build barracks for a new Gypsy Camp with better sanitary facilities; later on, the remaining relatives would follow them. The train with the workforces left Auschwitz I on July 31, 1944, but took the direction of Birkenau and stopped near Section B II e, where the Sinti and Roma were allowed to say goodbye to their relatives and friends. This event, unique in the history of Auschwitz-Birkenau, obviously aimed to have a calming effect on the affected people in order to prevent any renewed resistance. Yet, two days after the train left, the SS imposed a block and camp detention. The Polish nurses and educators were gathered and transferred to other sections of Auschwitz II. In the evening, SS men surrounded the barracks and forced the inmates block by block to climb onto lorries, which brought the men, women, and children to the gas chambers of the crematoria. Up to the last moment, the victims desperately protested, asked for mercy, and resisted, but it did not help.101 The operation lasted the whole night. The following day, the SS combed the whole area of Section B II e and found a woman and two children in hiding places; they became the last victims of the former Zigeunerfamilienlager. Altogether, 2,897 Sinti and Roma were gassed and burned in the night of August 2–3, 1944.
How many East Prussian Sinti had been among the victims and how many had been selected for work beforehand, remains unclear in regard to the existing sources.102 Moreover, in autumn 1944, several return transports from Buchenwald to Auschwitz took place: among the 1,188 prisoners who were transferred on October 5, 1944, from Buchenwald concentration camp to Auschwitz II (Birkenau) and probably gassed on the same day there were 800 “Gypsy men.”103 Shortly after, on October 18, 1944, 217 “Gypsy women” and a further woman were sent back from Buchenwald to Auschwitz-Birkenau.104 Even those Sinti and Roma who stayed in Buchenwald and Ravensbrück had rather low chances of survival. The male prisoners fit for work were partly sent to Mittelbau-Dora, a subcamp of Buchenwald concentration camp, where the extremely hard forced labor in the tunnel system reduced the average life expectancy to a few weeks. In the Ravensbrück Women’s Concentration Camp, numerous “Gypsy” women and girls died of illnesses and malnutrition or from the cruel experiments of sterilization by x-rays and injections into the uterus.105
It seems likely that only a few dozen of the deported East Prussian Sinti survived the Nazi persecution. It has not been possible so far to calculate a definite number. The documents of the International Tracing Service and of German compensation offices allow us at least to examine individual fates, but a systematic analysis of this type of source is still a desideratum.
The surviving East Prussian Sinti suffered in many respects from the consequences of the war and the Nazi persecution: First of all, they shared the traumata of most German Sinti and Roma—the experience of humiliation and persecution, deportation, concentration camp, loss of many relatives, sterilization, and eventually the denied recognition as victims of racist persecution. Secondly, they lost their homes in East Prussia forever.
Although most East Prussian Sinti outside Königsberg had been sedentary peasants for generations and regarded by Robert Ritter as “untypical Gypsies,” they were arrested and deported by the German police to Białystok in early 1942. Due to the terrible conditions in the prison of Białystok, many Sinti inmates died of malnutrition and diseases, especially small children and elderly people. The RHF, which cooperated with the German police, was well informed about the high mortality rate, as entries in its genealogical tables reveal. Most likely, Ritter’s race specialists even took part in selections at the Białystok prison. Single families were allowed to return to East Prussia on the condition that they were sterilized, while a first group of 150 Sinti was deported to Brest-Litovsk in May 1942.
The local German authorities were confused by the unannounced arrival of Gypsies from Białystok, who even turned out to be of German Reich nationality. After a short time in the prison of Brest, the deportees received accommodation in the town as well as German wages and food supplies. This relatively privileged status ended, however, soon after the arrival of a further transport of around eight hundred East Prussian Sinti from Białystok, who were sent to a newly established Gypsy camp in Brest. The reduction of wages and food supplies to the level of locals threatened the Sinti with starvation.
It is unmistakable that in the case of Brest-Litovsk the initiative for a radical solution to the self-created “Gypsy problem” came from the Gebietskommissar himself. While Burat had attempted (in vain) to prevent the complete liquidation of the Jewish ghetto for economic reasons, he tried everything in order to get rid of the East Prussian Sinti. After initial hesitation with regard to their German nationality, he decided to deprive them step by step of their rights, beginning with the establishment of the guarded camp and followed by the reduction of wages and food supplies. When plans for a deportation of the German Gypsies from Brest to Dnepropetrovsk in 1943 failed, Burat openly demanded their physical extermination by proposing to the Generalkommissar for Volhynia and Podolia that they be treated “as the Jews are.” It was a different matter with the SS- und Polizeistandortführer in Brest-Litovsk, Rohde, who—after some initial skepticism—adopted a rather moderate position in regard to the Sinti deportees. Hence, the example of Brest-Litovsk demonstrates that the civil administration in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine could sometimes even have a much more radical attitude toward the “Gypsy question” than the SS. In the perception of Gebietskommissar Burat, Gypsies were “antisocial elements” and “useless eaters,” regardless of their actual working capacity and the support by their German employers in the town. Obviously, the fact that among the German Gypsies in Brest were skilled workers and experienced farmers in no way fit into Burat’s worldview. All in all, the example of Brest-Litovsk relativizes to a certain degree Mikhail Tyaglyy’s assumption that the genocidal intent with regard to “Gypsies” was mainly, if not exclusively, a matter for the Security Police and the Wehrmacht, while the civil administration was more interested in exploiting the work force.106 Especially at the Gebietskommissar level, stereotypical images of the Gypsies as such might have dominated and led to harsh anti-Gypsy attitudes. Unfortunately, so far, only the case of Brest-Litovsk allows binding statements on that question, thanks to the extraordinarily detailed record of bureaucratic correspondence from 1941 to 1944.
Indeed, the anti-Gypsy policy in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine was in general rather contradictory. On May 8, 1942, the deputy of Reichskommissar Ukraine, Dargel, ordered that henceforth “Gypsies are to be treated generally like Jews. A decree concerning a potential placement in ghettos will be issued later.”107 Here, the term “Gypsies” is used without any distinction. In two implementing orders, however, the Generalkommissar for Volhynia and Podolia concentrated on “itinerant Gypsies,” who ought to be arrested, imprisoned, and engaged for useful labor. Horses and wagons of the Gypsies were to be confiscated.108 Meanwhile, in July 1942, data on the Roma population were collected in Volhynia: on behalf of the Gebietskommissar in Stolin, the rural rayon administration of Vysotsk ordered the village administrations to submit information on all “Gypsies” living in the area, including information about their way of life, profession, ownership of land, and even whether they were “real Gypsies or half-castes.”109 Whether the village elders knew about the purpose of such inquiries is not clear, but at least they had the power to save Gypsies by ignoring their presence. In the current case of Vysotsk rayon, all nine village elders answered that no Gypsies live in their area. In other regions of the Generalbezirk Volhynia and Podolia, however, the mass murder of Roma started in spring and summer 1942 almost simultaneously. So far, seventeen mass shootings of Roma are known from this area, with a total of nearly a thousand victims, according to Soviet investigations.110
At the same time, it must be pointed out that compared to the local Roma in the Generalbezirk Volhynia and Podolia, the deported East Prussian Sinti had been granted an exceptional status from the very beginning. This also applies to the final deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau in April 1944, which had been labeled as an evacuation by the local administration of Brest-Litovsk. With their arrival at the Zigeunerfamilienlager, the deportees from Brest-Litovsk returned to the course of the regular Nazi persecution of German Sinti and Roma, which ended in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
MARTIN HOLLER, MA, studied history and Slavic (Polish and Russian) literature. He is the author of various works on the fate of Roma in Nazi-occupied Europe, including the monograph Der nationalsozialistische Völkermord an den Roma in der besetzten Sowjetunion 1941–1944 (2009). Holler has also contributed to several source edition projects on German history and the Holocaust.
1. I am grateful to Dr. Frank Reuter of the Documentation and Cultural Center of German Sinti and Roma as well as Karol Usakiewicz of the Institute of National Remembrance (Białystok branch) for their helpful comments and for supplying me with several copies from Polish archives. I would also like to thank Dr. Karola Fings of the National Socialism Documentation Center of the City of Cologne for valuable suggestions.
2. Situation report for May–June 1943, Gebietskommissar in Brest-Litovsk to Generalkommissar for Volhynia and Podolia, June 24, 1943, Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfelde (hereafter BArch Berlin), R 94/8, unpaginated (as in the entire record group R 94).
3. See the chapter by Christopher R. Browning, “German Killers: Orders from Above, Initiative from Below, and the Scope of Local Autonomy—The Case of Brest-Litovsk,” in Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German Killers (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 116–142.
4. Far-reaching plans of the Reich Criminal Police Office (Reichskriminalpolizeiamt, hereafter RKPA) for large deportations of “Gypsies” to Riga in the Reichskommissariat Ostland (hereafter RKO) were not realized. See Martin Luchterhandt, Der Weg nach Birkenau. Entstehung und Verlauf der nationalsozialistischen Verfolgung der “Zigeuner” (Lübeck: Schmidt-Römhild, 2000), 195.
5. At the beginning of 1942, concrete preparations for the deportation of German Jews to the District Area (Kreisgebiet) Shepetovka in order to use them as forced laborers for road building failed due to the resistance of Gebietskommissar Dr. Worbs. Eventually, the deportation plans from Germany to RKU were generally abandoned. See Dieter Pohl, “Schauplatz Ukraine. Der Massenmord an den Juden im Militärverwaltungsgebiet und im Reichskommissariat 1941–1943,” in Der Deutsche Krieg im Osten 1941–1944. Facetten einer Grenzüberschreitung, ed. Christian Hartmann, Johannes Hürter, Peter Lieb, and Dieter Pohl (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 2009), 155–196, here 175.
6. BArch Berlin, R 94/6, 7, and 8; Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Brestskoi Oblasti (State Archive of the Brest Oblast, hereafter GABO), f. 201.
7. Sedentary Sinti farmers could be encountered in East Prussia already in the first half of the nineteenth century. See Carl von Heister, Ethnographische und geschichtliche Notizen über die Zigeuner (Königsberg: Gräfe und Unzer, 1842), 144–155.
8. Jana Mechelhoff-Herezi and Uwe Neumärker, “Nachwort. ‘Heimat im deutschen Osten’—Leben, Verfolgung und Vernichtung der ostpreußischen Sinti,” in Reinhard Florian, Ich wollte nach Hause, nach Ostpreußen! Das Überleben eines deutschen Sinto, ed. Jana Mechelhoff-Herezi and Uwe Neumärker (Berlin: Stiftung Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas, 2012), 93–109, here 94–95; Sophie Ehrhardt, “Zigeuner und Zigeunermischlinge in Ostpreußen,” Volk und Rasse 17, no. 3 (March 1942): 52–57, here 53; Sophie Ehrhardt, “Über Sesshaftigkeit und Grundbesitz ostpreussischer Zigeuner. In dieser Fassung an Dr. R. Ritter geschickt—am 16.6.1942” [unpublished manuscript, copy from 1980], Universitätsarchiv Tübingen (hereafter UAT), 288/5, unpaginated.
9. In the Lomse quarter of Königsberg, two communal Gypsy barracks accommodated several Sinti families. The building of such wooden barracks was connected with the restrictions on enlargement of the fortress city, which caused a permanent lack of housing space. See Bruno Schwan, Die Wohnungsnot und das Wohnungselend in Deutschland (Berlin: Carl Heymanns, 1929), 168–171, with illustrations on 169 and 171.
10. “Übersicht über die in Deutschland lebenden Zigeuner und Zigeunermischlinge,” undated [1940]. BArch Berlin, ZSg 142/70, unpaginated.
11. On the abstruse racial theories of Ritter see among others “Arbeitsbericht Dr. Ritters an die Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft,” January 20, 1940, BArch Berlin, R 73/14005, unpaginated; Benno Müller-Hill, Tödliche Wissenschaft: Die Aussonderung von Juden, Zigeunern und Geisteskranken 1933–1945 (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt Taschenbuch, 1984), 59–64; Michael Zimmermann, Rassenutopie und Genozid. Die nationalsozialistische “Lösung der Zigeunerfrage” (Hamburg: Christians, 1996), 135–138.
12. See Robert Ritter, “Die Zigeunerfrage und das Zigeunerbastardproblem,” Fortschritte der Erbpathologie, Rassenhygiene und ihrer Grenzgebiete 3 (1939): 2–20, here 12. The apparent incompatibility of theory and reality led Ritter to ignore the example of East Prussian “Gypsies” in his subsequent publications. See Zimmermann, Rassenutopie, 137. This could also be the reason why Sophie Ehrhardt’s aforementioned second contribution on the topic (“Über Sesshaftigkeit und Grundbesitz ostpreussischer Zigeuner”) remained unpublished.
13. Sophie Ehrhardt (1902–1990) graduated in zoology with a doctoral thesis on the behavior of ants. In 1935, she became assistant of the race specialist H. F. K. Günther in Berlin. From October 1938 to March 1942, Ehrhardt worked for Robert Ritter in the RHF. Afterward she moved to Tübingen and began to work at the University’s Institute for Racial Biology, which was renamed after 1945 to Anthropological Institute. Ehrhardt continued her work and became a nontenured professor in 1957, before retiring in 1968. See “Lebenslauf von Sophie Ehrhardt,” 1980, UAT, 288/5; Bernd Grün, Sophie Ehrhardt (1902–1990) (2005), http://www.uni-tuebingen.de/frauenstudium/daten/biographien/Biogramm_SophieEhrhard.pdf (last accessed on August 16, 2015); Hans-Joachim Lang, “‘Ein schöner Einblick in die Forschungsarbeit.’ Vorbereitende Beiträge Tübinger Wissenschaftler für die Zwangssterilisation und Ermordung deutscher Sinti,” in Sinti und Roma und Wir. Ausgrenzung, Internierung und Verfolgung einer Minderheit, ed. Ulrich Hägele (Tübingen: Kulturamt, 1998), 75–90.
14. See Sophie Ehrhardt, “Kurzer Reisebericht über meine Untersuchungen an Zigeunern in Ostpreussen,” September 10, 1980, UAT, 288/5; Ehrhardt, “Über Sesshaftigkeit.”
15. The card record system was based on numerical and alphabetical order. See BArch Berlin, R 165/7, 8, and 9.
16. See BArch Berlin, R 165, passim.
17. “Reichssicherheitshauptamt an Kriminalpolizeileitstelle in Königsberg vom 22. Juli 1941—auf dortige Schreiben vom 1.4.1941 und 18.5.1941 betr. Abschiebung der ostpreußischen Zigeuner.” Printed in Reichssicherheitshauptamt, Amt V, ed., Sammlung der auf dem Gebiete der vorbeugenden Verbrechensbekämpfung ergangenen Erlasse und sonstigen Bestimmungen, BArch Berlin, RD 19/28-15, fols. 237–237a. The reference letters of the Kriminalpolizeileitstelle Königsberg are not recorded.
18. It is possible, however, that the barracks in Königsberg were already fenced off in 1938, as several survivors stated. See Rechtsprechung zum Wiedergutmachungsrecht 9 (1962): 4–5. Generally, the history of this camp needs further investigation.
19. See Danuta Czech, Kalendarium der Ereignisse im Konzentrationslager Auschwitz-Birkenau 1939–1945 (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1989), 452; State Museum of Auschwitz-Birkenau in cooperation with the Documentary and Cultural Center of German Sintis and Roms, Heidelberg, eds., Memorial Book: The Gypsies at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Vols. 1 and 2 (Munich: K.G. Saur, 1993), Camp Register of Gypsies at Auschwitz-Birkenau (females), Nos. Z-5963 to Z-6154, 410–423; Camp Register of Gypsies at Auschwitz-Birkenau (males), Nos. Z-5397 to Z-5458, and Z-5462 to Z-5559, 1046–1057.
20. A further specific victim group were young men, who in June 1938 had been arrested during Operation Workshy Reich (Aktion Arbeitsscheu Reich) and taken to concentration camps, where they were marked with the black triangle of alleged “antisocial elements” (Asoziale). Furthermore, arbitrary single arrests and compulsory employments could take place since December 1937 in the framework of the decree on Crime Prevention by the Police (Vorbeugende Verbrechensbekämpfung durch die Polizei); in most cases, the affected individuals were later also transferred to concentration camps. All these measures affected likewise several hundred Sinti and Roma throughout Nazi Germany. See Wolfgang Ayaß, “Asoziale” im Nationalsozialismus (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1995), 138–165 and 196–197. Concerning East Prussia Sinti, only single cases are recorded.
21. See “Erinnerungsbericht des Sinto Franz Wirbel,” 1979, Archiwum Państwowego Muzeum w Oświęcimiu (Archive of the State Museum of Auschwitz-Birkenau, hereafter APMO), 165739/783, ark. 3–26, here 3; “Zeuge Robert Adler,” May 26, 1983, BArch Ludwigsburg, B 162/21080, fols. 202–207, here fols. 202–203; “Zeuge Hermann Dambrowski,” November 10, 1983, BArch Ludwigsburg, B 162/21080, fol. 239.
22. See Franz Wirbel, “Die Rückkehr von Auschwitz,” Pogrom. Zeitschrift für bedrohte Völker 12, no. 80–81 (March–April 1981): 142–143, here 142; Zimmermann, Rassenutopie, 228. For the deportation from Sensburg a passenger train was used. See “Zeuge Robert Adler,” May 26, 1983, BArch Ludwigsburg, B 162/21080, fols. 202–207, here fol. 203.
23. Under German occupation, the Bezirk Bialystok was subordinated to Gauleiter Erich Koch in his function as Chief of Civil Administration (Chef der Zivilverwaltung). The district had a special status with a rather provisional character, since Nazi plans for an incorporation into East Prussia were never implemented.
24. See “Kriegstagebuch Nr. 3 der 1. Komp. des Res.Pol.Batl. 13 vom 5. und 31. Januar 1942,” BArch Berlin, R 20/76, fols. 542 and 553.
25. Amanda Dambrowski, “Das Schicksal einer vertriebenen ostpreußischen Sinti-Familie im NS-Staat,” Pogrom. Zeitschrift für bedrohte Völker 12, no. 80–81 (March–April 1981): 72–75, here 72. Most survivors reported about the shouting and beating by the guards when they arrived in Białystok.
26. See “Erinnerungsbericht Wirbel,” APMO, 165739/783, ark. 3–4.
27. Dambrowski, “Das Schicksal,” 73.
28. See “Erinnerungsbericht Wirbel,” APMO, 165739/783, ark. 4; Dambrowski: “Das Schicksal,” 73–74.
29. See “Protokół przesłuchania Michała Bury w OKBZH w Białymstoku,” March 7, 1968, Archiwum Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej, Oddział w Białymstoku (Archive of the Institute of National Remembrance Branch in Białystok, hereafter AIPN Bi), 1/52, ark. 5; “Protokół przesłuchania Mikołaja Hryniewickiego w OKBZH w Białymstoku, May 11, 1968, AIPN Bi, S 2/68/1, ark. 20”; “Protokół przesłuchania Franciszka Zdanowicza w OKBZH w Białymstoku,” January 12, 1972, AIPN Bi, 1/52, ark. 70; “Protokół przesłuchania Filipa Stepaniukaw OKBZH w Białymstoku,” August 15, 1972, AIPN Bi, 1/53, ark. 143. Exhumations, which IPN conducted in cooperation with the public prosecutor of Białystok between 2013 and 2015 at the former garden of the prison (today remand center), revealed sixty-five pits with at least 359 human remains, including approximately 30 percent children. The scale of bodies comprised victims of both Nazi occupation and Stalinism, the murders took place between 1939 and 1956. With the help of DNA comparisons with relatives, it was possible to identify almost two hundred persons. See Marcin Zwolski, “Ekshumacje z dołów śmierci w Białymstoku,” Kresowiacy (August 27, 2015), http://kresowiacy.com/2015/08/ekshumacje-z-dolow-smierci-w-bialymstoku/ (last accessed on September 27, 2015); Marcin Zwolski, Searching and Identifying the Victims of the Crimes of Totalitarian Regimes: Remand Centre in Białystok 2013–2014. Information material for the Conference “Searching and Identifying the Victims of the Crimes of Totalitarian Regimes: Polish Experiences in the European Context (Białystok, June 25–26, 2015),” Based on the Exhibition by the Branch Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation of the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) in Białystok (Białystok: IPN, 2015). The identification via DNA comparison did so far not take place in relation to the skeletons of children. In all probability, most of the young victims could turn out to be Sinti, since the usual inmates under German occupation—and Stalinism—had been adult men. Only in the case of Gypsies and Jews, whole families had been put into the prison of Białystok.
30. Dambrowski, “Das Schicksal,” 74; Zimmermann, Rassenutopie, 229.
31. See “Erinnerungsbericht Wirbel,” APMO, 165739/783, ark. 4–10; Guenter Lewy, The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 83.
32. “Zeuge Robert Adler,” May 26, 1983, BArch Ludwigsburg, B 162/21080, fols. 204–207. Adler speaks in his entire interrogation about the year 1941 instead of 1942; for unknown reasons, the interrogators did not bring his attention to this obvious mistake.
33. See Hohmann, Robert Ritter, 537. The trip to Białystok, however, must have taken place in 1942, since in 1943 the East Prussian Sinti were situated in Brest.
34. “Zeuge Paul Dambrowski,” July 27, 1983. BArch Ludwigsburg, B 162/21080, fols. 218–219; Dambrowski, “Das Schicksal,” 74.
35. BArch Berlin, R 165/134–165.
36. Only in 1944, after the Red Army had recaptured large parts of the Generalkommissariat Volhynia and Podolia, the Gebietskommissariat Brest-Litovsk became part of the Generalkommissariat Weißruthenien (General District White Ruthenia [Belarus]) in the RKO.
37. Franz Burat (1896–1973), communal politician; 1931 joined the NSDAP; as of 1936 mayor of Ragnit (Tilsit district); September 1939 to February 1940 acting mayor of Zichenau (Ciechanów); September 1941 to 1942 Stadtkommissar in Brest-Litowsk, then Gebietskommissar in Brest-Litovsk until July 1944; 1945 to 1953 in Soviet captivity; 1963 to 1973 member of the District Committee Tilsit of the Landsmannschaft Ostpreußen (“Homeland Association of East Prussia”). See BArch Berlin, former BDC, NSDAP-Zentralkartei; “Vernehmung des Bürgermeisters a.D. Franz Burat,” November 19, 1962, BArch Ludwigsburg, B 162/29839 (AR 1.040/72), fol. 8; Browning, Nazi Policy, 193 and 205.
38. Friedrich Wilhelm Rohde (1893–1975), merchant; 1915 to 1918 soldier; 1927 NSDAP entry; as of August 1933 member of the Urban Police; SA member until 1935; 1939 SS entry; November 1941 to December 1942 SS- und Polizeistandortführer Brest-Litovsk; as of 1943 combating of Soviet partisans within Kampfgruppe von Gottberg (Combat Group von Gottberg). See BArch Berlin, former BDC, SSO file Friedrich Wilhelm Rohde; Browning, Nazi Policy, 193–194 and 205–206.
39. Curt/Kurt Rolle (born 1903), SA-Standartenführer; 1932 NSDAP and SA entry; April 1920 to March 1934 Reichswehr (Army); as of April 1934 full-time SA officer; September 1939 to 1941 military service; September 1941 to 1942 Gebietskommissar in Brest-Litovsk, afterwards Gebietskommissar in Staro-Konstantinov; postwar investigations of the Public Prosecutor’s Office led to no results, since the residence of Rolle could not be detected. See BArch Berlin, former BDC, SA file Kurt Rolle; BArch Berlin, former BDC, PK/P 121; BArch Ludwigsburg, B 162/4835 (AR-Z 334/59), fol. 750; Browning, Nazi Policy, 193, 205, and 212.
40. Ernst Berger (1904–1960), senior police detective; 1933 SA membership for six months; 1936 SS entry; 1937 NSDAP entry; 1928 police service; 1933 Gestapo official; as of February 1942 head of the KdS-Außenstelle Brest-Litowsk; Berger committed suicide on June 18, 1960 after his release from custody. See BArch Berlin, former BDC, SSO file Ernst Berger; BArch Ludwigsburg, B 162/4835 (AR-Z 334/59), fol. 745; Browning, Nazi Policy, 194 and 212.
41. Browning, Nazi Policy, 179–217, esp. 193–205.
42. Situation report of the Stadtkommissar in Brest-Litovsk for June 1942, BArch, R 94/6.
43. Situation report of the SS- und Polizeistandortführer Brest-Litovsk for May 15 to June 15, 1942, BArch Berlin, R 94/6.
44. Stereotypical police terminologies concerning Gypsies had a long tradition in the German Reich. See the examples in Zimmermann, Rassenutopie, 376.
45. Situation report of the Stadtkommissar in Brest-Litovsk for June 1942, BArch Berlin, R 94/6.
46. See Situation report of the Stadtkommissar in Brest-Litovsk for May 1942, BArch Berlin, R 94/6; Browning, Nazi Policy, 197.
47. Situation report of the Stadtkommissariat in Brest-Litovsk, department II, for June 1942, BArch Berlin, R 94/6.
48. Situation report of the SS- und Polizeistandortführer Brest-Litovsk for June 15 to July 15, 1942, BArch Berlin, R 94/6.
49. This follows indirectly from a later report of the employment office in Brest-Litovsk, in which the standard wages of the Sinti are reduced to the level of the local population. See Situation report of the Gebietskommissar in Brest-Litovsk, employment office, for November 1942, BArch Berlin, R 94/7.
50. Situation report of the Schutzpolizei-Dienstabteilung (Service Department of the Urban Police) Brest-Litovsk, BArch Berlin, R 94/7.
51. See the various registers in GABO, f. 201, op. 1. The addresses of these Sinti did not change even in 1943, when the inmates of the Gypsy camp were transferred to the former ghetto, but they were included in the deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1944. See the various registers in GABO, d. 583, ll. 99–105ob.
52. Michael Zimmermann assumes that an unknown number of East Prussian Sinti could have been among the Polish Roma who were deported in March and May 1943 from the Białystok district to the concentration camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau and gassed without registration. See Zimmermann, Rassenutopie, 459–460. This would mean that some of the East Prussian Sinti stayed back in Białystok in 1942, be it because they were needed as forced laborers or for other reasons. However, it is not possible to provide documentary proof of this assumption.
53. See Luchterhandt, Der Weg, 197; Donald Kenrick and Grattan Puxon, The Destiny of Europe’s Gypsies (London: Sussex University Press, 1972), 98.
54. Situation report of the Schutzpolizei-Dienstabteilung Brest-Litovsk, October 12, 1942, BArch Berlin, R 94/7.
55. Kenrick and Puxon, The Destiny, 98; GABO, f. 201, op. 1, d. 548, l. 57.
56. See “Namentliches Verzeichnis der Angestellten, Fuhrmänner und Arbeiter des Fuhrparkes Stralo Brest,” May 21, 1943, GABO, f. 201, op. 1, d. 6678; GABO, f. 201, op. 1, d. 548, ll. 59–60ob.
57. Situation report for September–October 1942, Generalkommissar for Volhynia and Podolia to Reichskommissar Ukraine, November 1, 1942, BArch Berlin, R 6/687, fols. 6–85, here fol. 70. The date of the report and the differentiation between “Gypsies” and “forced laborers” suggest that the “400 Gypsies” were indeed East Prussian Sinti. This observation contradicts Christian Gerlach’s assumption that the statement of Generalkommissar Schöne proves that “travelling Roma” “after their arrests were partly used as forced laborers in work gangs.” See Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, 1067.
58. Lewy, The Nazi Persecution, 83; Luchterhandt, Der Weg, 197; Zimmermann, Rassenutopie, 229; “Zeuge Hermann Dambrowski,” November 10, 1983, BArch Ludwigsburg, B 162/21080, fol. 240.
59. The exact number of victims of the ghetto liquidation is most likely 17,893, as the registration office’s statistics on the population figure demonstrate very vividly: On October 15, 1942, 16,934 Jews with “permanent residence” (stałych mieszkańców) and 959 Jews with “temporary residence” (czasowych mieszkańców) were registered in Brest-Litovsk. For the next day, the same numbers appear, but they are crossed out. Finally, from October 17, 1942 on, the column for Jewish residents remained empty. GABO, f. 201, op. 1, d. 502, ll. 15ob-16.
60. See Browning, Nazi Policy, 203–204; Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, 716–717; E. [Evgenii] Rozenblat, “Zhizn‘ i sud’ba” brestskoi evreiskoi obshchiny XIV-XX vv. (Brest: Beloruskii Fond Kul’tury, 1993), 33–37.
61. In the course of an administrative reform on September 1, 1942, the Stadtkommissariat and the Gebietskommissariat Brest-Litovsk had been united under the name Gebietskommissariat. In his new function as Gebietskommissar in Brest-Litovsk, Burat was responsible for both the town and the surrounding district, while his former colleague Curt Rolle became Gebietskommissar in Staro-Konstantinov.
62. As in the document. Most likely, Burat meant SS- und Polizeistandortführer Rohde.
63. Situation report of the Gebietskommissariat Brest-Litovsk, department II, for October 1942, BArch Berlin, R 94/7. It seems that Rohde henceforth generally followed a softer line in the Gypsy question than Burat.
64. Situation report of the Gebietskommissariat Brest-Litovsk, department II, for October 1942, BArch Berlin, R 94/7.
65. Paul Kohl, “Ich wundere mich, daß ich noch lebe.” Sowjetische Augenzeugen berichten (Gütersloh: Mohn, 1990), 39. Christian Gerlach was the first historian to point to the possible link between this mass shooting and the occurrence of typhus fever in late 1942. See Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, 1066. However, Karbuk does not mention any date or approximate time period, so that clear proof cannot be provided. East Prussian Sinti survivors did not mention any mass shootings during their stay in Brest-Litovsk, but this might be explained by an earlier isolation of the infected, due to which contact to the others was lost. At the same time, the investigation files of the Soviet Extraordinary State Commission dealing with similar Nazi crimes in Brest-Litovsk do not contain information about the potential shooting of Gypsies in the prison. See State Archive of the Russian Federation (Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii, GARF), f. 7021, op. 83, d. 10; GABO, f. 501, op. 1, dd. 41, 298.
66. Situation report of the Gebietskommissar in Brest-Litovsk for November–December 1942, BArch Berlin, R 94/7.
67. Situation report of the Gebietskommissar in Brest-Litovsk for November–December 1942, BArch Berlin, R 94/7.
68. Situation report of the Gebietskommissar in Brest-Litovsk for November–December 1942, BArch Berlin, R 94/7.
69. Situation report of the Gebietskommissar in Brest-Litovsk for November–December 1942, BArch Berlin, R 94/7.
70. Situation report of the Gebietskommissar in Brest-Litovsk, employment office, for January 1943, BArch Berlin, R 94/8.
71. On the “Ivan programme” see Kim Christian Priemel, Flick. Eine Konzerngeschichte vom Kaiserreich bis zur Bundesrepublik (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2007), 465–467.
72. Situation report of the Gebietskommissar in Brest-Litovsk, employment office, for February 1943, BArch Berlin, R 94/8. In the run-up to the mass murder of the Jewish population of Brest, the KdS-Außenstelle had taken over the legal responsibility for the ghetto in August 1942. See Browning, Nazi Policy, 201. Evidently, the site of the former ghetto remained under the control of the Security Police even after its liquidation.
73. This is how the survivor Franz Wirbel, whose relatives were affected, expressed it after the war. See Wirbel, “Die Rückkehr von Auschwitz,” 142.
74. See Luchterhandt, Der Weg, 197.
75. Situation report of the Gebietskommissar in Brest-Litovsk for May–June 1943, BArch Berlin, R 94/8.
76. Situation report of the Gebietskommissar in Brest-Litovsk for May–June 1943, BArch Berlin, R 94/8.
77. On the development and changes of anti-Gypsy stereotypes in Germany and Europe see among others Klaus-Michael Bogdal, Europa erfindet die Zigeuner. Eine Geschichte von Faszination und Verachtung (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2011); David Mayall, Gypsy Identities 1500–2000: From Egypcyans and Moon-men to the Ethnic Romany (London: Routledge, 2004); Wolfgang Wippermann, “Wie die Zigeuner.” Antisemitismus und Antiziganismus im Vergleich (Berlin: Elefanten Press, 1997).
78. Complaints about the extremely limited personnel resources of the Schutzpolizei grew in 1943 and 1944 permanently. See BArch Berlin, R 94/8.
79. This severe problem had bothered the civil administration already since mid-1943, and the situation continued to get worse day by day. See the work situation reports of the Gebietskommissar in Brest-Litovsk, June 25, 1943 and January 25, 1944, BArch Berlin, R 94/8.
80. See Zimmermann, Rassenutopie, 315. Zimmermann’s argumentation is untenable for two obvious reasons: firstly, the East Prussian Sinti were no “roaming Gypsies and Gypsy half-castes,” as even Robert Ritter had to admit; secondly, they had been kept in a camp already since September 1942.
81. Situation report of the Gebietskommissar in Brest-Litovsk for January–March 1944, BArch Berlin, R 94/8.
82. See “Verzeichnis der Personen, die Brest-Litowsk verlassen haben” (Register of persons who have left Brest-Litovsk), June 12, 1944, GABO, f. 201, op. 1, d. 583, ll. 99–105ob. The “evacuation” as such had already taken place two months before.
83. At the end of March 1943, two families—one with five children, the other with four—arrived in Brest-Litovsk and received “the permission of the Stadtkommissar [actually Gebietskommissar; MH]” to register in the town, as the registration office of the town administration expressed it. Whether this was an additional deportation or—as the term “permission” suggests—the result of an approved application for family reunion, does not emerge from the document. See the entries from March 26 and 30, 1943, in “Verzeichnis der nach Brest-Litowsk ankommenden Personen” (Register of persons arriving in Brest-Litovsk), GABO, f. 201, op. 1, d. 584, ll. 4 and 8.
84. Childbirths were also registered in the “Verzeichnis der nach Brest-Litowsk ankommenden Personen.” In the period from August 16 to November 16, 1943, eight “Gypsy” children were born, between January 25 and April 1, 1944, another four. See GABO, f. 201, op. 1, d. 586, fol. 46, 64, 71ob, 94ob, 96, 119ob; ibid., d. 654, ll. 2, 9ob, 13, 44ob.
85. Only two entries of death can be found in the lists of the registration office, both cases concern “Gypsy women.” See the entries from June 30, 1943, and March 6, 1944, in “Verzeichnis der Brest-Litowsk verlassenden Personen,” GABO, f. 201, op. 1, d. 586, l. 26ob; GABO, f. 201, op. 1, d. 654, l. 32.
86. The high mortality demonstrates that the granted “privileges” for Sinti and Roma in Birkenau (families stay together, civilian instead of inmate clothing, nursery, music band, temporary additional rations for pregnant women and babies, etc.) ultimately had no relevance for survival. See Luchterhandt, Der Weg, 282–286; Zimmermann, Rassenutopie, 331–338.
87. See Czech, Kalendarium, 758; Memorial Book, part 1 (females), 676–705; part 2 (males), 1284–1311. The numbers were also tattooed on the left forearm.
88. Sixteen female inmates (Z-10268 to Z-10270 and Z-10272 to 10284) and nineteen male inmates (Z-9421 to Z-9423 and Z-9564 to Z-9579). See Memorial Book, part 1 (females), 688–689; part 2 (males), 1286–1287 and 1296–1297.
89. See GABO, f. 201, op. 1, d. 583, ll. 99–105ob.
90. Ten persons were born in Barglow (Bargłów Kościelny), three in Augustow (Augustów), one in Jaminy, and one in Wizna. Four persons originated from nearby Lida, which under Nazi occupation belonged to the Generalkommissariat White Ruthenia.
91. Eight hundred eighty-four men were transferred to Buchenwald, 473 women to Ravensbrück. See Czech, Kalendarium, 756.
92. Michael Zimmermann considers the economic need to be the main motive for the selections at the Zigeunerfamilienlager in 1944. See Zimmermann, Rassenutopie, 340.
93. See Karola Fings and Frank Sparing, Rassismus—Lager—Völkermord. Die nationalsozialistische Zigeunerverfolgung in Köln (Cologne: Emons, 2005), 327.
94. See Luchterhandt, Der Weg, 299.
95. See Christian Gerlach and Götz Aly, Das letzte Kapitel. Der Mord an den ungarischen Juden (Stuttgart/Munich: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2002), 256.
96. See Czech, Kalendarium, 774–775.
97. In the Camp Register of Flossenbürg, the arrivals from Birkenau received the numbers 10361 to 10442, but without the usual categories Z (Zigeuner) or ASO (Asozialer). Instead, sixty-five inmates were registered as Reich Germans, eight as Czechs and six as stateless. The fact that all of them had been inmates of the Gypsy Family Camp arises solely from their names. See Norbert Aas, Sinti und Roma im KZ Flossenbürg und in seinen Außenlagern Wolkenburg und Zwodau (Bayreuth: Bumerang, 2001), 31.
98. See Memorial Book, part 2 (males), 1286–1309.
99. See APMO, Sygn. 66, KL Ravensbrück, ark. 134–138.
100. See Memorial Book, part 1 (females), 676–705.
101. See Lucie Adelsberger, Auschwitz. Ein Tatsachenbericht (Berlin: Lettner, 1956), 109–115; Filip Müller, Sonderbehandlung. Drei Jahre in den Krematorien und Gaskammern von Auschwitz (Munich: Steinhausen, 1979), 239–243.
102. The Camp Register of Gypsies ends with July 21, 1944, so that individual fates cannot be reconstructed. See Memorial Book, part 1 (females), 727. Transfer lists of the concentration camps Buchenwald and Ravensbrück, to which the transport of August 1944 was directed, are only partly recorded.
103. See Czech, Kalendarium, 895.
104. See Czech, Kalendarium, 910.
105. See Zimmermann, Rassenutopie, 345–348 and 357–358.
106. Mikhail Tyaglyy, “‘Zigeuner sind im allgemeinen wie Juden zu behandeln.’ Évolution de la politique anti-tsigane du Commissariat du Reich Ukraine au cours de printemps et de l’été 1942,” in Roms, Tsiganes, Nomades: Un malentendu européen, ed. Catherine Coquio and Jean-Luc Poueyto (Paris: Éditions Karthala, 2014), 165–175, here 174; Mikhail Tyaglyy, “Nazi Occupation Policies and the Mass Murder of the Roma in Ukraine,” in The Nazi Genocide of the Roma: Reassessment and Commemoration, ed. Anton Weiss-Wendt (New York/Oxford: Berghahn, 2013), 120–152, here 146.
107. Reichskommissar in Ukraine, department II a, to Generalkommissar in Brest-Litovsk, Zhitomir, Kiev, Nikolaev, and Dnepropetrovsk regarding “Treatment of Jews,” May 8, 1942, Derzhavny Arkhiv Volynskoї oblasti (State Archive of Volhynia Oblast, DAVO), f. R-2, op. 1, spr. 8b, ark. 156.
108. Order of the Generalkommissar for Volhynia and Podolia regarding Gypsies, May 15, 1942; Generalkommissar for Volhynia and Podolia to all Gebietskommissare and the Stadtkommissar in Brest-Litovsk regarding “Wandering tradesmen and Gypsies,” May 21, 1942. See Tyaglyy, “Nazi Occupation Policies,” 131.
109. Tyaglyy, “Zigeuner,” 171–172. As Tyaglyy correctly suggests, the reference to “half-castes” most likely indicates that the initial order to collect information came from the RMbO, since Otto Bräutigam had demanded similar information on Roma in a letter to RKO in June 1942.
110. See Aleksandr Kruglov, “Genotsid tsygan v Ukraine v 1941–1944 gg.: statistiko-regional’nyi aspekt,” in Golokost i Suchasnist’ 2, no. 6 (2009): 83–113, here 97–98.