Gypsies and the Porajmos: Timeline

To an Overview of Gypsies and the Porajmos

1899	Alfred Dillmann establishes the Central Office for Fighting the Gypsy Nuisance in Munich. This office collected information and fingerprints of Gypsies.
1922	Law in Baden requires Gypsies to carry special identification papers.
1926	In Bavaria, the Law for the Combating the Gypsies, Travellers, and Work-Shy sent Gypsies over 16 to workhouses for two years if they could not prove regular employment.
July 1933	Gypsies sterilized under the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring.
September 1935	Gypsies included in the Nuremberg Laws (Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honor).
July 1936	400 Gypsies are rounded up in Bavaria and transported to the Dachau concentration camp.
1936	The Racial Hygiene and Population Biology Research Unit of the Ministry of Health at Berlin-Dahlem is established, with Dr. Robert Ritter its director. This office interviewed, measured, studied, photographed, fingerprinted, and examined Gypsies in order to document them and create complete genealogical listings for every Gypsy.

We had to sit on a chair one after the other, and Dr. Ritter compared the eyes of the children and questioned them; his colleague noted everything down. We had to open our mouths and our jaws were measured with a strange instrument, then our nostrils, the roots of the nose, the distance between the eyes, eye color, eyebrows, ears inside and out, the nape of the neck, the throat, our hands - every single thing there was to measure.¹

---Josef Reinhardt

1937	Special concentration camps are created for Gypsies (Zigeunerlagers).
November 1937	Gypsies are excluded from the military.
December 14, 1937	Law Against Crime orders arrests of "those who by anti-social behavior even if they have committed no crime have shown that they do not wish to fit into society."
Summer 1938	In Germany, 1,500 Gypsy men are sent to Dachau and 440 Gypsy women are sent to Ravensbrück.
December 8, 1938	Himmler issues a decree on the Fight Against the Gypsy Menace which states that the Gypsy problem will be treated as a "matter of race."

Until 1938 I was in possession of a showman's license. On the incorporation of Austria into the German Reich, my license was withdrawn because I was unable to provide proof of Aryan descent, as I allegedly descend from "gypsies." From that moment I was under the constant surveillance of the Gestapo. I was forced to work in armaments in the former Göringwerk, and was not allowed to leave the town boundary (...) My mother Cäcilie Kohlberger died in Auschwitz concentration camp. My brother Julius Kohlberger died in Dachau concentration camp with three children. My sister Albine Rosenfeld died with her eight children in Litzmannstadt camp, all because we were "non-Aryans."²

---Maria Kohlberger

June 1939	In Austria, a decree orders 2,000 to 3,000 Gypsies to be sent to concentration camps.
October 17, 1939	Heydrich issues the Settlement Edict which prohibits Gypsies from leaving their homes or camping places.
January 1940	Dr. Ritter reports that Gypsies have mixed with asocials and recommends to have them kept in labor camps and to stop their "breeding."
January 30, 1940	A conference organized by Heydrich in Berlin decides to remove 30,000 Gypsies to Poland.
Spring 1940	Deportations of Gypsies begins from the Reich to the Generalgouvernment.

...we were suddenly loaded onto lorries, together with the other Frankfurt Sinti families, and taken to the East Station, where the empty wagons were already waiting for us. Everything was blocked off with SS men and policemen with dogs and guns. Sixty to eighty people were crammed into each of the cattle trucks, the windows were closed with barbed wire. Each truck had one SS man in a little guardhouse. We were taken to Auschwitz like cattle, not like humans; I've never forgotten that and I never will.³

---Herbert Adler

October 1940	Deportation of Gypsies temporarily halted.
Fall 1941	Thousands of Gypsies murdered at Babi Yar.
October to November, 1941	5,000 Austrian Gypsies, including 2,600 children, deported to the Lodz Ghetto
December 1941	Einsatzgruppen D shoots 800 Gypsies in Simferopol (Crimea).
January 1942	The surviving Gypsies within the Lodz Ghetto are deported to the Chelmno death camp and killed.
Summer 1942	Probably about this time when decision was made to annihilate the Gypsies.4

Ustashi (Croatian) militia cruelly tortured Angela Hudurovic's mother and sister:

First the girl had to dig out a hole in the field, while her mother, who was seven months pregnant, had to watch while chained to a tree. They slit open the stomach of the pregnant woman, ripped out the unborn child and threw it into the hole in the ground. Then they threw the woman in as well and the small girl too, after they had raped her first. She was still living when they covered the hole.⁵

October 13, 1942	Nine Gypsy representatives appointed to make lists of "pure" Sinti and Lalleri to be saved. Only 3 of the 9 had completed their lists by the time deportations began. The end result was that the lists didn't matter - Gypsies on the lists were also deported.
December 3, 1942	Martin Bormann writes to Himmler against the special treatment of "pure" Gypsies.
December 16, 1942	Himmler gives the order for all German Gypsies to be sent to Auschwitz.
January 29, 1943	RSHA announces the regulations for the implementation of deporting Gypsies to Auschwitz.
February 1943	Family camp for Gypsies constructed in Auschwitz II, section BIIe.
February 26, 1943	First transport of Gypsies delivered to the Gypsy Camp in Auschwitz.
March 29, 1943	Himmler orders all Dutch Gypsies to be sent to Auschwitz.
Spring 1944	All attempts to save "pure" Gypsies has been forgotten.6
April 1944	Those Gypsies that are fit for work are selected in Auschwitz and sent to other camps.

My sister Josefine Steinbach had nine children, only one of whom died in camp. Today I still can't believe that the other eight children survived everything until they were gassed in August 1944. My sister could have survived. But when she was supposed to be taken away with me to Ravensbrück before the destruction of the Gypsy Camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau, she refused to go because of the children. She told the SS that she wouldn't leave without her children. After the last transport left Auschwitz she and her children were gassed together. . .⁷

---Maria Peter

August 2-3, 1944

Zigeunernacht ("Night of the Gypsies"): All Gypsies who remained in Auschwitz were gassed.

I myself lost about thirty relatives in Auschwitz. Both of my grandmothers died there. An aunt with ten children was there. Only two children survived. Another aunt with five children was also in Auschwitz. None of them survived the camp. Another aunt was gassed at the very end. My father literally starved to death within the first several months. My older sister contracted typhus and died from it in 1943. Naturally her malnutrition and hunger played a great role. Then my brother died, my youngest brother. He was 13 years old. He had to carry heavy rocks until he became emaciated down to a skeleton. My mother died several months afterwards. They all starved.⁸

---Elisabeth Guttenberger

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1. Josef Reinhardt as quoted in Romani Rose, The Nazi Genocide of the Sinti and Roma (Heidelberg: Documentary and Cultural Centre of German Sinti and Roma, 1995) 66.

2. Maria Kohlberger as quoted in Rose, Nazi Genocide 19.

3. Herbert Adler as quoted in Rose, Nazi Genocide 47.

4. Donald Kenrick and Grattan Puxon, The Destiny of Europe's Gypsies (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1972) 86.

5. Angela Hudurovic as quoted in Rose, Nazi Genocide 119.

6. Kenrick, Destiny 94.

7. Maria Peter as quoted in State Museum of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Memorial Book: The Gypsies at Auschwitz-Birkenau (New York: K.G. Saur, 1993) 1517.

8. Elisabeth Guttenberger as quoted in State Museum, Memorial 1498.

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Bibliography on Gypsies in the Holocaust

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