Innocent Victims, Forgotten Souls

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The main victims of genocide during the Holocaust were the Jewish; however, they were not the only ones. Gypsies, also known as the Roma, also made up a large portion of the casualties that occurred in concentration camps. This innocent group of people, who move from place to place, who listened to different music and had different morals and beliefs, were also victims of the mass genocide led by Adolf Hitler. They were targeted and seen as “unhygienic, antisocial nuisances” (Tarr) and were a threat to the Nazis’ ideal German society. And since the Nazis thought they must do something about the Gypsies, this is what they did, all starting in 1899 (Rosenburg): they pinned each gypsy down by making identification papers for each individual, categorizing them by hair and eye color and cranium size, fingerprinted each person, made family trees of the gypsy families, then forced them into settling permanently into flats causing them to sell their caravans and belongings, forcibly sterilizing some individuals, and eventually sending them to concentration camps and murdering them.
In 1899, Alfred Dillmann established the ‘Central Office for Fighting the Gypsy Nuisance’ in Munich, Germany (Rosenburg). This act had people who were employed at this facility map out Gypsy movements throughout Germany and hunt the Gypsies down. When they found the Gypsies, each one over the age of six was fingerprinted, photographed, had his or her cranium measured, eye and hair color charted, and each official made sure to find out anything in each Gypsy’s background that had to do with criminality (Knudsen). This was the beginning of Gypsy profiling. The Nazi’s needed the Gypsies’ records, so that they could be located and have forms of identificati...

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...duce Holocaust Video”. youtube.com. Published 2 Feb 2012. Web. Accessed 18 Nov 2013. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIXlECQ5jU4
Rosenburg, Jennifer. "Timeline of Gypsies and the Holocaust." About.com 20th Century History. About.com, 2013. Web. 18 Nov. 2013. http://history1900s.about.com/od/holocaust/a/Gypsies-Timeline.htm
Tarr, Russel. “Nazi Treatment Of Gypsies”. youtube.com. Published 18 Oct 2009. Web. Accessed 18 Nov 2013. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIHU3OdWmT8
Uburuburu. “History Channel - Auschwitz (The Forgotten Evidence)”. youtube.com. Published 27 Apr 2013. Web. Accessed 18 Nov 2013. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKkNwkVRcOU
US Holocaust Memorial Museum. "Genocide of European Roma." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 10 June 2013. Web. 18 Nov. 2013. http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005219

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