Sinti and Roma imprisoned in camps

Concentration camps were created in Nazi Germany when the Nazis took power in 1933. Dachau, the first concentration camp, was located northwest of Munich. It was primarily built for political opponents, but criminals and the asocial were also imprisoned there. This included the Sinti and Roma, as the Nazis considered them criminals and asocial from birth.   

In 1935, the Nazis started setting up special internment camps for Roma communities. These were used to gather, register, restrict, and isolate these communities from the rest of society. Moreover, the Sinti and Roma people in these camps were subjects of racial biology research. In practice, the internment camps later in the war served as concentration camps for the Roma population.  

Leading Nazis discussed amongst themselves “a final solution to the Gypsy Plague”, and in 1938 Sinti and Roma people were arrested as they were regarded as an alien and inferior race. Thousands of people over the age of 12 were arrested and taken to large concentration camps such as Dachau, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, Ravensbrück, and Mauthausen.  

Main Image: Eva Justin compares a woman's eye color with an eye color chart.
Photo: Bundesarchiv, R 165 image-244-64 / CC-BY-SA 3.0

The Research Institute for Racial Hygiene and Population Biology

The Nazis set up The Research Institute on Racial Hygiene and Population Biology in Berlin in 1936. Dr Robert Ritter, a racial biologist, was appointed to head the institute. One of the institute’s jobs was to record and gather information on Sinti and Roma people living in Nazi Germany.

The institute worked based on studies and the information collected to classify which Roma communities were considered pure-bred and mixed-race. Robert Ritter and his colleagues worked based on the racial biology theory that criminality and asocial behavior were hereditary and part of the innate characteristics of the Sinti and Roma.  

Robert Ritter became the Nazi regime’s leading expert on Roma communities in Nazi Germany. Records, information and results presented by The Research Institute on Racial Hygiene and Population Biology later provided guidance for the upcoming genocide of the Sinti and Roma. 

Robert Ritter became the Nazi regime’s leading expert on Roma communities in Nazi Germany. Records, information, and results presented by The Research Institute on Racial Hygiene and Population Biology provided guidance for the upcoming genocide, and by adopting these doctrines the Nazis could justify their treatment.

Laws

There were around 30,000 Sinti and Roma living in Germany at the time when the Nazis took power in 1933. A sterilisation law was introduced that same year, leading to the forced sterilisation of certain Roma communities. A law on “particularly dangerous and professional criminals” was also passed in 1933. This struck the Sinti and Roma especially hard as Nazis and racial biologists considered them criminals from birth.   

Early on, the Nazi state introduced various measures and propaganda against people who were considered “vagrants”, “asocial” and “workshy’. As a result, Roma communities living as vagrants were forcibly relocated to settlements that effectively became concentration camps.  

The so-called Nuremberg Race Laws were adopted in Nazi Germany in 1935. These laws applied to Jews initially, but later that same year they were extended also to include the Sinti and Roma. According to the Nazis, the Sinti and Roma were an alien, inferior race that posed a threat to a “pure-bred” Germany. The Nuremberg Race Laws also led to settled non-vagrant Sinti and Roma people being affected by racial policies.