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1933
30 January 1933Adolf Hitler, leader of the National Socialist German Workers‘ Party, is appointed Reich Chancellor in Germany. On 1 February 1933, he dissolves the Reichstag, which means the end of democracy.
28 February 1933The ‘Decree for the Protection of the People and the State’ (Reichstag Fire Decree) abolishes the most important civil rights in Germany and paves the way for dictatorship.
14 July 1933The ‘Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring’ is passed in Germany and comes into force on 1 January 1934. It forms the basis for forced sterilisation.
18–23 September 1933A ‘beggars roundup‘ is carried out in Germany, during which tens of thousands are arrested. Mostly homeless people are affected, but also itinerant traders and showmen, including a few Sinti and Roma.
1934
7 January 193464 Norwegian Roma are expelled from Belgium and leave the country for Oslo, Norway. Two days later, they board a ship in Hamburg, Germany. On arrival in Trelleborg, Sweden, they are turned away by the authorities and have to return to Hamburg by ship.
20 – 21 January 1934At the railway station in Padborg (Pattburg), Denmark, located on the German-Danish border, 68 Roma’s attempt to return to their home country of Norway fails.
7 March 1934The German police escort a group of over 60 Norwegian Roma to the Belgian border town of Herbestahl. They are temporarily taken in there to negotiate their repatriation with Norway. Norway refuses to allow the Roma to enter the country. Most of them are deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp around ten years later.
16 May 1934Bernhard Pabst is the first Sinto known by name to be sent to Dachau concentration camp in Germany, which was set up in March 1933.
17 – 21 September 1934Participants in the tenth meeting of the International Criminal Police Commission (ICPC) in Vienna, Austria, agree to establish an ‘International Central Office for Combating the Gypsy Nuisance’.
1935
4 March 1935The city of Magdeburg, Germany, decides to set up a detention camp for Sinti and Roma.
May 1935Around mid-May 1935, the first detention camp for Sinti and Roma is established in Cologne, Germany.
15 September 1935The ‘Reich Citizenship Law’ and the ‘Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour’, the so-called Nuremberg Laws, are passed in Germany.
23 December 1935The boxer Johann Wilhelm ‘Rukeli’ Trollmann is forcibly sterilised in the ‘Rummelsburg labour and detention centre‘ in Germany.
23 December 1935The city of Gelsenkirchen, Germany, issues a local statute regulating the operation of the detention camp on Cranger Strasse.
1936
3 January 1936In Germany, the Minister of the Interior points out in a circular that in Europe ‘apart from the Jews, only the Gypsies’ are regularly counted among the ‘alien races’.
6 June 1936In Germany, the circular on ‘Combatting the Gypsy Menace‘ is issued, ordering constant monitoring and restrictive measures against Sinti and Roma.
3 July 1936 The Gestapo Office for the State Police District of Berlin, Germany, orders the transfer of Sinti and Roma in Greater Berlin to a detention camp in the Marzahn suburb, which is implemented from 16 July.
20 September 1936Reich Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick, Germany, decrees a reorganisation of the state Criminal Police. The ‘Gypsy Policing Office’ in Munich is elevated to the rank of a ‘Reich Central Office for Combating the Gypsy Nuisance’ with nationwide jurisdiction.
1 November 1936Germany and Italy sign a treaty of alliance (‘Berlin-Rome axis’).
25 November 1936Germany and Japan sign the ‘Anti-Comintern Pact’ against the Soviet Union. Italy joins the pact on 6 November 1937.
1937
1 January 1937In Finland, a law [‘Irtolaislaki’] comes into force to control and regulate persons capable of working who ‘pose a threat to public order’.
March 1937In the detention camp in Cologne, Germany, 400 to 500 Sinti and Roma are forcibly housed.
9 March 1937At the instigation of the criminal investigation department, 2,000 men in Germany who are regarded as ‘professional or habitual criminals‘ are sent to concentration camps. A few Sinti and Roma are among the inmates, who are marked with a green triangle on their clothing.
27 May 1937Adolf W. is deported to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Germany. He is the first Sinto known by name in the camp set up near Berlin in July 1936.
30 June 1937The detention camp on Höherweg in Düsseldorf, Germany, is completed. Up to 200 Sinti at a time are forced to live in the camp from now on.
24 November 1937Heinrich Himmler issues a decree on the reorganisation of the Women’s Division of the Criminal Police in Germany. Female criminal police officers are involved in the persecution of Sinti and Roma children and young people until the end of the war.
3 December 1937In Fascist Italy, police chief Arturo Bocchini instructs the prefects to report the number of Sinti and Roma present in each province.
6 Dezember 1937In a circular decree, police chief Arturo Bocchini, Italy, orders the arrest of all ‘Gypsies’ in the provinces of Bolzano, Trento, Trieste, Gorizia, Pola, Fiume and Zara.
14 December 1937The ‘Decree on the Preventive Fight Against Crime’ is issued in Germany. On this basis, the criminal police can deport Sinti and Roma to concentration camps at any time.
1938
10 January 1938The Prefect of Pola, Oreste Cimoroni, orders all Carabinieri offices in Istria, Italy, to arrest all Roma and send them into banishment (confino).
17 January 1938In Italy, the decision is made that Sinti and Roma must relocate to provinces in southern and central Italy; for those who are considered particularly ‘dangerous’, police banishment (confino) to southern Italy or Sardinia is envisaged.
March 1938In Stettin, German Reich, several families are concentrated in specially erected barracks at Lukasstraße No. 2, creating the first detention camp in the city.
4 April 1938In the guidelines of the ‘Decree on the Preventive Fight against Crime’ of the Reich Criminal Police Office, Germany, Sinti and Roma are declared ‘asocials’ as an entire group.
21 – 30 April 1938The Gestapo takes around 1,950 men into ‘protective custody‘ and sends them to the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany. A few Sinti and Roma are among the inmates.
12 May 1938Austrian Roma from Burgenland write a letter of protest to the Reich government complaining about the restriction of their rights. None of the men survive the Nazi era. Franz Horvath dies on 22 October 1939 as a result of mistreatment he endured in Dachau concentration camp in Germany.
16 May 1938Heinrich Himmler orders the relocation of the ‘Reich Central Office for Combating the Gypsy Nuisance’ to the Reich Criminal Police Office in Berlin, Germany.
21 May 1938Josef Köhler is sent to Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany at the instigation of the Gestapo in Kassel. He is the first Sinto known by name to be documented in the camp, which was established near Weimar in July 1937.
13 – 18 June 1938For the first time, large groups of Sinti and Roma, all men, are arrested during the ‘Aktion Arbeitsscheu Reich’ on racist grounds and sent to Buchenwald, Dachau and Sachsenhausen concentration camps in Germany. One in eight adults in the minority group is affected by this abduction.
17 June 1938On this day, the number of Roma and Sinti and Roma affected by the ‘confino’ (police banishment measure) in Italy totals 142 people, most of whom are minors.
28 June 1938The Reich Criminal Police Office instructs all Regional Criminal Police Headquarters to prevent Sinti and Roma from appealing to the government in Berlin, Germany. Relatives who want to campaign for the release of their husbands, fathers or sons sent to concentration camps in June 1938 must return to their hometowns under threat of internment in a concentration camp.
26 July 1938The validity of the ‘Decree on the Preventive Fight against Crime’ of 14 December 1937 is extended to Austria, which is annexed to Germany. On this basis, Sinti and Roma can be sent to concentration camps at any time.
28 July 1938Anna and Barbara Petermann are arrested in Sauensiek, Stade district (Germany) and sent to the Lichtenburg concentration camp. They had previously protested against the arrest of their husbands, sons and brothers in June 1938.
30 September 1938Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Great Britain and France accept the ‘Munich Agreement’, which means the loss of the Czechoslovak borderland (the so-called Sudetenland) and the demise of the First Czechoslovak Republic.
1 October 1938The so-called Second Czechoslovak Republic is created on the territory of Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, Slovakia and Carpathian Ruthenia without the territories annexed to Germany, Poland and Hungary (on the basis of the so-called Munich Agreement and later the so-called Vienna Arbitration).
1 October 1938Heinrich Horvath, Wenzel Horvath and Alois Sarkösi, originally from Austria, are transferred from Dachau concentration camp in Germany to Flossenbürg. According to current knowledge, these are the first Roma to be deported to Flossenbürg.
1 October 1938The ‘Reich Central Office for Combating the Gypsy Nuisance’ moves its headquarters from Munich, Germany, to Berlin.
14 October 1938Foundation of the University Institute of Hereditary Biology and Eugenics in Copenhagen, Denmark. Shortly afterwards, the institute begins to study the ‘Gypsy population’.
7 November 1938The Württemberg Ministry of the Interior, Germany, issues a decree to remove all school-age and underage Sinti and Roma from other care homes and move them to the St. Josefspflege Catholic children‘s home in Mulfingen. The ‘Homes Decree’ prepared the ground for the racist exclusion that would later form the basis for the deportation of the children and young people.
9 – 10 November 1938During a pogrom against the Jewish population organised by the Nazi leadership, at least 1,400 synagogues in Germany and Austria are damaged or destroyed, hundreds of people are injured or killed and more than 30,000 Jewish men are deported to the Buchenwald, Dachau and Sachsenhausen concentration camps.
4 December 1938The validity of the ‘Decree on the Preventive Fight against Crime’ of 14 December 1937 is extended to the territories of Czechoslovakia (Sudetenland) annexed by Germany. On this basis, Sinti and Roma can be sent to concentration camps at any time.
18 December 1938The circular decree issued by Heinrich Himmler on ‘combating the Gypsy Menace’ emphasises the racial policy objectives of state measures in Germany.
1939
February 1939Helios Gómez, Spanish artist, writer, political activist, Rom and fighter against the Francoist Dictatorship during the Spanish Civil War, flees over the border to France, where he is interned and deported to Algeria.
14 March 1939The independent Slovak State is declared.
15 March 1939German troops occupy the remaining territory of the Czech part of Czechoslovakia, i.e. the territory of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia, which Germany and Poland have not occupied and annexed until then. The day after that, the newly occupied territories are established as ‘Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia’. The occupation further exacerbates the situation of Sinti and Roma.
April 1939Alois Paffner and Antonia Růžičková live together with their seven children in Česká Třebová, Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia (German occupied Czech Lands). The family is deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp in 1943. Only the son Emil Růžička survives.
2 April 1939An internment camp is set up in Gurs, France, where various groups of people and persecuted individuals are interned until the end of World War II. Under the Vichy regime, 18,000 Jewish men, women and children are deported from Gurs to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp. From the summer of 1940 onwards, up to 300 Sinti (Manouches) and Roma are also interned in the camp and mainly transferred from there to detention camps.
15 April 1939On the basis of the Reich Law ‘On the Division of the Sudeten German Territories’ [Gesetz über die Gliederung der sudetendeutschen Gebiete], the Reichsgau Sudetenland is created with the capital Liberec (then Reichenberg).
24 April 1939In the Pest-Pilis-Solt-Kiskun County, Hungary, László Endre orders twice-yearly round-ups against Roma without residence in the county with the aim of expelling them. The instruction remains in force until 1944.
15 – 18 May 1939974 women, including at least eight Sintize and Romnja, are transferred from the Lichtenburg concentration camp to the Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany, which is opened at this time.
22 May 1939Germany and Italy sign the ‘Pact of Steel’, which extends the previous treaty of alliance to include close military cooperation and mutual support in the event of a war of aggression.
5 June 1939The Reich Criminal Police Office in Berlin, Germany, orders the removal of Roma from Burgenland, Austria, to concentration camps. Every fifth adult (men and women) in the Burgenland community is affected by this deportation.
9 June 1939In Gelsenkirchen, Germany, Sinti and Roma living in caravans are only allowed to live in the detention camp on Reginenstraße, which is guarded by a Sturmabteilung (SA).
15 June 1939The Reich Minister of Science, Education and National Education, German Reich, issues a decree to the Viennese authorities authorising the expulsion of Sinti and Roma children and young people from schools. The decree becomes valid throughout the Reich on 22 March 1941.
16 June 1939In Finland, a law on compulsory labour in times of war [Työvelvollisuuslaki] comes into force.
28 June 1939At least 554 Roma men from the Austrian Burgenland are imprisoned in Dachau concentration camp in Germany.
29 June 1939A transport of 440 Roma women from Lower Austria and Burgenland arrives at Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany. The prisoners include young people aged 14 and over.
1 July 1939In Germany, the ‘Reich Central Office for Combating Juvenile Delinquency’ is founded within the Reich Criminal Police Office. It operates the concentration camps for young people set up from 1940, to which Sinti and Roma are also sent.
1 September 1939The Wehrmacht invades Poland in the early hours of the morning, with which Germany starts the Second World War.
September – October 1939In September or October 1939, a detention camp for the internment of Sinti and Roma is put into operation in Reichenberg, formerly Liberec (Sudetenland, German annexed Czech Lands).
3 September 1939The United Kingdom declares war on Germany.
21 September 1939At a meeting convened by Reinhard Heydrich, who shortly afterwards becomes head of the Reich Security Main Office in Berlin, Germany, it is decided to deport all Jews, Sinti and Roma from the Reich to German-occupied Poland.
26 September 1939570 Sinti and Roma, all men, are transferred from Dachau concentration camp, Germany, to Buchenwald concentration camp.
27 September 1939143 Sinti and Roma, all men, are deported from Dachau concentration camp in Germany to Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria.
9 October 1939In Austria, there are demands for Roma and Sinti to be ruthlessly housed in closed camps.
9 October 1939The first German Jewish refugees arrive at the new Central Refugee Camp Westerbork in the Netherlands.
17 October 1939In Germany, the ‘Festsetzungserlass’ (Immobilisation Decree) prohibits all Sinti and Roma from changing their place of residence or domicile under threat of imprisonment in a concentration camp. The immobilisation is intended to facilitate the preparation of deportations.
22 October 1939A decree bans ‘nomadic and fairground families‘ from eight departments in western France. House arrest or expulsion to the interior of the country is ordered.
25 – 27 October 1939Thousands of Sinti and Roma are registered on state-organised ’search days‘ in Germany.
20 November 1939Because of alleged ‘popular anxiety’, a decree is issued in Germany stating that Sinti and Roma women suspected of fortune telling are to be sent to concentration camps.
30 November 1939The Minister of the Interior of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (German-occupied Czech Lands) orders that by 1 January 1940 all ‘itinerant Gypsies’ have to settle down in their home towns or wherever they are staying on that date.
30 November 1939Start of the Finnish-Soviet ‘Winter War’ with the Soviet Union’s attack on Finland. The hostilities end on 13 March 1940.
1 December 1939In German-occupied Poland, the General Government, Jews over the age of twelve are forced to wear a white armband with a blue Star of David.
1 December 1939A second detention camp for the internment of Sinti and Roma is put into operation in Nádražní Street in Reichenberg, formerly Liberec (Sudetenland, German annexed Czech Lands). At the same time, a third detention camp operates there in the Horní Růžodol district.
1940
25 January 1940Around 1,000 prisoners, including 48 Sinti and Roma, are transferred from Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Germany to Mauthausen in Austria.
12 March 1940The ‘Peace of Moscow’ on 12 March 1940 ends the ‘Winter War’ between Finland and the Soviet Union. Among the 450,000 Karelian refugees are around 1,500 and 2,000 Finnish Roma.
6 April 1940The French Government orders the ‘house arrest’ of ‘nomads’ throughout French territory. This abolishes freedom of movement for Sinti and Roma by decree.
9 April 1940German troops march into Denmark. The government and parliament remain in place despite the occupation.
27 April 1940Heinrich Himmler orders the deportation of Sinti and Roma from western and north-western Germany to the General Government, German-occupied Poland.
2 May 1940In a diary note, an adjutant of Adolf Hitler records his instruction that Sinti and Roma—like Jews—are to be excluded from the German Wehrmacht.
10 May 1940Germany extends the war to Western Europe; the Wehrmacht invades Belgium, France, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.
16 – 22 May 1940Sinti and Roma from the west and north-west of Germany are sent to transit camps in Hamburg, Hohenasperg near Stuttgart and Cologne and deported from there to the General Government, German-occupied Poland. The ‘May Deportation’ is the first deportation carried out family by family.
27 May 1940The Swiss consul Franz Rudolph von Weiss, based in Cologne, Germany, reports on the May deportation.
10 June 1940Italy enters World War II as an ally of the German Reich. On 15 June, Benito Mussolini orders the arrest and transfer of foreign Jews to concentration camps and places of internment.
17 June 1940The Soviet Union occupies and subsequently annexes Estonia, alongside Latvia and Lithuania.
18 June 1940The Reich Criminal Police Office, Germany, orders that the Sinti and Roma committed to concentration camps in June 1938 are not to be released.
26 June 1940The so-called Continuation War [jatkosoda] involved renewed hostilities between Finland and the Soviet Union and lasted until 19 September 1944. Finland’s military activities were closely coordinated with the National Socialist war of aggression against the Soviet Union.
1 July 1940The SS special camp Hinzert, Germany, is placed under the control of the Inspectorate of Concentration Camps (IKL). At least two Roma are imprisoned in this concentration camp until the end of the war.
1 July 1940Head of Einsatzgruppe III orders a census of ‘professional criminals and anti-social individuals’ in German-annexed Alsace (France).
2 July 1940In German-occupied Alsace (France), head of Einsatzgruppe III orders the establishment of transit and concentration camps for the expulsion of ‘undesired elements’ to France. He names ‘Jews’ and ‘Gypsies’ first.
11 July 1940In Italy, it is decided that all ‘suspected Gypsies’, especially those without Italian citizenship, can be transferred to a concentration camp (campo di concentramento) on the recommendation of the prefect.
25 July 1940The first Sinti and Roma are sent to the Neuengamme concentration camp in Germany, which was initially set up as a satellite camp of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in December 1938 and became an independent camp in spring 1940.
1 August 1940From August 1940, the first concentration camp for male youths is operated in Moringen, Germany, on the initiative of the Reich Security Main Office. Young Sinti and Roma are also sent there.
14 August 1940The German police authorities settled in Alsace (German-annexed France) order the gathering of people labelled as ‘Gypsies’ to the Schirmeck-Vorbruck security camp in order to expel them to unoccupied France.
5 September 1940The ’Nuremberg Laws’ are introduced in German-occupied Luxembourg.
11 September 1940In Italy, Sinti and Roma with ‘established or presumed Italian citizenship’ are ordered to be interned in localities.
17 September 1940Members of the Goman and Bogdan families are interned in the village of Berra near Ferrara, Italy. In the summer of 1941, they are transferred to Agnone concentration camp (campo di concentramento) via Bojano concentration camp.
22 September 1940The first Sinti and Roma, all men, are imprisoned in the Wewelsburg satellite camp of Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Germany. From 1 September 1941, the satellite camp becomes an independent concentration camp in Niederhagen/Wewelsburg.
27 September 1940Germany, Italy and Japan sign the ’Tripartite Pact’, which becomes known as the ‘Axis Alliance’.
30 September 1940The validity of the ‘Decree on the Preventive Fight against Crime’ of 14 December 1937 is extended to the territories of Poland annexed by Germany and incorporated into the Reich. On this basis, Sinti and Roma can be sent to concentration camps at any time.
31 October 1940A decree issued by the Reich Criminal Police Office enables the subordinate authorities in Austria to tighten their policy towards Roma and Sinti, including by concentrating them in guarded settlements and detention camps.
8 November 1940Edouard Maitre and his family flee from German-occupied Belgium and are arrested in Rouen, German-occupied France.
8 November 1940Joseph Toloche, his wife Flore Boudin and their children Marguerite and Bernard are arrested in Rouen (German-occupied France), where they had fled during the invasion of Belgium by German troops. They are imprisoned in detention camps and Flore Boudin dies of a miscarriage. Father and children flee back to Belgium and are deported from there to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp (German-annexed Poland). Only Joseph Toloche survives.
11 November 1940In Mérignac near Bordeaux, German-occupied France, a detention camp is set up, to which around 360 ‘Nomades’ are sent by December 1941.
11 November 1940Internment of ’nomades‘ in the Forge camp in Moisdon-la-Rivière, France.
12 November 1940In German-occupied Belgium and northern France, itinerant trade is banned in the coastal zone (Flanders and Antwerp district). Although this measure does not explicitly mention Sinti and Roma, it has a direct impact on their professional activities.
18 November 1940Around 80 Sinti are interned in Prignano sulla Secchia, Italy. 60 per cent of them are minors. Fioravante Lucchesi is among the internees.
23 November 1940The first Roma are sent to the detention camp in Lackenbach in Burgenland, Ostmark (Austria).
10 December 1940At least 30 Roma from the Austrian Burgenland are included in a transport arriving at Neuengamme concentration camp from Buchenwald concentration camp, Germany.
16 December 1940The eleven-member Marinkovitch family is arrested in their home town of Calais (German-occupied northern France) because it is part of the ‘Forbidden Coastal Zone’ and deported to the interior of France.
19 December 1940The first Roma families are interned in Bojano concentration camp (campo di concentramento) in Italy. In 1941, there are 66 Roma and Sinti and Roma in this camp.
1941
13 January 1941Up to this day, 878 Roma and Sinti ‚with established or presumed Italian citizenship‘ are arrested in Italy in order to intern them in localities.
14 January 1941Opening of the Rivesaltes camp in Vichy-France. During its existence, almost 1400 ‘nomads’ pass through this camp.
11 February 1941The High Command of the Wehrmacht, Germany, orders the discharge of Sinti and Roma from active military service.
27 February 1941From 27 February, the internees of the Moisdon-la-Rivière camp were transferred to the Choisel camp in Châteaubriant, both in France. They were repatriated in September 1941.
5 March 1941Katharina Waitz is brutally murdered in Ravensbrück concentration camp, Germany, after being recaptured by the SS following her escape from the camp.
1 April 1941The ‘Gypsy camp’ at Schwarzer Damm No. 13 in Stettin, German Reich, which had existed since 1940, is mentioned for the first time in the correspondence of the Stettin Gestapo.
6 April 1941As part of the ‘Balkan Campaign’, Germany and Italy invade the Kingdom of Yugoslavia without prior declaration of war. The Axis powers Germany, Italy and Hungary divide the country among themselves. The Independent State of Croatia is also created.
10 April 1941The military administration for Belgium and Northern France prohibits Sinti and Roma from living in the Coastal Zone (East and West Flanders and the Antwerp district).
15 April 1941The Danica camp is established as the first concentration camp in the Independent State of Croatia. About 5,000 inmates pass through the camp, most of them Serbs and Jews, followed by Roma and Croatians.
May 1941Ignac Đurđević and Stjepan Đurđević are arrested by Ustaša authorities as sympathisers of the Communist Party and the Union of Communist Youth of Yugoslavia and taken to Danica Camp in the Independent State of Croatia. Both do not survive.
3 May 1941The southern regions of Slovenia are annexed by Italy as the ‘Province of Ljubljana’.
22 May 1941600 prisoners, including 46 Sinti and Roma, are transferred from the Buchenwald concentration camp, Germany, to the Mauthausen concentration camp, Austria. On 28 June and 4 July, transports with a further 64 and 31 Sinti and Roma follow.
30 May 1941The Military Commander in German-occupied Serbia issues the ‚Decree on Jews and Gypsies‘ (Verordnung betreffend die Juden und Zigeuner / Naredba koja se odnosi na Jevreje i Cigane). According to this decree, Jews and Roma must register and wear yellow armbands to ensure identification and that they are to be excluded from public, political and cultural life. On 11 July 1941, the decree is amended to the effect that Roma who can demonstrate a respectable occupation, a settled way of life and ancestors who have been settled since at least 1850 are not to fall under the terms of the decree for the time being.
7 June 1941As part of ‘Operation 14f13’, prisoners are transferred from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Germany to the Pirna-Sonnenstein killing centre and gassed. Among them are four Sinti and Roma.
19 June 1941In a ‘Promemoria’ to the German Embassy in Zagreb, the Independent State of Croatia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs requests on behalf of the Muslim religious authorities that Roma of Muslim faith in Serbia be considered and treated as ‘Aryans’ and not as ‘Gypsies’, precisely because of their religious affiliation. Despite this intervention, in many cases these Muslim Roma still fall victim to persecution and murder.
20 June 1941The entry register of the Rivesaltes camp in Vichy-France records the arrival of 448 ‘nomades’ from the internment camp in Argelès-sur-Mer.
22 June 1941Germany invades the Soviet Union and advances with its troops to just outside Moscow by the end of the year.
25 June 1941On the Adriatic island of Pag in the Italian-occupied part of Croatia, the Ustaša establishes the Slana concentration camp, where, according to a witness statement, Croatian and Bosnian Roma are also imprisoned. The camp is dissolved on 21 August 1941. Some of the prisoners are murdered, while others are deported to Jastrebarsko via Gospić.
3 July 1941In German-occupied Estonia, the indigenous auxiliary police Omakaitse is re-established and assists the German army in pursuing communists and their sympathisers. Members of Omakaitse participate in ad hoc arrests of Roma.
9 July 1941As far as we know to date, the Poles Franciszek and Ryszard Buriański and the Czech Rudolf Richter are the first Roma to be sent to concentration camp Auschwitz (German-annexed Poland). The camp was established in June 1940. From July 1941 to February 1943 (before the systematic deportation of Sinti and Roma from German-controlled territory to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp), it is estimated that at least 370 Roma, mostly of Polish or Czech nationality, are sent to camp Auschwitz.
9 July 1941In German-annexed Alsace (France), the December 1937 ‘Decree on Preventive Fight Against Crime’ is issued. On this basis, Sinti and Roma can be deported to concentration camps at any time.
11 July 1941Pärnu Prison, officially designated a concentration camp for political prisoners, becomes operational in German-occupied Estonia. In 1941–42 it serves as a police detention facility for local Jews and Roma.
13 July 1941Roma partisan Muharem Asović participates in the anti-fascist uprising against Italian occupation forces in the wider area of Nikšić and Šavnik in Montenegro.
16 July 1941In German-occupied Estonia, the Tartu concentration camp is established in mid-July 1941, shortly after the capture of Tartu. Among the inmates was a group of Roma, who were shot there in the autumn of 1941.
18 July 1941The Hungarian Parliament discusses the prevention of marriages between Roma and Non-Roma.
22 July 1941The Reich Security Main Office instructs the Königsberg Regional Criminal Police Headquarters to set up a detention camp for Sinti and Roma from East Prussia, German Reich.
23 July 1941It is decided that in future only Sinti and Roma are to be interned in the concentration camp (campo di concentramento) in Agnone, Italy, which was set up in June 1940.
End of July and Early August 1941Roma of the wider area of Koprivnica are deported to the Danica camp, with a small number of Roma also deported from the areas of Bjelovar, Donja Stubica, Đurđevac and Ludbreg.
30 July 1941The office of the fascist Independent State of Croatia for Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo sends a letter to the Ministry of the Interior requesting the exemption of so called ‘White Gypsies’, settled Muslim Roma, from registration as ‘Gypsies’.
August 1941The fourth detention camp for the internment of Sinti and Roma is put into operation in Kunratická Street in Reichenberg, formerly Liberec (Sudetenland, German annexed Czech Lands).
13 August 1941In Germany, the ‘racial diagnosis’ of the Racial Hygiene Research Unit is announced by decree as the basis for further policies against Sinti and Roma.
16 August 1941Between this date and 24 August 1941, all Sinti and Roma are transferred from the Bojano concentration camp (campo di concentramento) in Italy to the Agnone camp.
27 August 1941In German-occupied Estonia, the 18th Army of the Wehrmacht prescribes engaging ‘idlers’ in physical labour. Roma are forced to assist in gathering crops with their horses and carts.
28 August 1941The Wehrmacht captures the capital of Estonia, Tallinn. The Tallinn Central Prison serves as the main collection point for Estonian Jews and Roma prior to their execution.
30 August 1941The Ministry of Internal Affairs of the fascist Independent State of Croatia issues a circular which decrees that the so-called Muslim ‘White Gypsies’ are not to be persecuted, but to be considered ‘Aryans’ and treated accordingly.
September – October 1941In the area around Nikolaev, German-occupied Soviet Union, Roma are shot by members of Einsatzgruppe D.
1 September 1941Internment of ’nomades‘ in the Arc-et-Senans camp, France.
Autumn 1941Execution of a few Roma at Tartu concentration camp in German-occupied Estonia.
10 September 1941Dr Martin Sandberger orders the arrest of all Jews in German-occupied Estonia. Hundreds of men, women and children are murdered.
Mid-September 1941The first Roma are sent to the Banjica concentration camp in German-occupied Serbia.
16 September 1941General Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, Germany, issues the ‘Sühnebefehl’ (atonement order) to the Wehrmacht High Command, instructing the troops to execute 50–100 civilians for every German soldier killed in an ambush.
18 September 1941The Wehrmacht orders the arrest of all Roma in German-occupied Estonia.
19 September 1941In the German Reich, Jews from the age of 6 are subject to compulsory labelling and must wear a yellow star (‘Judenstern’).
21 September 1941In Halbturn, Austria, all Roma are transferred to the Lackenbach detention camp. Among them is the couple Katharina and Stefan Ujvary with their children Adam, Eva, Gertrude and Walter. None of them survives.
21 September 1941Harald Turner, head of the German military administration in occupied Serbia, draws up a report in which he proposes not only the arrest of all Jews in Serbia, but also that of Roma.
29 September 1941Pärnu Prison in German-occupied Estonia has 302 inmates. Among the prisoners are 50 Roma.
4 October 1941In response to the killing of 22 German soldiers near Topola, the Plenipotentiary Commanding General in Serbia, Franz Böhme, orders that 100 ‘Serbian prisoners’ (mainly Jews and Communists) be shot for every German killed and 50 prisoners for every German wounded. A few days later, on 10 October, he issues an order that provides the formal basis for the Wehrmacht’s subsequent massacres of Jews, Roma and Serbs.
6 October 1941In German-occupied Estonia, 61-year-old Sophie Siimann dies while incarcerated in Pärnu Prison.
9 – 21 October 1941More than 2,100 Jews and Roma from the Šabac and Topovske Šupe camps are shot as a ‘reprisal’ for 22 German soldiers killed by Serb rebels near Topola at the beginning of the month. The murders of the prisoners from Šabac takes place on 12 and 13 October. The exact times of the murders of the prisoners from Topovske Šupe between the order to shoot them and the report of their execution are unknown.
18–21 October 1941After a partisan attack on Wehrmacht units, German forces together with collaborating Serbian formations arrest 2,700 civilians in and around Kragujevac, German-occupied Serbia. The victims are mostly Serbs, among them entire year groups of local secondary school children, but also include Roma (about 250 men) and Jews (about 40 men). Most of them are murdered at the Šumarice killing site.
20 October 1941During a raid in Niš, German-occupied Serbia, a Rom, who is forced to pass on police orders, warns the Roma to be arrested in Romanes, whereupon some are able to flee.
26 October 1941In German-occupied Serbia, an order is issued to all field and district commands that Jews and Roma are to be taken ‘hostage’ for reprisals.
26 October 1941150 detainees, among them ten Sinti and Roma, are sent from Buchenwald concentration camp, Germany, to Natzweiler concentration camp in German-annexed Alsace, France. The Natzweiler camp was established on 1 May 1941.
28 October – 3 November 1941In German-occupied Serbia, Wehrmacht soldiers together with Serbian police units and agents of the Serbian special police carry out mass arrests of Belgrade Roma. They are taken to the Belgrade concentration camps Topovske Šupe, German-occupied Serbia, where they are held hostage for reprisals. 2,200 ‘hostage’, mostly Jewish and Roma males, are eventually shot in Zasavica, Jabuka and Jajinci near Belgrade.
1 November – 31 December 1941Between November and December 1941, in Iakovlevo, German-occupied Russia, a group of Roma of unknown size is shot by a German Sonderkommando [Special Detachment].
1 November 1941On the night of 1 November 1941, the Estonian Security Police in Narva (German-occupied Estonia) rounds up 260 people, including a Roma family of three.
4 – 8 November 1941In the space of five days, 5,007 Austrian Roma from Burgenland and the Gau Niederdonau are deported to the Litzmannstadt ghetto. The rail transports depart from the Lackenbach detention camp (2,000 Roma on November 4 and 7), the Fürstenfeld transit camp (1,000 Roma on November 5) and the Alt-Pinkafeld transit camp (1,000 Roma on November 7, 1,007 Roma on November 8). Ten children and one woman die during the deportations.
8 November 1941The Montreuil-Bellay detention camp is opened in German-occupied France. The first internees are transferred there from the La Morellerie camp (Indre-et-Loire).
24 November 1941The Hägerwelle ‘labour education camp’ in Stettin-Pölitz, German Reich, replaces three previously existing Gestapo penal camps. Sinti were repeatedly sent there from the detention camps in Stettin.
1 December 1941
The Roma brothers Ibro and Ćamil Muratović, who are members of the Montenegrin partisans, are killed in action during the fight for the town of Pljevlja, Italian-occupied Montenegro.
1 December 1941The German military commander’s office in occupied Estonia amends the order of 18 September 1941 that all Roma should be arrested, stipulating that only ‚itinerant‘ Roma should be arrested while those with a permanent address should be kept under police surveillance.
2 December 1941The internees held in the Coray detention camp (Finistère) are transferred to Montreuil-Bellay, German-occupied France.
4 December 1941In German-occupied Estonia, Reich Commissioner Hinrich Lohse communicates the decision of 1 December to the Higher SS and Police Leader in the Ostland, Friedrich Jeckeln, interpreting it to mean that all Roma should be imprisoned.
9 December 1941In Simferopol‘, German-occupied Soviet Union, mass shootings of Roma take place.
10 – 11 December 1941Roma women and children from Belgrade, German-occupied Serbia, are arrested and taken to Sajmište concentration camp, after their male family members have been killed in mass executions a month earlier. The camp’s commandant decides to release those women and children who can prove permanent residence in Belgrade. Those who are not released will be killed during the liquidation of the camp together with Jewish women and children between March and May 1942.
11 December 1941In reprisal for three German soldiers killed by partisans in Leskovac, Serbia, 310 ‘hostages’ are shot by Wehrmacht soldiers; 293 of the victims are Roma from Leskovac and surrounding villages.
21 December 1941The newly created Criminal Biology Institute of the Security Police in the Reich Criminal Police Office, Germany, begins its activities in Berlin under Robert Ritter, Head of the Racial Hygiene Research Unit.
29 – 30 December 1941In Kerch‘, German-occupied Soviet Union, Roma are arrested and murdered by members of Einsatzgruppe D.
1942
1 January 1942From this date, Roma are no longer allowed to enter the city of Tartu (German-occupied Estonia) without special permission.
20 January 1942Five Roma youths stage an escape from Pärnu Prison in German-occupied Estonia. Prison guards rapidly apprehend three of them, Juhan Koslovski, Robert Mitrovski, and Karl-Alfred Mitrovski. Richard Eamets and Karl Koslovski manage to flee.
20 January 1942The Wannsee Conference takes place in Berlin. The subject of the meeting is the murder of the European Jews.
21 January 1942In German-occupied Belgium, special identity cards for Sinti and Roma are introduced at the initiative of the Belgian aliens police. In order to facilitate their distribution, Sinti and Roma are prohibited from leaving their place of residence between 5 and 20 January.
25 January 1942 – 5 February 1942In German-occupied Estonia, police prefectures in Tallinn, Haapsalu, Paide, Saaremaa, Narva, and Petseri begin screening the Romani population in accordance with the order from Reich Commissioner Hinrich Lohse of 4 December 1941.
February 1942From February 1942, most of the 2,000 East Prussian Sinti are deported to Bialystok, which is occupied and incorporated into the German Reich.
7 February 1942In German-occupied Estonia, a village elder orders the liquidation of Karl Koslovski’s household because he has been sent to a concentration camp.
9 February 1942In German-occupied Estonia, Karl Koslovski is deported to Pärnu Prison.
10 February 194246 inmates of the Niederhagen/Wewelsburg concentration camp, including the Sinti Felix Adler, Hermann Broschinski, Franz Lursky, Paul Morgenstern and Janko Weiss, are deported to an unknown killing centre and murdered as part of ‘Aktion 14f13’.
17 – 19 February 1942In reprisal for the killing of German soldiers during an escape of prisoners from the camp Crveni Krst in Niš, Serbia, about 1,000 prisoners are shot at the ‘Bubanj’ killing site outside of town, among them Roma. After these and subsequent mass shootings, Roma labour squads are brought to the shooting site and forced to bury the corpses.
End of February 1942In the Russian village Filippovshchina, German-occupied Soviet Union, 26 Roma are shot dead, including ten children. The alleged German, Estonian and Ingrian-Finnish perpetrators force the non-Romani villagers to witness the execution and then bury the bodies.
1 March 1942Between March 1942 and early spring 1944 the ‘juvenile correctional facility’ in Laitse, German-occupied Estonia, serves as a detention centre for Roma teenagers. Few of them, if any, survive.
6 March 1942The police transfers 48 Roma from Pärnu Prison to Harku prison camp in German-occupied Estonia before 6 March 1942.
9 March 1942The Government of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (German-occupied Czech lands) issues Decree No. 89/1942 Coll. on the ‘Preventive Fight against Crime’. This order is largely a copy of the decree of the same name issued in the German Reich by Heinrich Himmler in 1937. On this basis, Sinti and Roma can be deported to concentration camps at any time.
21 March 1942The German Criminal Police Headquarters in Prague issues a ban on the release of inmates from the ‘penal labour camps’ [kárné pracovní tábory, KPT], taking all inmates into ‘preventive custody’ and labelling them as ‘asocials’ (Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, German-occupied Czech Lands).
2 April 1942The validity of the ‘Decree on the Preventive Fight against Crime’ of 14 December 1937 is extended to German-occupied Luxembourg. On this basis, Sinti and Roma can be sent to concentration camps at any time.
5 April 1942The internees held in the detention camp Montsûrs (Mayenne) are transferred to Montreuil-Bellay, German-occupied France.
17 April 1942In German-occupied Estonia, Tartsan Koslovski and Robert Mitrovski escape from Harku prison. Robert Mitrovski dies in a mass killing on 27 October 1942; all trace of Tartsan Koslovski is lost after the escape.
1 May 1942The military cabinet of the Romanian Presidency of the Council of Ministers orders the preparation of the deportation of Roma to Transnistria.
8 May 1942The validity of the ‘Decree on the Preventive Fight against Crime’ of 14 December 1937 is extended to Lorraine (France), which is annexed by Germany. On this basis, Sinti and Roma can be sent to concentration camps at any time.
15 May 1942The Arc-et-Senans assembly camp, France, becomes an detention camp for ’nomades‘.
19 May 1942Authorities in the fascist Independent State of Croatia order the deportation of all Roma to the Jasenovac concentration camp, marking the beginning of a systematic genocide.
23 May 1942A transport from the Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp (German-annexed Poland) includes Sintize and Romnja.
25 May 1942In Romania, a census is prepared in secret and carried out throughout the country, on the basis of which Roma are selected by the gendarmerie according to certain criteria to be deported to Transnistria shortly afterwards. 9,471 Roma labelled as ‘nomadic’ and 31,438 Roma labelled as ‘non-nomadic’ are registered. Some families are taken into custody on the day of the census itself and held until the deportation is carried out.
26 May 1942Muslim representatives from Zenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina, draw up a resolution to campaign for so-called ‘White Gypsies’, settled Muslim Roma, to be exempt from persecution and deportation, while only itinerant, ‘non-assimilated’ (Muslim) Roma, should be considered ‘Gypsies’. Thanks to this intervention [‘Zenica Resolution’], some of the Muslim Roma in Bosnia and Herzegovina are spared from persecution.
27 May 1942Conference in Tallinn (German-occupied Estonia) on the subject of cooperation between the German and Estonian branches of the police. Heinrich Bergmann, commander of the German Criminal Police in Estonia, speaks on the ‘Solution to the Gypsy Question.’
29 May 1942The Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Independent State of Croatia halts further deportations of ‘White Gypsies’, stating that they are Muslim Roma who are defined as ‘Aryans’. On 1 June 1942, the Ministry informs the Office of the Reis-ul-Ulema that it has issued an order to the authorities at the Jasenovac camp to release ‘Muslim Gypsies’, and that all police forces as well as local authorities are again instructed to leave them alone and refrain from sending them to camps.
1 June 1942In Romania, the deportation to Transnistria of Roma categorised by the gendarmerie as ‘țiganii nomazi’ [‘nomadic Gypsies’] begins. About 11,500 people are deported under this regime. The deportation takes place on foot and using the deportees’ own vehicles (horse-drawn carts). The transfers continue until mid-August 1942. The deportees will remain in camps in the Golta county until February–March 1944.
1 June 1942In Uckermark, near the Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany, the first concentration camp for female youths is opened on the initiative of the Reich Security Main Office. Young Sinti and Roma are also sent there.
June 1942The Estonian Security Police issues instructions to branch offices reporting on Jews and ‘Gypsies’ under the heading ‘Racial Question’.
1 June 1942Arrest and interrogation of Karl Siimann in Paide (German-occupied Estonia).
6 June 1942In German-occupied Estonia, Peeter Burkevich escapes from Harku Prison. He is caught after a few hours.
19 June 1942Slovenian partisans carry out a massacre of 41 Roma in the village of Kanižarica in the district of Črnomelj, which lies in the Italian-annexed province of Ljubljana. Not only individual Roma accused of espionage are killed, but also entire families.
22 June 1942The first Roma are interned in the concentration camp (campo di concentramento) in Tossicia, Italy. Others follow in the next few months.
24 June 1942The ‘Decree on Combating the Gypsy Menace’, a copy of the German decree of the same name, is issued in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (German-occupied Czech Lands).
26 June 1942Rom Štefan Nikolić from Bistra, Independent State of Croatia, is arrested and deported to the Danica camp in early July of that year. He declares himself a Croat and Roman Catholic, but is nevertheless deported to Jasenovac, where he is killed in 1944.
27 June 1942The Strasbourg criminal police implements a racial census to ‘definitively resolve the Gypsy question in Alsace’ (German-annexed France).
28 June 1942Under the code name ‘Operation Blue’ [‘Unternehmen Blau’] or ‘Case Blue’ [‘Fall Blau’], the Wehrmacht’s summer offensive begins in the southern section of the German Eastern Front with advances towards the Volga region and the North Caucasus (Soviet Union). By the end of February 1943, hundreds of Roma were murdered by German units in these areas.
1 July 1942In the German occupied Netherlands, the Central Refugee Camp Westerbork becomes a transit camp under the control of the Security Service (SD) for the deportation of Jews. On 15 July, the first transport leaves the camp to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp (German-annexed Poland).
1 July 1942The Estonian Security Police reports on 17 Roma (six males and eleven females) who have faced a firing squad up to this point. Among the dead are probably the two children Vera and Valentina Indus.
8 July 1942Catea and Ion Tudorachi Avram and their eight children, deported from Romania to Transnistria on foot, cross the Danube in Tulcea, from where they are sent to a camp in Domanovca.
10 July 1942The implementation order for the ‘Decree on Combating the Gypsy Menace’ is issued in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (German-occupied Czech Lands), setting out in detail the measures to be taken.
14 July 1942The Foreign Security Service (Amt VI) of the Reich Security Main Office writes to German security officers in Western Europe, seeking information about ‘Gypsies’ in Britain, United Kingdom.
15 July 1942At the German Criminal Police Headquarters [Kriminalzentrale] in Prague (Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, German-occupied Czech Lands), August Lyss issues orders on the organisation of the ‘Zigeunerlager’ and the treatment of their inmates.
18 July 1942In German-occupied Estonia, Harku prison camp houses 1,133 inmates, including 328 Roma (189 of them children).
22 July 1942Ion Antonescu, president of the Council of Ministers of Romania, orders the deportation to Transnistria of Roma categorised by the gendarmerie as ‘țiganii nenomazi’ [‘non-nomadic Gypsies’].
22 July 1942In Hungary, the Town Council of Esztergom passes a regulation on the establishment of a closed ‘Gypsy settlement’, and asks the Ministry of the Interior to confirm the decree.
27 – 31 July 1942The first prisoners are sent to a camp in Kampor, six kilometres from the town of Rab on the island of Rab (Italian: Arbe). It is one of the largest concentration camps (campo di concentramento) operated by the Italian army for civilians in the annexed Yugoslav territories. To date, the names of 13 Roma who died in the camp are known.
27 July 1942The security police put an ‘SS transit camp for Jews’ into operation in the Dossin barracks in Mechelen, German-occupied Belgium. It is the central camp for the realisation of deportations to the Nazi concentration and extermination camps.
August 1942Members of the Hungarian Gendarmerie shoot a group of 45 Roma, among them 30 women and children, in the town of Korocha, German-Hungarian occupied Russia.
1 – 3 August 1942In the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (German-occupied Czech Lands), people defined as ‘Gypsies’ are registered.
2 August 1942In the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (German-occupied Czech Lands), the ‘Zigeunerlager’ Lety near Pisek and Hodonin near Kunstadt start to operate. During the first days more than a thousand people are deported to each camp.
3 August 1942The internees held in the Mulsanne (Sarthe) detention camp are transferred to Montreuil-Bellay, German-occupied France.
7 August 1942Aloys Blum from Hoyerswerda, Germany, is sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp (German-annexed Poland). He had tried to flee abroad with his family.
27 August 1942
In Article 24 of Decision No. 4567, the Bulgarian Council of Ministers confirms the existing ban on marriages between Jews and Bulgarians and extends it to marriages between Roma and Bulgarians. This regulation also applies in the Bulgarian-occupied and de facto annexed ‘new territories’ of Vardar Macedonia, Western Thrace and the Pirot region.
27 August 1942Camp commander Josef Janovský issues his personal set of rules for the ‘Zigeunerlager’ Lety near Pisek in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (German-occupied Czech Lands).
29 August 1942In German-occupied Serbia, the Chief of the Administrative Staff Harald Turner reports that in Serbia ‘the Jewish question and the Gypsy question have been solved’.
1 September 1942A Roma family of five is shot in the North Caucasian village of Niny, German occupied Russia. On the following day the 61 Jewish inhabitants of the village are murdered, too.
1 – 4 September 1942A group of inmates from Tallinn Central Prison is forced to dig a mass grave at Kalevi-Liiva (German-occupied Estonia) for planned shootings in the first days of September.
4 September 1942On 4 or 5 September, the Sinto Johann Wilhelm ‚Rukeli‘ Trollmann, German light heavyweight boxing champion in 1933, is sent to Neuengamme concentration camp in Germany, where his date of death is registered as 9 February 1943.
6 September 1942100 to 150 Jews, Roma and Russians, who had been interned as non-local evacuees and refugees in Kislovodsk, German-occupied Russia, are taken out of the town by the German Security Police and shot in a ravine.
12 September 1942In Romania, the deportation to Transnistria of Roma categorised by the gendarmerie as ‘țiganii nenomazi’ [‘non-nomadic Gypsies’] begins. Transfers takes place by train. The last train arrives in the Oceacov county on 20 September 1942. About 14,000 deportees are counted there in October 1942. The deportees are then redistributed in the counties of Oceacov and Berezovca where they have to remain until February–March 1944. The measure leads to numerous complaints to the Romanian authorities to stop the deportations or order the repatriation of the deportees.
15 September 1942Josef Serinek manages to escape with a few other men from a work group outside of the ‘Zigeunerlager’ Lety near Pisek, Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia (German-occupied Czech lands) and joins the resistance movement. His wife Pavlína Janečková and their six children die in Lety or in Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp (German-annexed Poland).
16 September 1942The Ministry of the Interior in Romania issues a circular expanding the categories on the basis of which Roma can be deported to Transnistria.
18 September 1942In Germany, Reich Minister of Justice Otto Thierack agrees with Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler to hand over ‘asocial prisoners’ to the concentration camps ‘for extermination through labour’. Sinti and Roma are also affected by this.
19 September 1942In Slovakia, Interior Minister Alexander Mach issues Decree No. 419/1942, which tightens the conditions in the ‘work departments’ for ‘asocials’ and Roma.
22 September 1942The last of nine deportation trains from Romania with Roma categorised as ‘țiganii nenomazi’ [‘non-nomadic Gypsies’] arrives at the Tighina border station. This officially ends the deportation of this group to Transnistria.
25 September 1942In neutral Sweden, the government declares that it is necessary to take measures against Roma.
30 September 1942An official set of camp rules for the Lety and Hodonin ‘Zigeunerlager’ (Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, German-occupied Czech Lands) is issued by the occupation authorities.
13 October 1942The Reich Security Main Office orders the appointment of nine ‘spokespersons’ from the Sinti group for the Reich territory. This is an attempt to instrumentalise them for selection processes in the run-up to the later deportations to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp (German-annexed Poland).
15 October 1942The Estonian Security Police reports 58 Roma children at Laitse Juvenile Correctional Facility in Harju province (German-occupied Estonia).
20 October 1942During mass arrests in the Roma neighbourhoods of Niš, Serbia, 370 Roma are arrested and imprisoned in the Crveni Krst camp. Some of them are later released.
27 October 1942Between 15 October 1942 and March 1943, presumably around the time of the first larger mass killing of Roma in German-occupied Estonia on 27 October 1942, 42 Roma teenagers held in Laitse Juvenile Correctional Facility are murdered in Kalevi-Liiva.
27 October 1942Murder of 243 Roma in Harku (German-occupied Estonia), among them Karl Siimann, Leontine Siimann and Richard Siimann.
November 1942In November 1942, a group of over 100 Roma (mostly women, children and elderly people) are suffocated in a gas van in Voroshilovsk, German-occupied Russia. Einsatzkommando 12 of Einsatzgruppe D is responsible for this mass crime.
November 1942In the North Caucasian Kushchevskaia, German-occupied Russia, the 454. Security Division arrests in November a group of 22 Roma and puts them into the ‘Jewish camp’ [‘Judenlager’].
2 November 1942The Presidium of the Supreme Council of the Soviet Union establishes the Extraordinary State Commission (ChGK).
22 November 1942The Rivesaltes camp in Vichy-France is closed and 299 ‘nomades’ are transferred to the Saliers camp.
1 December 1942On the initiative of the Reich Security Main Office, a concentration camp for under-16s is set up inside the Litzmannstadt Ghetto. The inmates are mostly Polish and Soviet children and young people, but there are also Sinti and Roma.
2 December 1942The first transport of Sinti and Roma from the ‘Zigeunerlager’ in Lety near Pisek, Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (German-occupied Czech lands), to Auschwitz I concentration camp (German-annexed Poland) is carried out on the basis of the order for ‘preventive fight against crime’. The transport consists of 94 mainly elderly persons (78 women and 16 men).
2 – 7 December 1942The first transport of Sinti and Roma from the ‘Zigeunerlager’ in Hodonin near Kunstadt, Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (German-occupied Czech Lands), to Auschwitz I concentration camp (German-annexed Poland) is carried out on the basis of the order on the ‘preventive fight against crime’. The transport consists of 78 mostly old male and female prisoners.
6 December 1942Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer-SS, holds talks with the head of the NSDAP party chancellery, Martin Borman, and the ‘Führer and Reich Chancellor’ Adolf Hitler to coordinate further action against Sinti and Roma in the Reich.
16 December 1942‘Auschwitz Decree’: Heinrich Himmler, head of the Schutzstaffel (‘Reichsführer-SS’), the Reich Security Main Office and the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office, orders the deportation of Sinti and Roma from the German Reich to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp.
19 December 1942The Reich Minister of the Interior, Germany, calls on all youth welfare offices at Gau and state level to compile lists of underage Sinti and Roma resident in care homes. The registration serves to prepare the deportations to Auschwitz-Birkenau (German-annexed Poland).
31 December 1942The whole ‘Zigeunerlager’ Lety near Pisek in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (German-occupied Czech Lands) is put under quarantine due to a typhoidus and typhus epidemic.
1943
15 January 1943In Berlin (Germany), members of the Reich Criminal Police, the Racial Hygiene Research Centre, the Security Service and the Race and Settlement Main Office agree on the forced sterilisation of those Sinti and Roma who are not intended for deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp (German-annexed Poland).
22 January 1943Head of the German Security Police in occupied Estonia Dr Martin Sandberger orders the deportation of all Estonian Roma.
25 January 1943With a transport of over 1,000 prisoners from the Compiègne-Royallieu transit camp in German-occupied France, 65 French Sinti and Roma are sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Germany.
28 January 1943The Reich Security Main Office issues a decree ordering the deportation of Roma and Sinti from the ‘Alpen- und Donau-Reichsgaue’ (= Austria) to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp (German-annexed Poland).
29 January 1943The Reich Security Main Office in Berlin, Germany, issues more detailed instructions on the deportation of Sinti and Roma to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp (German-annexed Poland).
3 February 1943Eight Roma from the southern part of German-occupied Estonia are imprisoned in the ‘labour education camp’ at Murru. Up to November 1943, a further 67 Roma are brought to the camp.
6 February 1943Nine Sinti and Roma, men between the ages of 16 and 32, are arrested in the ‘Forbidden Coastel Zone’ in Antwerp, German-occupied Belgium. They are transferred to Germany via the prison in Antwerp, the Citadel of Huy and the Saint-Gilles prison in Brussels and deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp (German-annexed Poland) in November 1943. Only one of them, Joseph Collicon, survives.
8 February 1943Start of deportation of Roma from all over German-occupied Estonia to Tallinn. Tallinn Central Prison becomes a collection point for deported Roma in Estonia.
9 February 1943A train with 92 Roma on board departs from Rakvere for Tallinn in German-occupied Estonia. Briefly incarcerated in Tallinn Central Prison, Roma from all over Estonia face death by bullet.
10 February 1943Mass shooting of 110 Roma previously imprisoned in Tallinn Central Prison (German-occupied Estonia) by the German Security Police, probably in Kalevi-Liiva. Among the victims is Lonny Indus from Narva, wife of Willem Indus, together with their six children.
12 February 1943174 Roma, originally from smaller towns and villages in Estonia, are transferred from Tallinn police detention facility to Tallinn Central Prison.
13 February 1943In German-occupied Estonia, Robert Burkevich manages to escape from the deportation train scheduled to leave Tapa station for Tallinn Central Prison. He is soon caught.
17 February 1943Due to the spread of an epidemic of typhoid and typhus among the prisoners, the ‘Zigeunerlager’ Hodonin near Kunstadt, Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (German-occupied Czech Lands), is put under quarantine.
17 February 1943Mass shooting of 337 Roma previously imprisoned in Tallinn Central Prison (German-occupied Estonia) by the German Security Police, probably in Kalevi-Liiva. Willem Indus from Narva is among the victims, as are the fifteen-year-old Pavel Koslovski from Petseri parish and his father, Nikolai Koslovski.
19 February 1943Asafan Czerwieniak, having been deported to Auschwitz concentration camp (German-annexed Poland) by the security police in German-occupied Kraków, Poland, is shot at the ‘Death Wall’ along with 13 other men, including the Roma Józef Mirga, Władysław Szczerba and Władysław Olszewski. They were suspected of attempting to escape. By November 1943, a total of 57 Sinti and Roma are murdered in this way.
23 February 1943At least 86 Roma held as ‘hostages’ in the Crveni Krst camp in Niš, Serbia, are shot on the killing site ‘Bubanj’ in the biggest mass shooting of Roma from the town.
26 February 1943The first Sinti and Roma are deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp (German-annexed Poland) in Camp Section BIIe on the basis of the ‘Auschwitz Decree’. From 1 March 1943, further deportation trains with Sinti and Roma arrive almost daily. By the end of the month, 12,259 men, women and children are already registered in the ‘General ledger of the Gypsy camp’.
1 – 5 March 1943Thirty-six Roma (22 women, four elderly, and ten small children) are murdered in Kalevi-Liiva (German-occupied Estonia) in early March 1943.
6 March 1943The first mass transport from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (German-occupied Czech Lands) to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp (German-annexed Poland) on the basis of the ‘Auschwitz decree’, numbering approx. 1,040 Roma men, women, and children, leaves the city of Brno. They are registered in the camp on 7 and 8 March.
10 March 1943 The second mass transport from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (German-occupied Czech Lands) on the basis of the ‘Auschwitz decree’, departing from the city of Prague and numbering approx. 650 Roma men, women, and children, arrives in Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp (German-annexed Poland). They are registered on 11 March.
11 March 1943
Peter Wachler and Anna Malik are born in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp (German-annexed Poland) in Camp Section BIIe. Their mothers had been deported from Germany and the German-occupied Czech lands. They are the first of at least 378 babies born to deported Sintize or Romnja under appalling conditions in the camp. All of them die within a few days or weeks.
14 March 1943Some of the around 130 men, women and children, who are interned in the detention camp in Kunratická Street in Reichenberg (Sudetenland, German annexed Czech Lands) are deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp (German-annexed Poland).
15 March 1943Presumably on this day, the Dycha family of ten is arrested in Hrušky for deportation to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp (German-annexed Poland). Thanks to the support of local officials, they are released. However, they are later deported to Auschwitz on the fourth transport from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (German-occupied Czech Lands). No one survives.
17 March 1943658 Sinti and Roma from the Sudetenland (German annexed Czechoslovakia) are registered in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp (German-annexed Poland).
19 March 1943About 1,050 men, women and children deported from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (German-occupied Czech lands) on the basis of the ‘Auschwitz decree’ are registered on arrival in Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp (German-annexed Poland). They arrive on the third mass transport from the Protectorate, departing from the city of Olomouc.
21 March 194363 individuals from Moselle and Saar arrested by the Saarbrücken (Germany) criminal police as ‘Gypsies’ are registered at Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp (German-annexed Poland).
22 March 194361 individuals from Alsace arrested by the Strasbourg (German-annexed France) criminal police as ‘Gypsies’ are registered at Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp (German-annexed Poland), among them Maria Barbara Gerste with her family.
29 March 1943The Reich Security Main Office orders the deportation of Roma and Sinti from German-occupied territories and countries (Belgium, Bialystok district, Alsace, Lorraine, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and northern France) to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp (German-annexed Poland).
31 March 1943Ceija Stojka from Vienna, Austria, is registered with her mother and siblings in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp (German-annexed Poland).
5 April 1943Niederhagen/Wewelsburg concentration camp in Germany is dissolved as an independent main camp and most of the inmates are transferred to other camps. 42 remaining prisoners are liberated on 2 April 1945.
7 April 1943Born in 1925, Johann Waszkowski (also known as Jan Wackowski) is the first young person from the Sinti and Roma minority to be registered in the ‘bricklayer school’ of the Auschwitz concentration camp (German-annexed Poland).
8 April 1943Roma and Sinti from Nikolsburg, formerly Mikulov (Sudetenland, German annexed Czechoslovakia) and surrounding areas are deported as part of a mass transport of Roma from the Burgenland (German annexed Austria) to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp (German-annexed Poland).
14 April 1943From that day until 11 January 1945, more than 20 Sinti and Roma are deported to concentration camps under Nazi rule via the prisons in Gorizia, Udine and Trieste, Italy.
19 April 1943Karel Serynek, who had escaped from a labour detachment of the ‘Zigeunerlager’ Lety near Pisek, Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (German-occupied Czech lands) on 15 September 1942, is shot during an attempted arrest.
22 April 1943Hans Braun and two of his cousins are deported from Luxembourg-Grund prison to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp (German-annexed Poland). This is the only known direct deportation of members of the minority from German-occupied Luxembourg to Auschwitz.
28 April 1943In Denmark, a study on Danish ‘Gypsies’ deploying racial-biological criteria is published in English.
7 May 1943About 860 men, women and children, mainly inmates of the detention camp Lety near Pisek, are registered in Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp (German-annexed Poland). They were deported in the fourth mass transport from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (German-occupied Czech lands) on the basis of the ‘Auschwitz decree’.
10 May 1943Four Romani men escape from the ‘Zigeunerlager’ Hodonin near Kunstadt, Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (German-occupied Czech Lands). Bohuslav Dydy is shot, Blažej Dydy later deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp (German-annexed Poland) (survives), Ludvík Murka later executed in Prague. Antonín Murka goes into hiding and joins the resistance movement (survives).
22 May 1943In the Auschwitz concentration camp (German-annexed Poland), 15 Sinti and Roma are shot at the ‘Death Wall’ after failed escape attempts. Five are German and ten are Czech. Among the victims are the teenagers Albert Bernhardt and Rudolf Stein.
23 May 1943The ‘Reich Commissioner for the Ostland’ allows for the continuous incarceration of ‘sedentary’ Roma, without treating them like Jews.
25 May 1943Romni Milica Katić, a partisan in German-occupied Serbia, is executed after months of imprisonment in the Banjica concentration camp.
25 May 1943In Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp (German-annexed Poland), 507 Sinti and Roma, all men and boys, as well as 528 Sinti and Roma, all women and girls, from Camp Section BIIe are taken away and murdered in the gas chambers. They are Polish Roma from Bialystok (German-occupied Poland) and Roma from Austria.
31 May 1943During a one-day series of police raids in neutral Sweden, 453 Roma are registered by the police.
3 June 1943Stanisław ‘Stahiro’ Stankiewicz is born in Dominów, a work detail of the Majdanek concentration camp in German-occupied Poland.
4 June 1943Ján Lacko is released from the Dubnica nad Váhom forced labour camp, Slovak State, and joins the partisan movement.
11 June 194331 Roma and Sinti interned in the commune of Valdastico, Italy, attempt to escape. 13 adults with children are seized and taken back.
25 June 1943Fourteen-year-old Johann Winterstein is shot at the ‘Death Wall’ in the Auschwitz concentration camp (German-annexed Poland). On the same day, eleven other Sinti and Roma are murdered in this way. Like the teenager, they had fled the camp or were suspected of attempting to escape.
1 July 1943In the Netherlands, the German occupation authorities impose a ban on travelling for people living in caravans, which also affects Sinti and Roma.
9 July 1943The 13-year-old Rom Pero T. is sent to the Litzmannstadt youth concentration camp at the instigation of the Magdeburg welfare and youth welfare office.
22 July 1943A Strasbourg (German-annexed France) police statistical report indicates that 673 ‘Gypsies or mixed-race Gypsies’ have been expelled to unoccupied France since July 1940.
6 August 1943In German-occupied Estonia, Juhan Burkevich, Richard Koslovski, and Johannes Koslovski try to escape from Tallinn Central Prison. Richard Koslovski succeeds while the other two are captured and later in December 1943 transferred to Murru ‘labour education camp’.
8 August 1943In Lety near Pisek in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (German-occupied Czech lands), the ‘liquidation’ of the ‘Zigeunerlager’ is completed and the camp is officially closed down.
22 August 1943About 770 men, women and children, mainly prisoners of the ‘Zigeunerlager’ Hodonin near Kunstadt, are registered in Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp (German-annexed Poland). They were deported in the fifth mass transport from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (German-occupied Czech lands) on the basis of the ‘Auschwitz decree’.
23 August 1943The British Special Operations Executive, United Kingdom, receives a report from the intelligence service of the Polish Home Army describing ‘mass executions of gipsies’ in Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp (German-annexed Poland).
29 August 1943The Danish government resigns and the country, which has been under German occupation since 1940, is then governed by a German military administration.
7 September 1943The Extraordinary State Commission (ChGK, Soviet Union) publishes a communiqué on Orel oblast with information about Nazi mass killings of Roma.
8 September 1943After the fall of Benito Mussolini on 25 July 1943, the new government under Marshal Pietro Badoglio negotiates with the Allies. The armistice is signed on 3 September 1943 and announced on 8 September. On 10 September, the release of ‘nationals of an enemy state’ from the concentration camps (campi di concentramento) is decreed. Political internees and other categories of prisoners had already been released earlier. ‘Gypsies’ are disregarded and are therefore not yet released.
12 September 1943In Italy, the deportation of the Jewish population to the extermination camps begins with the transfer of some Italian territories to German military administration and the occupation by the Wehrmacht of those parts of Italy not yet liberated by the Allies.
26 September 1943All those interned in the concentration camp (campo di concentramento) in Tossicia, Italy, flee the camp as it is no longer guarded.
30 September 1943The ‘Zigeunerlager’ Hodonin near Kunstadt in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (German-occupied Czech lands) is disbanded, but officially closed down only on 1 December 1943.
October – December 1943Raids are carried out in the area of the German Military Commander for Belgium and Northern France, and the Sinti and Roma who are arrested are then transferred to the ‘SS transit camp’ in Mechelen awaiting deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
12 October 1943Order to record the civil status of Poles, ‘Zigeuner’ and ‘Ostarbeiter’ in the districts of Esch/Alzette, Diekirch and Grevenmacher, German-occupied Luxembourg, for the issue of income tax cards for the year 1944.
15 October 1943Reich Criminal Police in Berlin proposes treating ‘sedentary’ Roma in the ‘Ostland’ like the non-Romani population while confining ‘itinerant’ Roma to concentration camps.
19 October 1943On the basis of the ‘Auschwitz decree’, the sixth mass transport from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (German-occupied Czech Lands), departing from the cities of Prague and Brno and numbering approx. 90 people, arrives in Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp (German-annexed Poland).
12 November 1943100 Sinti and Roma from Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp (German-annexed Poland) arrive at Natzweiler concentration camp in German-annexed Alsace (France) for medical experiments. 18 died during the transport.
23 November 1943In Flers-en-Escrebieux (Nord department), the Lagrené family of 15 is arrested in order to transfer them via the Loos-lez-Lille prison to the ‘SS transit camp’ in Mechelen (German-occupied Belgium and northern France).
23 November 1943In Tournai, German-occupied Belgium, 19 members of the Karoli family are arrested by the Feldgendarmerie.
24 November 1943The French musician Jean ‘Django’ Reinhardt and his companion Jean Meinhard are denied entry to Switzerland near Geneva.
27 November 194335 Sinti and Roma from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (German-occupied Czech lands) are sent to the ‚penal company‘ of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp (German-annexed Poland) for acts of resistance. Thirty of them do not survive; these include Franz Daniel and Johann Daniel, who are ‘shot while attempting to escape‘ on 1 February 1944.
1 December 1943In Finland, a law [‘Erikoistyöleirilaki’] comes into force that allows people to be sent to separate labour camps if, in the view of Finnish legislators, they are ‘unwilling to work’ or have an ‘undesirable lifestyle’.
9 December 1943The German criminal police in the area of the German Military Commander for Belgium and Northern France draw up a list with the name of 351 Sinti and Roma who are destined for deportation. One woman, Jeanne Royenne Vados, is later deported without having been registered on this list.
11 December 1943Jacqueline Vadoche is born in the ‘SS transit camp’ Mechelen in German-occupied Belgium. After being deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp (German-annexed Poland), she died in the camp on 1 May 1944.
12 December 194389 Sinti and Roma, all men, aged between twelve and 37 are registered in the Natzweiler concentration camp in German-occupied France. They are the second group of Sinti and Roma transferred from Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp (German-annexed Poland) to be abused for medical experiments.
23 December 1943Otto Koslovski is dispatched to Murru ‘labour education camp’ in German-occupied Estonia. This is the last available information about him.
24 December 194372 Sinti and Roma, all men, who survived criminal human experiments in Natzweiler concentration camp (German-annexed Alsace, France) are deported back to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp; during the transport 28 of them die.
29 December 1943The internees held in the Poitiers (Vienne) detention camp are transferred to Montreuil-Bellay, German-occupied France.
1944
15 January 1944From the ‘SS transit camp’ in Mechelen, German-occupied Belgium, 352 men, women and children are deported on the train known as ‘Transport Z’ to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp (German-annexed Poland), where they arrive two days later. One-year-old Georgette Hédouin dies during the transport.
28 January 1944On the basis of the ‘Auschwitz decree’, the seventh mass transport from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (German-occupied Czech Lands), numbering approx. 60 people, arrives in Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp (German-annexed Poland).
30 January 1944A transport from the Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany to the Lublin-Majdanek concentration and extermination camp includes Sintize and Romnja.
February 1944
The Roma brothers Uko and Salko Sejdović, both fighters of the Partisan Littoral Brigade [Primorska brigada], die in a battle in Zagarač near Danilovgrad, German-occupied Montenegro.
Spring 1944In early spring 1944, the director of Laitse Juvenile Correctional Facility in German-occupied Estonia receives the order from the German Security Police to hand over the remaining Roma children. They are murdered at Kalevi-Liiva.
Spring 1944Sonderkommando 1005 begins erasing the traces of mass murder at Kalevi-Liiva (German-occupied Estonia) by burning the corpses.
7 March 1944Two-year-old Robert Georg Lehmann is deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp (German-annexed Poland) together with his five-year-old brother Egon Karl Lehmann after being forcibly transferred from Luxembourg to the German Reich by the German criminal police. Neither child survived the camp.
13 March 1944American intelligence officers in London, United Kingdom, receive from Polish intelligence a report on conditions in Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp (German-annexed Poland) that includes accounts of Section BIIe.
19 March 1944German troops invade Hungary and establish a government dependent on Germany.
24 March 1944Tallinn Central Prison in German-occupied Estonia reports 61 (German and Czech) Jews and 31 Roma among its 2,867 inmates.
30 March 1944Adam Ujvary is murdered in the Nazi ‘euthanasia’ centre ‘Am Spiegelgrund’ in Vienna, Austria, at the age of two years and four months. His parents and siblings have already died in the Lackenbach detention camp in 1941 and 1942 or were murdered after being deported to the Litzmannstadt ghetto.
15 April 1944534 Sinti and Roma, women and girls, are transferred from Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp (German-annexed Poland) to Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany.
15 April 1944884 Sinti and Roma, men and boys, are transferred from the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp (German-annexed Poland) to Buchenwald concentration camp, Germany. One prisoner dies during the transport or manages to escape, as 883 are registered in Buchenwald.
17 April 1944Heinrich and Helga Schultz are deported from Kiel, Germany, to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp (German-annexed Poland).
21 April 1944200 Sinti and Roma are transported from the Buchenwald concentration camp, Germany, to the Dora satellite camp.
May 1944In Italy, Slovakian Rom Anton Facuna defects to the Allies and henceforth fights as a partisan for the liberation of Slovakia.
9 May 194433 Sinti children and adolescents are deported from the Catholic children‘s home St. Josefspflege in Mulfingen, Germany, to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp (German-annexed Poland). Together with an earlier deportation, at least 38 children and adolescents from this children’s home are taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Only three children survive the deportation: Luise Mai and Rosa Georges are liberated in Dachau, after having been imprisoned in Ravensbrück and the Wolkenburg subcamp of the Flossenbürg concentration camp. Amalie Reinhardt was transferred to Ravensbrück and Mauthausen and liberated in Bergen-Belsen.
11 May 1944530 Sinti and Roma are transported from the Buchenwald concentration camp, Germany, to the Dora satellite camp.
14 May 1944In the German occupied Netherlands, the Commander of the Security Police (SIPO) and the Security Service (SD) orders the arrest and internment in Westerbork of ‘all persons […] who possess the characteristic of Gypsies.’
16 May 1944In the German occupied Netherlands, a nationwide round-up of Sinti and Roma takes place. 578 Sinti, Roma and travellers are sent to the transit camp Westerbork. Among those arrested are Ludwig, Josephine, Johanna, Clara and Frieda Georg from Solweg. Edi Georg goes into hiding.
19 May 1944In the German-occupied Netherlands, 245 Sinti and Roma and 208 Jews are deported from Westerbork transit camp to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp (German-annexed Poland). In Assen, German-occupied Netherlands, twelve Sinti and Roma are loaded onto this train. Thanks to the help of a policeman, Zoni Weisz escapes deportation with his aunt and cousins. A deportation train from Mechelen (Dossin barracks), German-occupied Belgium, is coupled to the train from Westerbork en route; on this train is Stevo Karoli. On 21 May, the deportees are registered in the camp.
24 May 1944161 Sinti and Roma, women and girls, are transported from Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp (German-annexed Poland) to Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany.
27 May 194482 Sinti and Roma are transferred from Auschwitz concentration camp (German-annexed Poland) to Flossenbürg concentration camp in Germany and registered there. The majority of the men perform forced labour in various satellite camps from January 1945 at the latest.
15 June 1944Fioravante Lucchesi joins the Resistenza (resistance movement) in Italy.
Summer 1944According to a single testimony at a Soviet war crimes trial, the police transfer somewhere between 150 and 200 Roma in summer 1944 to Murru ‘labour education camp’ (German-occupied Estonia) and kill them.
12 July 1944In Switzerland, a new directive prohibits the deportation of people whose ‘life and limb’ are at risk. Nevertheless, 17-year-old Anton Reinhardt is expelled on 8 September 1944.
21 July 1944Twenty-two Lithuanian Romnja are registered in the concentration and extermination camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau (German-annexed Poland), most of them toddlers and children. It is likely that Lithuanian Roma men are also admitted on the same day, but due to the illegibility of the last pages of the ‘General Ledger of the Gypsy Camp’ for men, neither their names nor their number is known. These are also the last entries in the register for Sinti and Roma in Camp Section BIIe, which was then buried by prisoners to preserve it for posterity. A total of 10094 numbers were assigned to male prisoners and 10849 numbers to female prisoners.
28 July 1944In Hungary, the Town Council of Esztergom decides to put a regulation on a closed ‘Gypsy settlement’ into effect legally from 16 August 1944.
2 August 1944535 Sinti and Roma, women and girls, together with 490 men and boys, are transferred from Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp (German-annexed Poland) to Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany.
2 August 1944919 Sinti and Roma, men and boys, are transferred from Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp (German-annexed Poland) to Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany. 918 are registered in Buchenwald on 3 August. Josef Freiwald escapes while the train is near Weimar, but is recaptured and taken into custody in Buchenwald on 6 September 1944.
2 – 3 August 1944In the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp (German-annexed Poland), the approximately 4,200 to 4,300 Sinti and Roma remaining in Camp Section BIIe are murdered in the gas chambers during the night of 2 to 3 August.
7 August 194440 Sinti and Roma are transported from the Buchenwald concentration camp, Germany, to the Dachau concentration camp.
7 August 1944450 Sinti and Roma are transported from the Buchenwald concentration camp, Germany, to the Dora satellite camp. On 3 September, another 70 Sinti and Roma are transferred there.
23 August 1944The British Home Office, United Kingdom, considers interning ‘Gypsies’ or restricting their mobility, but no such policy is introduced.
29 August 1944The Extraordinary State Commission (ChGK, Soviet Union) publishes a communiqué on Pskov oblast with information about Nazi mass killings of Roma.
29 August 1944210 Hungarian Roma, all women, are deported from Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp (German-annexed Poland) to Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany.
30 August 1944Vinzenz Rose is able to escape from Neckarelz, Germany, a satellite camp of Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp, with the help of his brother Oskar Rose.
1 September 1944The Graslitz, Wolkenburg and Zwodau satellite camps, which had previously been assigned to Ravensbrück, are placed under the Flossenbürg concentration camp. There are more than 500 Romani women in these satellite camps. Among them are Lily van Angeren-Franz, Rosa Höllenreiner and Elisabeth Schneck-Guttenberger, who flee during a death march.
4 September 1944End of the evacuation of Natzweiler concentration camp (German-annexed Alsace, France) by the SS administration. The 7 000 remaining detainees are transferred to Dachau concentration camp.
14 September 1944Vaclav Ferda, Josef Florian, Willi Rose, Emil Růžička and Johann Stojka are transferred from the Auschwitz I concentration camp (German-annexed Poland) to Flossenbürg concentration camp, Germany, in a transport with a total of 100 prisoners. The five men had previously been transferred from camp section BIIe in Auschwitz-Birkenau to the main camp, some of them as early as 1943.
17 September 1944The auxiliary police Omakaitse in German-occupied Estonia is dissolved.
19 September 1944Rudolf Franz is born in Ravensbrück concentration camp, Germany, and dies there on 5 October 1944. He is one of 51 children of Sintize and Romnja who are born in Ravensbrück until April 1945, with little chance of survival.
19 September 1944The ‘Armistice of Moscow’ between Finland and the Soviet Union ends the Finnish-Soviet hostilities.
25 September 1944200 male Sinti and Roma, all of them children and teenagers, are transported from Buchenwald concentration camp, Germany, to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp (German-annexed Poland). Only two survivors of this transport are known: Alfred Rosenbach and Rudolf Böhmer.
3 October 1944
In retaliation for a partisan attack in the Maleševo mountains region, German-occupied Macedonia, the German combat group ‘Bruns’ shoots around 50 local civilians, 40 of them in the town of Berovo [Albanian: Berova]. Among the victims of Berovo were at least four Roma.
3 October 1944Partisan Rudolf Facuna is executed by German forces, together with 20 other residents of the town of Sklabiňa, Slovak State.
10 October 194449 Sinti and Roma, all women, are transferred from Altenburg, a satellite camp of Buchenwald concentration camp, Germany, to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp (German-annexed Poland).
11 October 1944110 Sinti and Roma, all women, are transferred from Hasag-Taucha, a satellite camp from Buchenwald concentration camp, Germany, to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp (German-annexed Poland). Joséphine Lagrené and Jeanne Marie Modis-Galut are among the prisoners.
16 October 1944In German-occupied Hungary, the fascist Arrow Cross Party under Ferenc Szálasi takes over the government.
22 October 1944After several dozen of his relatives are killed by Ustaša in the fascist Independent State of Croatia, Bosnian Rom Nadir Dedić joins the partisan resistance movement.
24 October 1944Transfer of 231 Sinti and Roma, detainees in Dachau concentration camp, to Schömberg, a satellite camp of Natzweiler concentration camp.
2 November 1944The Ministry of National Defence of the Slovak State orders the establishment of a detention camp for Roma in Dubnica nad Váhom.
3 November 1944Ján Lacko’s mother, Mária Lacková, his wife Rozália Lacková and their daughters Margita, Gabriela, Rozália and Valéria are led into a forest near Puš mountain, Slovak State, and shot by German and Slovak supporters of the Tiso regime.
5 November 1944Massacres take place in Kremnička, Slovak State, after the suppression of the Slovak National Uprising until 17 March 1945. At least 150 Roma are among the victims.
6 November 1944Members of Einsatzkommando 14 of Einsatzgruppe H murder 13 Roma men, women and children from a settlement near Valaská Belá, Slovak State.
14 November 1944Roma from Čierny Balog, Slovak State, all of them women and children, are led by members of the 18th SS Panzergrenadier Division ‘Horst Wessel’ into a wooden hut in the Jegrovo Valley and burned alive there.
14 November 1944157 Hungarian Roma, all men, are sent to Dachau concentration camp in Germany. By 21 December 1944, a total of around 1,100 Roma, men and women, from Hungary are sent to Dachau for forced labour. The women are transferred to Ravensbrück and Bergen-Belsen shortly afterwards.
15 November 1944Roma from Čierny Balog, Slovak State, are shot by members of the 18th SS Panzergrenadier Division ‘Horst Wessel’ in the Vydrovo Valley.
21 November 1944In Tisovec, Slovak State, 14 Roma of the town are shot by members of Einsatzkommando 14 of Einsatzgruppe H for supporting partisans. About 30 women and children are abducted on the same day and also murdered at an unknown location.
22 November 1944Dissolution of the Schirmeck-Vorbruck security camp in Alsace (German-annexed France).
24 November 1944Roma from the settlement of Detva-Pustovníky are led away by members of Einsatzkommando 14 of Einsatzgruppe H and murdered in Zvolen, Slovak State.
24 November 1944461 women arrive at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp from Allach satellite camp of Dachau concentration camp in Germany, including 125 Hungarian Roma with their children. This is the first known group transport of Roma to this camp.
25 November 1944Entrance of the American troops in the deserted Natzweiler concentration camp (German-annexed Alsace, France).
28 November 1944290 Hungarian Romnja are deported together with Hungarian Jews from the Komárom camp, Hungary, to the Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany.
5 December 1944Around 150 Hungarian Roma are transferred from the Dachau concentration camp, Germany, to the Buchenwald concentration camp. On 15 December and at the end of January 1945, transports with a further 36 and around 30 Roma from Hungary follow.
9 December 1944Presumably on this day, 15 male members of the Klinec family from Dúbravy, Slovak Republic, are arrested in retaliation for supporting partisans and taken to Zvolen, where they are murdered on an unknown date in December 1944 by men from Einsatzkommando 14 of Einsatzgruppe H.
27 December 1944Emma Braidich and Maria Levakovich are arrested by the Security Police in Talmasson, Italy.
1945
4 – 11 January 1945Members of Einsatzgruppe 14 and the Hlinka Guard‘s riot troops from Považská Bystrica commit a mass murder of 400 people near Nemecká, Slovak State. Among the victims are also Roma.
6 January 1945Two Roma families, a total of ten people including children, women and men, are shot by German SS men in Héreg, German-occupied Hungary.
11 January 1945Maria Braidich, Emma Braidich and Maria Levakovich are among other deportees on a transport from Trieste, Italy, via Udine to the Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany.
12 January 1945Together with other Sinti and Roma, Louise Maitre is transferred from Wolkenburg, a satellite camp of Flossenbürg concentration camp, Germany, to Ravensbrück.
16 January 1945The Montreuil-Bellay detention camp, German-occupied France, is closed.
18 January 1945A transport from Käsmark, Slovakia, arrives at Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany with 15 mostly Hungarian Romnja as well as Jewish women.
20 January 1945In the Zwodau satellite camp of the Flossenbürg concentration camp in Germany, around 200 Hungarian Roma women were imprisoned alongside German-speaking Sinti women.
27 January 1945
Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp is liberated by soldiers of the Soviet Red Army. The SS guards had previously forced around 56,000 prisoners on death marches. Around 7,000 men, women and children are liberated in the Auschwitz main camp, in camp Birkenau and camp Monowitz. It is not known whether any Sinti and Roma were among them.
February 1945Hamid Džemail Hamidovski, a Rom from Skopje, Macedonia, and brother of Ramiz Džemail Hamidovski, has been fighting as a partisan against the occupation since 1941. He dies during a battle with Chetniks in Kosovo.
23 February 194526 Roma from the detention camp in Dubnica nad Váhom, Slovak State, are led out of the camp and shot on the grounds of a nearby factory.
March 1945Helios Gómez, Spanish artist, writer, political activist and Rom, is imprisoned in Modelo Prison in Barcelona, Spain, for clandestine activities against the Franco regime. He is released in 1946 and imprisoned again from 1948 to 1954.
1 March 1945Most of the Roma from Esztergom, German-occupied Hungary, are deported to the ‘Csillagerőd’ camp in Komárom.
1 March 194570 Sinti and Roma, all women, arrive at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany, having been transferred from the Buchenwald satellite camp in Taucha.
2 March 1945A transport of 1,918 women from the Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany to the Mauthausen concentration camp in German-attached Austria included 800 Sintize and Romnja with babies and small children.
3 March 1945At least 183 Roma and Sinti are transferred to Sachsenhausen concentration camp as part of a partial evacuation of the men’s camp in Ravensbrück, Germany. Many of the men were former Wehrmacht soldiers.
4 March 194527 Sinti and Roma, all women and mainly of German nationality, are transferred from the Altenburg satellite camp of Buchenwald concentration camp to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany. More than half of them are under the age of 25.
6 March 1945A transport of prisoners from Ravensbrück arrives at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany, including female Sinti and Roma with their children.
19 March 1945A transport of prisoners from Mauthausen arrives at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany. They include the Sinti woman Antonie Steinbach and her three children.
26 March 1945A transport of prisoners from Ravensbrück arrives at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany, including Sinti and Roma women with their children.
29 March 1945 – 1 April 1945Victims of Einsatzkommando 14 of Einsatzgruppe H are being exhumed at the Jewish cemetery in Zvolen, formerly in the Slovak State. At least 35 of the victims are Roma.
31 March 1945After escaping from a satellite camp of Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp, 17-year-old Anton Reinhardt is seized and murdered near what is now Bad Rippoldsau, Germany.
April 1945In connection with the Swedish Red Cross rescue operation (‘White Buses’), Roma are also evacuated from the Nazi concentration camps to Sweden.
11 April 1945Buchenwald concentration camp is liberated by US troops.
12 – 13 April 1945
In the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Germany, at least 150 German Sinti are forcibly recruited for deployment at the front.
12 April 1945In the German occupied Netherlands, the 850 Jewish prisoners remaining in the transit camp Westerbork are liberated by the Canadian army.
13 April 1945The women of the Wolkenburg satellite camp, Germany, including Rosa Mettbach, Marie Fröhlich and Mädie Franz, are first driven by the SS towards the Flossenbürg concentration camp and then to Dachau. On this death march, five women, including three Sinti or Roma, were shot near Irrenlohe.
15 April 1945British soldiers liberate Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany. Around a quarter of the liberated inmates die in the following weeks as a result of their imprisonment.
22 April 1945Polish and Soviet troops liberate the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, Germany, where there are still 3,400 weakened prisoners.
23 April 1945US troops liberate the Flossenbürg concentration camp in Germany.
26 – 28 April 1945Amilcare Debar takes part in the liberation of Turin, Italy, as a partisan.
26 April 1945Gervaise Schmitt-Vinstretin and Marie-Madeleine Vinstretin are registered in a hospital in Malmö, Sweden, where they are evacuated shortly before the liberation of the Ravensbrück concentration camp thanks to the Red Cross.
26 April 1945Ramiz Džemail Hamidovski, a Rom from Skopje, Macedonia, and brother of Hamid Džemail Hamidovski, fights as a partisan against the German occupation. He is killed during a battle in the Croatian village of Jamarica.
29 April 1945Dachau concentration camp in Germany is liberated by American troops.
30 April 1945Units of the Soviet Red Army liberate approximately 2 000 prisoners in Ravensbrück concentration camp, Germany.
30 April 1945The Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany is liberated by soldiers of the Soviet Red Army.
2 May 1945The unconditional surrender of the German troops in Italy comes into force.
5 May 1945A mass grave containing the bodies of 26 Roma is opened near the former Slovakian state’s Dubnica nad Váhom detention camp. During the exhumation, it is discovered that one of the victims was seven months pregnant and that eight people had been buried alive.
8 May 1945Germany’s surrender, dated 8 May and signed on 9 May in Berlin-Karlshorst, marks the end of World War II and the National Socialist regime in Germany.
June – July 1945In connection with the Swedish Red Cross rescue operation (‘White Ships’), a number of Sinti and Roma, survivors in the Nazi concentration camps, come from Germany to Sweden.
17 September 1945The ‚Belsen Trial‘ begins in Lüneburg, Germany, which is also the first Auschwitz trial on German soil, as several defendants were not only deployed in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, but also in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp.
20 November 1945In Nuremberg, Germany, the trial of 24 major war criminals and six criminal organisations of the German Nazi regime (Nuremberg Trial) begins before the International Military Tribunal of the Allies. It lasts until 1 October 1946.
1946
27 February 1946During the Trial of the Major War Criminals at Nuremberg, Germany, the Soviet prosecution reads aloud from German reports about the forced sterilisation of a Roma woman in German-occupied Latvia.
April 1946In an article published in the United Kingdom, Vanya Kochanowski reports in detail about the genocide of the Roma in Latvia.
22 June 1946A general amnesty is announced in Italy, which also cancels the banishment of Sinti and Roma under the fascist regime.
October 1946In an article published in the United Kingdom, Matéo Maximoff calls for a United Nations tribunal to be established to punish those responsible for the murder of 500,000 Sinti and Roma.
2 – 7 December 1946In the Hamburg Doctors’ Trial in Germany, six doctors and two police officers are tried before a United Kingdom military court for carrying out and facilitating the illegal sterilisation of Romani women and men.
1947
26 February 1947In Belgium, compensation is only granted if the arrest was caused by ‘selfless patriotic activity’ during the German occupation. As racist reasons are not taken into account, Sinti and Roma who survived the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp are not compensated.
27 February – 3 March 1947The former Chief of the Administrative Staff in German-occupied Serbia, Harald Turner, stands trial before the military court in Belgrade, Serbia, and is sentenced to death by hanging. The execution takes place on 9 March 1947. In the autumn of 1941, Turner was one of the initiators of the mass murder of Jews and Roma.
2 April 1947
The Supreme National Tribunal in Warsaw, Poland, sentences Rudolf Höss, the first camp commandant of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp, to death for the crimes committed there, including those perpetrated against Sinti and Roma. The execution by hanging takes place on 16 April 1947 on the former Auschwitz camp grounds (Stammlager).
29 May 1947Franz Böhme, former Plenipotentiary Commanding General in German-occupied Serbia and one of the main defendants in the ‘Hostages Trial’ (Case VII) before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals, commits suicide in prison before the arraignment. On Böhme‘s orders, thousands of Jews, Roma and Serbs were shot in 1941.
30 June 1947The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), responsible for supporting Displaced Persons (DPs) since the end of the war, ends its activities. Responsibility for Displaced Persons made homeless during World War II, including an unknown number of Sinti and Roma, is transferred to the International Refugee Organisation (IRO).
15 September 1947The Einsatzgruppen trial against 24 former SS men who bore significant responsibility for crimes committed in the German-occupied Soviet Union during World War II begins in Nuremberg, Germany.
8 October 1947Otto Ohlendorf, the former head of Einsatzgruppe D of the Security Police and the SD, is interrogated about mass killings of Roma at the Nuremberg Einsatzgruppen Trial (Case 9), Germany.
10 November 1947Law No. 59 of the American military government regulates the restitution of property in the US zone (part of occupied Germany) and becomes the model for later restitution laws.
1948
1 January 1948Foundation of the International Tracing Service (ITS) in Arolsen, American occupation zone, Germany, as a central tracing service for the victims of Nazi persecution.
6 May 1948In the Netherlands, the first memorial on which Sinti or Roma are mentioned by name is unveiled on the Brink in Vledder. Among the names of the victims (‘those who fell’) are also those of Josephine, Frieda and Clara Georg who were murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau in August 1944.
15 October 1948Before the People’s Court in Vienna, Austria, Franz Langmüller, former camp administrator of the Lackenbach detention camp, is sentenced to one year in prison for ‘crimes against humanity and human rights’ based on the testimony of survivors.
1949
13 January 1949Employees of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, Poland, recover the ‘General Ledger of the Gypsy Camp’ on the site of the former Camp Section BIIe, Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp. This important testimony to the crimes committed was buried by Polish political prisoners before the murder of the Sinti and Roma on 2/3 August 1944 in order to preserve it for the time after the war.
26 April 1949The South German Council of States passes the US Compensation Act, which becomes the starting point for the later Federal Compensation Acts in Germany.
28 April 1949In Czechoslovakia, the play ‘Horiaci cigánsky tábor’ [Burning Gypsy Camp], written by Elena Lacková, is premiered. It deals with the persecution of Roma in the Slovak State.
16 August 1949The People’s Court in Vienna, Austria, closes its investigation against Bernhard Wilhelm Neureiter, one of the National Socialist politicians who played a key role in the persecution of the Austrian Roma and Sinti.
1950
22 February 1950In a circular decree, the Württemberg-Baden Ministry of Justice in Germany advises that applications from ‘Gypsies’ must always be forwarded to the criminal investigation department to check the legitimacy of the claims before they are processed.
24 June 1950In Czechoslovakia, a group of Romani representatives from Brno, among them Rudolf Daniel (born 1911), Anna Danielová and Rudolf Daniel (born 1919), founds the ‘Provisional Regional Committee of Gypsies’.
1 August 1950Law No. 117/1927 Coll. on ‘roaming Gypsies’ is repealed by § 150 of Law No. 88/1950, the new penal code for Czechoslovakia.
1952
26 May 1952 The Federal Republic of Germany signs the ‘Transition Treaty’, in which the Western Allies link national sovereignty rights to a nationwide standardisation of reparation regulations.
10 September 1952With the Luxembourg Agreement between the Federal Republic of Germany and Israel and the Claims Conference, Germany commits itself for the first time to global compensation for foreign victims of Nazi persecution.
1953
18 September 1953The first federal law on compensation in Germany, the so-called Federal Compensation Act, is passed by the Bundestag.
1954
15 May 1954In Lyon, France, physicians Eugen Haagen and Otto Bickenbach are sentenced to 20 years of forced labour for the medical crimes they committed on Sinti and Roma in the Natzweiler concentration camp. They are pardoned just one year later.
1 July 1954The Swedish parliament abolishes the entry ban on Sinti and Roma that has been in force since 1914.
1955
6 May 1955The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) takes over the sponsorship of the International Tracing Service (ITS) in Arolsen, Germany.
1956
7 January 1956The Federal Court of Justice in Germany issues its precedent-setting ruling that the collective persecution of Sinti and Roma on the grounds of ‘race’ only began on 1 March 1943.
29 June 1956In Germany, the Federal Supplementary Act is replaced by the improved and more comprehensive Federal Compensation Act.
1957
29 July 1957The Federal Restitution Act introduces uniformity across the federal states in the management of restitution regulations and practice.
1958
February 1958The Austrian survivor Hermine Horvath gives an interview for the Eyewitness Accounts Collection of the Wiener Holocaust Library, London (United Kingdom).
1961
6 – 11 March 1961Four defendants implicated in the crimes committed at Kalevi-Liiva and Tallinn Central Prison stand trial, an event widely publicised by Soviet authorities.
1963
18 December 1963The Federal Court of Justice in Germany reverses its 1956 judgement and recognises that racial-political reasons for the persecution of Sinti and Roma could have been a contributing factor even before 1943.
1964
Spring 1964Without any legal basis, all ‘Gypsies’ in Poland are banned from travelling in caravans as well as setting up encampments.
1965
14 November 1965The Federal Compensation Final Act in Germany provides for improvements for those persecuted. Sinti and Roma are allowed to re-file rejected claims.
1968
8 September 1968An international memorial is inaugurated on the grounds of the Dachau concentration camp memorial site in Germany, which opened in May 1965. The memorial includes a depiction of the brown triangle representing the Romani victim group.
1969
30 January 1969Dortmund Regional Court sentences Herbert Andorfer, former camp commandant of the Sajmište concentration camp in Belgrade, German-occupied Serbia, to two and a half years for complicity in the killing of more than 5 500 Jews. Among the victims of the Sajmište camp were also Romani women with their children.
18 April 1969In Prizren, Yugoslavia, Roma activists found the ‘Cultural and Artistic Society “Durmiš Aslano”’ [Kulturno-umetničko društvo ‘Durmiš Aslano’], named after the most prominent Kosovan Roma partisan Durmish Aslano.
30 August 1969The Czech ‘Union of Gypsies-Roma’ [Svaz Cikánů-Romů] is officially established in Brno, Czechoslovakia.
1971
2 March 1971The Romanian government sends approximately 155,000 applications for compensation to the Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany, including thousands of applications from Romanian Roma.
8 – 12 April 1971The first World Romani Congress takes place near London, United Kingdom.
1973
18 March 1973The Commission of Former Victims of Concentrations Camps of the Czech Union of Gypsies-Roma organises in Hodonín near Kunštát the first public commemoration at the site of the former ‘Zigeunerlager’.
April 1973In Czechoslovakia, the Czech and Slovak Unions of Gypsies-Roma are dissolved under pressure from the state authorities.
November 1973
On the grounds of the former Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp, a memorial dedicated to the murdered Sinti and Roma is completed in Camp Section BIIe. The initiative and financing are provided by the survivor Vinzenz Rose from Germany.
11 December 1973A memorial is unveiled in Leskovac, Serbia, commemorating the victims of the German massacre of 11 December 1941. Among the 310 victims were 293 Roma from Leskovac and the surrounding area.
1975
15 January 1975In Belgium, a royal decree abolishes the ‘Gypsy cards’.
7 September 1975On the shore of Sušac on the Adriatic island of Pag, Croatia, a memorial plaque is erected for the victims (‘Serbs, Jews, Croats and others’, including Roma) of the Ustaša concentration camp in Slana.
1979
27 October 1979On the initiative of the German Sinti and Roma civil rights movement, the first international commemoration ceremony is held on the grounds of Bergen-Belsen memorial site with around 2,000 participants, including 500 Sinti and Roma.
1980
4 – 11 April 1980Twelve Sinti, all men, including survivors Jakob Bamberger, Ranco Brantner, Hans Braun and Franz Wirbel, go on hunger strike in the Church of Reconciliation on the grounds of the Dachau concentration camp memorial site in Germany in protest against the continuing discrimination against the minority.
1981
26 August 1981The Bundestag establishes a hardship fund in Germany for persecuted persons of non-Jewish faith. One-off payments are granted primarily to Sinti and Roma who have not yet received compensation.
1983
8 – 9 September 1983The Rom and Cinti Union e. V. organises a hunger strike at the Neuengamme concentration camp memorial site in Germany and obtains access to the ‘Landfahrer files’ of the Hamburg criminal police department, which were handed over to the Hamburg State Archives in 1980.
1984
10 May 1984The archives of the International Tracing Service (ITS) in Arolsen, Germany, are closed to research and the public.
2 June 1984A memorial plaque is unveiled at the main building of St. Josefspflege in Mulfingen, Germany, in memory of the children deported from there to Auschwitz-Birkenau, on the initiative of the staff there and the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma.
1986
12 September 1986A memorial plaque and a memorial stone are inaugurated in the cemetery in Berlin-Marzahn, Germany, in memory of the victims of the Marzahn detention camp.
1988
16 January 1988A memorial stele is inaugurated at the site of the former detention camp in Montreuil-Bellay, France, on the initiative of survivor Jean-Louis Bauer, among others.
December 1988Ceija Stojka from Vienna, Austria, publishes one of the most influential testimonies of the suffering of Roma and Sinti under the Nazi regime with her autobiography ‘Wir leben im Verborgenen’ (We Live in Secrecy).
1989
18 February 1989In the fight for a permanent right to stay in Germany, Roma organise a hunger strike in the ‘House of Documents’, the exhibition space of the Neuengamme Memorial, Germany, which ends after about two weeks.
28 August 1989Several hundred Roma occupy parts of the grounds of the Neuengamme concentration camp memorial in Germany to fight for a permanent right to stay in Germany. The police clear the protest camp after about five weeks.
1990
5 May 1990In the Netherlands, a monument for the persecuted and murdered Sinti and Roma is unveiled in The Hague.
6 May 1990Artist Gunter Demnig commemorates the 50th anniversary of the deportation of Sinti and Roma in May 1940 with a high-profile art project. Using a specially constructed ‘trail apparatus’, he stamps the words ‘May 1940—1000 Roma and Sinti’ in white paint thousands of times on pavements and roadways in Cologne, Germany. Demnig’s interest in the persecution of Sinti and Roma inspires him to develop the STOLPERSTEINE project.
17 December 1990On the initiative of the Cinti Union and the Rom-Union Berlin, the first memorial plaque for Sinti and Roma is installed at the Sachsenhausen Memorial in Germany.
1991
7 April 1991A group of Romani and non-Romani intellectuals founds the Museum of Romani Culture in Brno (Czechoslovakia).
21 August 1991Yad Vashem honours the Kosovan Romni Hajrija Imeri-Mihaljić as ‘Righteous Among the Nations’ for saving the life of the Jewish girl Ester-Stela Acević.
7 December 1991A memorial stele for Sinti and Roma is being erected at the site of the former detention camp in Jargeau, France.
1992
16 December 1992In memory of the crimes committed against Sinti and Roma during National Socialism, artist Gunter Demnig lays a stone in front of the historic town hall in Cologne, Germany, on which the first lines of the ‘Auschwitz Decree’ are engraved on a brass plate. The memorial stone is a precursor to the STOLPERSTEINE laid since 1995.
1993
1 January 1993The Czechoslovakian state ceases to exists. Its territory is now divided into the Czech and the Slovak Republics.
16 May 1993Representatives of the Rom and Cinti Union e. V. announce that they will occupy the grounds of the Neuengamme concentration camp memorial as a ‘place of refuge’ from the danger of expulsion. A massive police presence prevents the plan; a vigil by Roma on an access road lasts for a two-week period.
16 May 1993In Beek in the Netherlands, a monument is unveiled for the Franz family.
16 May – 7 July 1993‘Roma Refuge Dachau’: On the grounds of the Dachau concentration camp memorial site, Germany, around 150 Romani men and women threatened with deportation seek sanctuary in the Church of Reconciliation; the action ends on 7 July.
5 July 1993A memorial plaque commemorating the deportation and murder of the Düsseldorf Sinti is unveiled at the site of the former Höherweg detention camp in Düsseldorf, Germany.
1995
4 January 1995In Cologne, Germany, artist Gunter Demnig lays the first STOLPERSTEINE in an act of civil disobedience. The stone blocks bear inscriptions engraved on brass plates and are dedicated to Sinti and Roma who were deported from Cologne in 1940 or 1943.
25 March 1995A memorial room for the Sinti and Roma murdered in the Ravensbrück concentration camp, Germany, is opened in the basement of the cell building at the Ravensbrück Memorial.
8 April 1995On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of liberation, a memorial to the Sinti and Roma who were victims of genocide is inaugurated at the Buchenwald Memorial in Germany. It was erected on the initiative of the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma.
7 May 1995The official inauguration of the Joods Museum van Deportatie en Verzet / Musée juif de la Déportation et de la Résistance [Jewish Museum of Deportation and Resistance] takes place at the site of the former ‘SS transit camp’ in Mechelen, Belgium.
13 May 1995The Museum of Romani Culture (Czech Republic) unveils a monument at the mass cemetery of inmates of the former ‘Zigeunerlager’ in Lety near Písek.
3 June 1995A memorial plaque commemorating the imprisonment of Sinti and Roma in Mechelen and their deportation is affixed to the façade of the former ‚SS transit camp‘ in the Dossin barracks in Mechelen, Belgium.
20 August 1995The first official commemoration at the former ‘Zigeunerlager’ in Hodonín near Kunštát (Czech Republic) is held by the Museum of Romani Culture.
1997
16 May 1997In the Hiroshima Park in Kiel, Germany, a memorial stone is inaugurated in memory of the deported Sinti and Roma.
14 June 1997A copper sculpture by Roma artist Loris Levak is placed at the memorial to the deportees in Padua, Italy, to commemorate the deported Sinti and Roma.
17 August 1997The Museum of Romani Culture (Czech Republic) unveils a monument at the mass cemetery of inmates of the former ‘Zigeunerlager’ in Hodonín near Kunštát.
1998
16 May 1998The Museum of Romani Culture (Czech Republic), in cooperation with the municipal authorities in Hodonín near Kunštát and Černovice, unveils a memorial plaque at the municipal cemetery in Černovice above the still unmarked graves of the victims of the former ‘Zigeunerlager’ in Hodonín near Kunštát.
29 October 1998In Magdeburg, Germany, a memorial to the Sinti and Roma deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp is unveiled in front of the cathedral.
1999
1 March 1999In the Netherlands, the Caravans Act introduced in 1918 is repealed. One effect of this is that a number of old caravan sites gradually disappear.
15 July 1999A memorial is unveiled in Čierny Balog, Slovak Republic, remembering the Roma murdered on 14 November 1944.
2000
30 May 2000On the initiative of historian Ctibor Nečas, a commemorative plaque is placed on one of the original buildings of the former assembly point for deported Roma on Masná Street in Brno (Czech Republic).
2 August 2000With the establishment of the ‘Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ (EVZ) in Germany, compensation for forced labour is made possible for the first time; Sinti and Roma who do not live in Germany can also apply for compensation.
2001
10 March 2001The city of Cologne, Germany, erects a memorial plaque near the former detention camp in Cologne.
2 August 2001
A permanent exhibition on the genocide of the Sinti and Roma in Europe opens in Block 13 on the grounds of the former Auschwitz concentration camp. The exhibition was created by the Documentation and Cultural Centre of German Sinti and Roma (Heidelberg, Germany), in cooperation with the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum and the Association of Roma in Poland.
2002
27 April 2002In Vienna, Austria, a memorial is erected at the central cemetery at Simmeringer Hauptstraße 232 in memory of the children and young people murdered in the Nazi ‘euthanasia’ centre ‘Am Spiegelgrund’. Among the names on the dedication plaques is the name of Adam Ujvary (1941–1944).
May 2002The ‘Bronisława Wajs Society of Creators and Friends of Gypsy Culture’ is founded in Gorzów Wielkopolski, Poland. Survivor Edward Dębicki is president of the organisation.
13 May 2002At the municipal cemetery in the town of Mirovice (Czech Republic), where victims of the former ‘Zigeunerlager’ Lety near Pisek are buried, the Committee for the Redress of the Roma Holocaust places a memorial plaque with the names of the deceased.
2003
17 December 2003The Bund Deutscher Berufsboxer (German Professional Boxing Association), Germany, adds the boxer Johann Wilhelm ‘Rukeli’ Trollmann to the list of champions, thereby cancelling the revocation of his title in 1933.
2004
1 September 2004The French non-governmental organisation Yahad – In Unum is founded with the aim of identifying the sites of the ‘Holocaust by bullets’ and documenting the crimes through witness statements. Over the next 20 years, around 600 testimonies about the genocide of the Sinti and Roma are recorded.
7 November 2004A permanent exhibition on Sinti and Roma in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp is opened in the former infirmary of the Sachsenhausen Memorial in Germany.
2006
8 April 2006Thanks to the citizens’ initiative In Minorita, a monument is being inaugurated in the Jewish cemetery in Zvolen, Slovakia, dedicated to the Jews and Roma murdered in November and December 1944 and January 1945.
2007
22 April 2007The Museum of Romani Culture (Czech Republic) opens a permanent exhibition hall dedicated to the topic of the Nazi genocide of Roma and Sinti.
6 May 2007The first and only monument to the murdered Roma of Estonia, initiated by the Romani Association of North Estonia, is unveiled at Kalevi-Liiva.
28 November 2007The archives of the International Tracing Service (ITS) in Bad Arolsen, Germany, will be reopened to research and the public due to public pressure.
2009
1 March 2009In Magdeburg, Germany, a memorial is unveiled on the site of the former detention camp.
27 May 2009With the direct involvement of former Sinti and Roma internees, a memorial plaque is placed at the site of the former Bolzano-Gries concentration camp, Italy.
28 December 2009The Czech state, through the Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sports, purchases in Hodonín near Kunštát a site of the former ‘Zigeunerlager’ from a private owner.
2010
10 April 2010With the direct participation of former Roma and Sinti internees, a memorial plaque is placed at the former internment site of Prignano sulla Secchia in the province of Modena, Italy.
9 June 2010A temporary memorial to Johann Wilhelm ‘Rukeli’ Trollmann in the form of a boxing ring is opened in Berlin, Germany, and is subsequently shown in other cities.
2011
27 January 2011In Germany, survivor Zoni Weisz, Netherlands, addresses the Bundestag in Berlin.
1 June 2011On the initiative of the Berlin-Brandenburg Regional Association of German Sinti and Roma, the first sod is turned at the former site of the Berlin-Marzahn detention camp in Germany to mark the creation of a place of remembrance.
23 October 2011On the site of the former Gurs camp in France, twenty-seven columns are inaugurated along an alley of remembrance in memory of all those who were interned or imprisoned there. One column is dedicated to the victims among Roma, Sinti (Manouches) and Kale (Gitans).
2012
3 May 2012In the Netherlands, the performance of the ‘Requiem for Auschwitz’, composed by Roger ‘Moreno’ Rathgeb, is conducted in the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam.
8 May 2012The names of the members of the Lagrené family murdered in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp are inscribed on the war memorial in the town of Flers-en-Escrebieux, France.
4 September 2012The first part of the memorial is inaugurated at Dossin barracks, a former ‚SS transit camp‘ in Mechelen, Belgium. On 2 November 2012, the new building, which will henceforth be known as ‘Kazerne Dossin. Memorial, Museum and Documentation Centre on the Holocaust and Human Rights’ is also opened.
24 October 2012The ‘Memorial to the Sinti and Roma of Europe Murdered under National Socialism’ in Berlin, Germany, designed by Israeli architect Dani Karavan, is inaugurated in the immediate vicinity of the Reichstag building. The Bundestag decided to build the memorial in 1992 after many years of campaigning by survivors and their organisations.
2013
27 January 2013Sinti and Roma associations erect memorial plaques on the sites of the former concentration camps (campo di concentramento) in Tossicia and Agnone, Italy.
16 August 2013In Hodonín near Kunštát, the mass cemetery of the inmates of the former ‘Zigeunerlager’ is declared a state cultural monument thanks to the initiative of the Museum of Romani Culture (Czech Republic).
2014
20 March 2014The Swedish government sets up a commission against antigypsyism (Swedish: Kommissionen mot Antiziganism), which is active until 2016.
2 June 2014A square in Vienna, Austria, is named after Ceija Stojka.
17 September 2014A memorial to the Romani and Jewish victims from Brno, who were deported and murdered between 1939 and 1945, is unveiled in Brno (Czech Republic).
2015
26 April 2015In the presence of the President of France, François Hollande, a memorial plaque is unveiled near that once housed a gas chamber at the site of the former Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp for four Sinti and Roma who were murdered there during medical experiments.
2016
27 January 2016In the United States, survivor Zoni Weisz, Netherlands, addresses the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
17 April 2016A memorial to the Sinti and Roma murdered in the Flossenbürg concentration camp in Germany is unveiled on the anniversary of the liberation.
24 April 2016On the site of the former detention camp in Mérignac, France, a new stele is unveiled to commemorate the ‘Tsiganes’ who were interned there.
29 October 2016At a national commemoration ceremony on the site of the former Montreuil-Bellay detention camp in France, President François Hollande recognises for the first time France’s responsibility for the suffering inflicted on the Sinti and Roma during the Second World War. On this occasion, the ‘Instante nomade’ memorial by artist Armelle Benoît is unveiled.
2017
30 September 2014In the Czech Republic, two Stolpersteine [Stumbling Stones] are placed on the site of the former Romani ‘colony’ in Černovice, Brno to commemorate the couple Jan and Amália Daniel, murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau. These are thought to be the first stumbling stones for the victims of the Nazi genocide of the Roma in Central and Eastern Europe.
23 November 2017After decades of protest by survivors, their descendants, and activists, the Czech State buys the pig farm in Lety near Písek, operating on the site of the former ‘Zigeunerlager’.
2018
25 January 2018The Museum of Romani Culture (Czech Republic) becomes an administrator of the memorial on the territory of the former ‘Zigeunerlager’ in Hodonín near Kunštát.
17 May 2018Activists and relatives of former internees take part in a commemoration ceremony in Agnone, Italy, in memory of the Roma and Sinti interned in the former concentration camp (campo di concentramento).
25 June 2018Seven wooden crosses are placed on the site of a former detention camp for Sinti and Roma in Kunratická Street, Liberec, (Czech Republic).
2 August 2018In Tirana, Albania, a mural commemorating the resistance of Roma against the Italian and German occupation during World War II is painted on a house wall on the initiative of Klaudia Veizaj and with the support of the civil society organisation Roma Versitas Albania. A memorial stele is erected on 8 April 2021 in the vicinity of the mural, but destroyed the following year – and remains missing to this day.
5 October 2018Thanks to the initiative of the Associazione Culturale Thèm Romanó, a cultural association, there is a stone sculpture by Tonino Santeusanio unveiled in the Parco delle Memorie in Lanciano, in the province of Chieti, Italy, which commemorates the Samudaripen.
8 November 2018On the initiative of the Association of Roma Representatives of the Liberec Region (Czech Republic), a Stolperstein [Stumbling Stone] is laid in the central square of Liberec for one local Sinti victim who was murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp.
2019
25 April 2019A memorial plaque is placed on the building of the former concentration camp (campo di concentramento) for women in Casacalenda, Italy.
13 September 2019On the initiative of the Association of Roma Representatives of the Liberec Region (Czech Republic), two Stolpersteine [Stumbling Stones] are laid in the central square of Liberec for two local Sinti victims who were murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp.
18 December 2019In the courtyard of St Stephen’s Church in Esztergom, Hungary, a memorial to the Roma deported and murdered during World War II is erected.
2020
27 January 2020In Den Bosch in the Netherlands, a monument is unveiled in memory of the Sinti and Roma who were deported and murdered.
13 February 2020The German Bundestag decides to recognise those persecuted by the National Socialists as ‘asocials’ and ‘professional criminals’.
7 March 2020In the Czech Republic, two Stolpersteine [Stumbling Stones] are laid in the Žebětín district in Brno with the names of Jana Danielová and her daughter Anastázie Danielová, two local Romani residents who perished in Auschwitz-Birkenau.
September – November 2020Archaeological research is carried out at the site of a former detention camp for Sinti and Roma in Kunratická Street, Liberec (Czech Republic).
2021
15 July 2021In Hodonín near Kunštát, the Museum of Romani Culture (Czech Republic) opens to the public a memorial with a permanent exhibition on the site of the former ‘Zigeunerlager’.
5 November 2021In Zagreb, Croatia, German artist Gunter Demnig lays a STOLPERSCHWELLE commemorating 69 Roma who were deported to the Jasenovac concentration camp in May 1942 and murdered there.
2022
24 October 2022At the Memorial to the Sinti and Roma of Europe Murdered under National Socialism in Berlin, Germany, an open-air exhibition opens. It presents the biographies of Branko Branislav Acković (Serbia), Vinko Paul Franz (Germany), Elina Emílie Holomková (Czech Republic), Lidija Krylowa (Russia), Noncia Alfreda Markowska (Poland), Matéo Maximoff (France), Zilli Schmidt (Germany), Adam Ujvary (Austria) and Zoni Weisz (Netherlands).
2023
January 2023On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of Muharem Asović’s death, the Association of Veterans of the National Liberation War and Antifascists of Nikšić sets up a monument at the site of his death in the village of Dragovoljići, Montenegro.
18 January 2023The first stumbling stone in Italy commemorating Sinti or Roma is laid in Trieste. It is dedicated to the Sinto Romano Held (1927–1948).
20 January 2023In Nuremberg, Germany, relatives of those persecuted as ‘asocials’ and ‘professional criminals’ found the ‘Association for the Remembrance of the Disavowed Victims of National Socialism’.
27 January 2023A memorial plaque is placed on the building of the former Vinchiaturo concentration camp (campo di concentramento), Italy, which was set up in August 1940.
2024
22 February 2024In Liberec, Czech Republic, a Memorial is placed on the site of the former detention camp for Sinti and Roma at Kunratická street.
12 April 2024In Lety near Písek, the Museum of Romani Culture (Czech Republic) opens a memorial with a permanent exhibition on the site of the former ‘Zigeunerlager’.
18 April 2024At the Sachsenhausen Memorial in Germany, an intervention developed by relatives of victims of the concentration camp, among others, critically comments on and supplements the existing permanent exhibition on Sinti and Roma.
12 June 2024In Austria, the National Council passes an amendment to the Victims’ Welfare Act of 1947 which recognises those persecuted as ‘asocial’ as victims of National Socialism.
6 December 2024In France, the NOMadeS database—a digital ‘wall of names’ [mur des noms] of people interned and/or placed in enforced residence as ‘Nomades’ in France between 1939 and 1946—is launched.
2025
5 January 2025A memorial is inaugurated in the cemetery of Héreg, Hungary, in memory of two Romani families who were shot by German SS troops on 6 January 1945.
27 January 2025On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the National Archive of Israel is making hundreds of thousands of documents from the trial of Adolf Eichmann, which took place in Jerusalem in 1961, available online. The SS Obersturmführer in the Reich Security Main Office in Berlin, Germany, was one of the main figures responsible for organising the persecution, deportation and murder of Europe’s Jewish population. Count 11 of the indictment dealt with the deportation and murder of tens of thousands of Sinti and Roma.
27 January 2025On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the Wiener Holocaust Library, London, United Kingdom, makes publicly available the online archive ‘Wiener Digital Collections’. Sources that report on the persecution of Sinti and Roma in different countries from different perspectives can be found using the keyword ‘Sinti and Roma’.
19 February 2025In Switzerland, the Federal Council recognises the persecution of the Yenish People and Sinti that took place under the auspices of the ‘Hilfswerk für die Kinder der Landstrasse’ as a ‘crime against humanity’ under current international law.
1 August 2025England’s first public memorial to the genocide of the Sinti and Roma, an initiative arising from the local Roma community, is unveiled in the grounds of Newcastle Civic Centre.
2 November 2025In Oberpullendorf in Burgenland, Austria, a monument is being unveiled in memory of Baron György Rohonczy Jr., who saved 121 Roma from deportation.
