In the period of National Socialism, special camps were established in the German Reich and in German-occupied countries or countries allied with Germany, in which only people stigmatised as ‘Zigeuner’ (‘Gypsies’) were sent. The detention camps called ‘Zigeunerlager’ (‘Gypsy camps’) served as racist segregation from the rest of the population, recruitment for forced labour, registration and control as well as collective camps for deportation. They were usually guarded by the police and structurally separated from the surrounding area. The internees were subject to permanent control and arbitrariness by the guards. With regard to the organisational forms and living conditions, different phases and characteristics can be identified. While camps were founded primarily by communal initiatives from 1933 onwards, police and security police authorities at the middle and upper administrative levels dominated from the beginning of the war.
Sybil Milton characterised the detention camps as ‘antechamber to Birkenau’. In fact, isolation in the camps in the German Reich was usually followed by deportation. In this respect, the detention camps fulfilled the same purpose that ghetto houses and ghettos had for the murder of the Jewish population. The camp areas in the Litzmannstadt ghetto and in the concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, which were designated only for Sinti and Roma, are to be seen as a radicalisation of this isolation policy towards a policy of extermination.
The role of the detention camps should also be emphasised in quantitative terms: about half of all Sinti and Roma in the German Reich were probably in one of these camps at least for a time. For the German Reich, including Austria and the Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia, it should be noted that the internment of Sinti and Roma in detention camps with their subsequent deportation were significant for the persecution process. However, this does not apply to most of the occupied countries or even those allied with the German Reich, where the practice of persecution differed depending on the regime, occupation policy and war situation.
A large number of detention camps existed in France, which was invaded by the German Reich in May 1940. Even before the invasion of the Wehrmacht, all ‘Nomades’ had been banned from travelling and those so designated were interned in many départements in camps called ‘Camps d’internement de Nomades’. But unlike in the Reich, deportations only took place in a few individual cases.
In fascist Italy, Sinti and Roma were also classified as ‘dangerous’ for the nation when the war began in July 1940. Especially non-resident and foreign Sinti and Roma were deported to internment camps in southern Italy.
In other occupied countries or countries allied with the Reich, there were smooth transitions in internment policy, without a systematic establishment of detention camps intended only for Sinti and Roma. In the part of German-occupied Poland annexed as General Government, the Sinti and Roma deported from the German Reich were housed in often improvised collective or forced labour camps. In the second half of the war, there was an increase in the number of deportations to existing ghettos or, as in Transnistria, where Romania, an ally of the Reich, deported Jews and Roma, the formation of ghetto-like forced settlements. In Hungary, persecution intensified during the last phase of the war after the German Reich occupied the territory of its former ally. Local and regional collective camps were created in numerous places, from where deportations took place mainly via the Komárom camp to concentration camps.
The detention camps had a prison-like character, the living conditions in the camps were mostly miserable. Some, such as Lackenbach in Burgenland or Lety and Hodonín in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, also had concentration camp-like characteristics. Hundreds of Sinti and Roma died in the detention camps.
