Under National Socialism, special camps reserved for people stigmatised as ‘Zigeuner’ were set up in the German Reich and in countries occupied by or allied with Germany. The purpose of these detention camps, known as ‘Zigeunerlager’, was to segregate the ‘Gypsy’ population from the rest of the population, to recruit them for forced labour, to register and monitor them, and to serve as assembly centres for deportations. These camps were usually guarded by the police and structurally separated from their surroundings. The internees were subject to constant control and at the mercy of the guards. With regard to the organisational forms and living conditions, various phases and characteristics can be identified. While camps were established mainly by municipal initiatives from 1933 onwards, by the beginning of the war, police and security police agencies of the middle and upper administrative levels dominated in their management.
The Role of the Detention Camps in the Process of Persecution
Sybil Milton (1941–2000) characterised the local detention camps as a ‘prelude to extermination’. Indeed, as a rule, isolation in the camps in the German Reich was followed by deportation. In this respect, the detention camps fulfilled the same purpose as the ghetto houses and ghettos for the murder of the Jewish population. The camp sections in the Litzmannstadt Ghetto and in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp that were intended only for Sinti and Roma are to be seen as a radicalisation of this policy of isolation towards a policy of extermination.
The detention camps also played a significant role in quantitative terms; taking the municipal and security police camps together, about half of all Sinti and Roma in the German Reich may have been in one of these camps at least some of the time. For the German Reich including Austria and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, the internment of Sinti and Roma in detention camps and their subsequent deportation were significant for the persecution process. However, this does not apply to most of the occupied countries or those allied with Germany, because the practice of persecution varied depending on the regime, occupation policy and the course of the war.
Detention Camps in Europe
A large number of detention camps existed in France, which was invaded by Germany in May 1940. Even before the Wehrmacht invaded, all ‘nomades’ had been banned from travelling and those identified as such were interned in camps called ‘Camps d’internement de nomades’ in each department. In October 1940, the German military administration issued a directive to the French police to concentrate all Sinti and Roma in assembly centres. In Vichy France, there were several small camps for Sinti and Roma deported from Alsace, where very different conditions prevailed. Many internees were transferred from there to the larger camp at Saliers in the summer of 1942. But in contrast to the situation on the territory of the German Reich, no deportations took place from these camps—except for a few individual removals.
In fascist Italy, Sinti and Roma were also classified as ‘dangerous’ to the nation when Italy entered the war in July 1940. In particular, Sinti and Roma who were not settled and those who were foreign nationals were either interned in localities or held in concentration camps or penal colonies. Sinti and Roma were also sent to various islands in a process of banishment. Some camps, such as those in Agnone or Bojano, were intended exclusively for Sinti and Roma.
In other occupied countries or those allied with Germany, there were fluid transitions in internment policy without the systematic development of detention camps intended only for Sinti and Roma. In the part of German-occupied Poland annexed as the General Government, Sinti and Roma deported from Germany were often housed in improvised assembly or forced labour camps. There was no systematic internment in separate detention camps. In the second half of the war, there was an increase in the number of people being sent to existing ghettos. In Transnistria, where Romania, an ally of the Reich, deported Jews and Roma, ghetto-like forced settlements were formed. In Hungary, persecution intensified in the last phase of the war after Germany occupied the territory of its former ally. Local and regional assembly centres were set up in numerous places, from where deportations were carried out, mainly to Dachau and Ravensbrück concentration camps via the Komárom camp.
Dealing with Detention Camps after 1945
The detention camps were similar to prisons, and living conditions in the camps were usually oppressive. Some, such as Lackenbach in Burgenland or Lety near Pisek and Hodonin near Kunstadt in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, were similar to concentration camps. Several hundred Sinti and Roma died in the camps; the total number of deaths in all detention camps has not yet been researched.
After 1945, imprisonment in detention camps was usually not officially acknowledged as an injustice. The sites where the camps had been set up fell into oblivion, were converted and redeveloped, or had to serve as the first provisional shelter for survivors returning from concentration camps. It took a long time for people to realise that these sites had been places of persecution, and it was only in the 1990s that this led to the installation of memorial plaques or the erection of monuments in some places. The only place where a museum and memorial now exist on the site of a former detention camp is Lety near Písek in the Czech Republic.
