During and after World War II, millions of people were made homeless: they were deported, displaced or forced to flee. The vast majority of these up to eleven million non-German liberated persons, refugees and displaced persons came from eastern and south-eastern Europe. At the end of the war or shortly afterwards, they were mainly located in German-speaking countries and Italy. In order to care for these people and return them to their countries of origin, the Allies established the administrative category of ‘DP‘—Displaced Persons.1Jacobmeyer, Vom Zwangsarbeiter zum Heimatlosen Ausländer; Wyman, DP: Europe’s displaced persons 1945–1951; Balint, Destination elsewhere. Whether Sinti and Roma were able to obtain this status, which meant protection and care, depended on many different factors.
The Situation at the End of the War
People who were recognised as DPs differed in terms of language, religion, ethnicity, origin, war experiences and nationality. These very different people and groups essentially had only two things in common: First, they were not in the place where they had lived before the war began. Second, they were not Germans or regarded as former enemies of the Allies. The repatriation of the DPs took place not only voluntarily, but also under duress.2Fitzpatrick, Soviet Displaced Persons; Bernstein, Return to the Motherland. In addition, the repatriations took a long time because of transport problems. And parallel to these repatriations to the east and south-east, new refugee movements began in the opposite direction.
Contrary to the Allies’ plans, it became clear from the end of 1945 at the latest that not all displaced persons wanted to live in their countries of origin in the future. Anti-Semitism played a role for Jewish DPs, as did the desire to emigrate. Many of them wanted to participate in the establishment of their own Jewish state in Palestine.3Person and Labentz, Jüdische DPs aus Polen; Königseder and Wetzel, Lebensmut im Wartesaal; Brenner, Nach dem Holocaust. For the numerically far larger group of non-Jewish DPs, it was above all the shifting of borders and anti-communism that played a role. This also gave rise to a desire to emigrate4Nowak, Kingdom of Barracks; Dyczok, The Grand Alliance; Antons, Ukrainian displaced persons; Knapton, Occupiers, Humanitarian Workers, and Polish Displaced Persons. which was further intensified by the escalation of the Cold War.
As a result, around one million displaced persons remained in the western zones of Germany and Austria for years. They initially received support from the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA). From 1947, the International Refugee Organisation (IRO) took over responsibility for the DPs. The IRO not only took care of the DPs, but also helped them to emigrate. The majority of these ‘last million’ emigrated mainly to North America, Australia and Palestine/Israel.5Nasaw, The last Million. The bureaucratic label Displaced Person existed as such until 1951.6Huhn and Rass, Displaced person(s). Those DPs, around 130,000 people, who then remained in West Germany were given a new status: as ‘Heimatlose Ausländer’ [homeless foreigners], they fell under the jurisdiction of West German authorities.
Sinti and Roma and DP status
Although the administrative category of DP was repeatedly adapted over the years, it was primarily conceived along national lines. Germans and so-called ‘ex-enemy nationals’ [Angehörige ehemals feindlicher Staaten] were explicitly excluded from international DP care. Formally speaking, German Sinti and Roma could therefore not be recognised as DPs. However, the majority of Sinti and Roma from Germany and Austria had been deprived of their citizenship during the Nazi era. This made their legal situation particularly difficult. It was no less complicated for non-German Sinti and Roma. Officially, neither UNRRA nor the IRO categorised them as ‘Zigeuner’ or ‘Gypsy’. In some cases, however, UNRRA or IRO staff noted ‘Gypsy’ as a known or suspected category on forms. As will be shown, this could have both positive and negative effects for DPs.
In the context of recognition as DPs, Sinti and Roma did not have an explicit lobby. For the most part, they were primarily categorised under their citizenship. As a result, they did not form a cohesive group fighting for recognition, as did Jewish or Ukrainian DPs. Jewish and Ukrainian displaced persons did not initially exist as official DP categories either. It was only the long and persistent struggle for recognition by those affected themselves that created these bureaucratic categories.7Antons, “The Nation in a Nutshell”; Person and Labentz, Jüdische DPs aus Polen. Sinti and Roma thus found themselves in different DP camps, which were primarily organised along national lines. In some respects, their specific history of persecution faded into the background. Another complicating factor for today’s research is that because of the national understanding of DPs, the category of ‘Gypsies’ was only mentioned in passing in Allied documents or international organisations.
Ari Joskowicz (born 1975) published a pioneering study on DPs and Sinti and Roma in 2016.8Joskowicz, “Romani Refugees”. He analysed 573 cases handled by the IRO that were annotated ‘Gypsy’. According to Joskowicz, this annotation could—at least for a certain period of time—give the applicant an advantage.9Ibid, 764. Beyond this, however, research on this topic is still in its infancy. In DP research, it is still a near-total blind spot.10Hagen et al., Displaced Persons-Forschung. It can therefore be assumed that there was a significant number of unreported cases of Sinti and Roma who were recognised as DPs but deliberately or unintentionally ensured that their origins were not mentioned in official documents. It is also unknown how many Sinti and Roma failed to apply because they had no papers or were unable to obtain them as a result of their persecution. It should also be borne in mind that Nazi persecution and decades of state discrimination and humiliation left quite a few Sinti and Roma extremely sceptical of the authorities.11Reuss, Kontinuitäten der Stigmatisierung, 213.
It is therefore impossible at present to state with certainty how many Sinti and Roma were recognised as Displaced Persons and received support. Joskowicz drew attention to three groups in his research on those with the explicit annotation ‘Gypsy’: those from German-speaking countries, the Italian-Yugoslavian border regions and Czechoslovakia, most of whom arrived in the western zones of Germany starting in 1948.12Joskowicz, “Romani Refugees”, 766–67. He noted a high recognition rate among these groups. These Sinti and Roma and then DPs were able to benefit, at least temporarily, from official recognition in the western zones. Some also managed to emigrate as a result.
Case Studies
A person’s stated and, in the sense of the DP category, ‘correct’ citizenship was a key to being recognised as a Displaced Person, as is shown by the example of Emil Růžička (1923–unknown), a Czechoslovak citizen. After surviving the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp and Flossenbürg concentration camp, he had initially returned to his home country, but left Czechoslovakia in 1948. Růžička told the IRO that he had fled because of the communist takeover of the government. This justification was successful because it fitted into the anti-communist narrative.13Holian, “Anticommunism in the Streets“. Although there are also explicit references to his ethnicity and his internment in concentration camps in his application, Růžička’s anti-communist stance seems to have been the decisive factor for the IRO officer.14Arolsen Archives, CM1 Emil Ruzicka, online: https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/de/document/79674544 [accessed: 03/04/2025]. As a result, he was recognised as a Displaced Person and received the resulting benefits.
The question of citizenship was particularly relevant for Sinti and Roma women: Under the law at that time, women automatically took on the citizenship of their husband when they married. Marriage to a male DP made it possible for German Sinti and Roma women to change citizenship or escape statelessness. If, for example, a German Sinti woman married a man recognised as a Czechoslovak DP, she was also counted as a ‘Czech DP’. One example of this is Josefa (also Josepha/Josefine) Köhler (1921–1992). She had been able to go into hiding during the Nazi era. After the war, she started a family in Munich with her Czech husband, who in turn was categorised as a DP. This enabled them and their two children to leave Germany. In 1949, they received a visa for Australia. Josefa Köhler never stated her origins on her emigration applications or in her immigration documents. Nor did she mention her own persecution or that of her family.15Grandke, “Die Verfolgung der Sinti und Roma”, 45. Marrying a recognised DP thus also enabled Sinti and Roma women bureaucratically to disavow their ethnicity to the outside world and thus avoid discrimination.
The choice between revealing one’s origins and exploiting the bureaucratic opportunity to discard them became particularly relevant in relation to visa issues, as antigypsyism was not a feature of European societies alone. For example, the issuing of visas for over 180,000 DPs by the Australian state was not a humanitarian endeavour. Rather, labour shortages, the domestic economy and nation-building were at the centre of the state’s interests.16Persian, Beautiful Balts. It can be assumed that quite a few Sinti and Roma and then DPs who wanted to emigrate knew from their experiences that it could be a disadvantage to disclose their ethnicity.
However, other cases are also documented. Members of a Romani family from the border region between Italy and Yugoslavia were initially recognised as Displaced Persons. However, when they applied for assistance to emigrate to Brazil, they were rejected. The reason for the rejection was explicitly their origin. The family applied again in 1951, two years later. Now the main IRO officer came to their aid and declared the family eligible to emigrate. According to Joskowicz, it is noticeable that particularly high-ranking IRO officers favoured people noted as ‘Gypsy’. This meant that rejections by lower-ranking administrative officials could also be overturned.17Joskowicz, “Romani Refugees”, 774.
The situation was particularly complex for Sinti and Roma from East Prussia. Because their German citizenship had been revoked by the Nazi regime, they were initially considered stateless. At the same time, their places of origin were no longer part of the German state, but were divided between republics of the Soviet Union and Poland. Obviously, this mixed situation meant that Sinti and Roma from East Prussia were at least temporarily recognised as DPs and received international support.18Example especially for north-east Bavaria. The applicants had to operate in a confusing network of actors. For example, if Sinti and Roma from East Prussia claimed to have been born in a town that now belonged to Poland after the border changes, UNRRA referred them to Polish DP self-help organisations. These organisations were supposed to confirm the Polish descent of the Sinti and Roma from East Prussia and assist them with the bureaucratic procedures. In the case of Bruno Dombrowoski (also known as Dambrowski) (1919–unknown), the Polish committee in Neunburg vorm Wald, Bavaria, issued him with a certificate, but noted in Polish that he was ‘without nationality’.19Arolsen Archives, CM1, Bruno Dambrowski, online: https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/de/document/79018214 [accessed: 03/04/2025]. Temporarily categorised as a Polish DP, Dombrowoski had to fill in Polish-language forms. He made no secret of his former German citizenship. ‘Gypsy’ is noted in the line on the persecution background.20Arolsen Archives, CM1, Bruno Dambrowski, online: https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/de/document/79018209 [accessed: 03/04/2025]. The question of his citizenship then dragged on for several years. In the meantime, the IRO officer responsible recommended that his DP status be revoked, as Dombrowoski was actually a German citizen. The East Prussian Sinto, on the other hand, explained that his father had been Polish, and so he should also be considered as such. Ultimately, and after a long bureaucratic struggle, Dombrowoski remained eligible for benefits. According to the IRO officer, the explicit background was his identity as a ‘Gypsy’, the Nazi persecution and the resulting statelessness, which made it necessary to support him.21Joskowicz, “Romani Refugees”, 771.
Open Questions
The encounter between, for example, Polish DP organisations and Sinti and Roma calls for further investigation. Ethnic Polish DPs were not free from antigypsyism. However, it is also the case that Polish DPs sometimes compared their own situation of wandering around and being moved from DP camp to DP camp with their (stereotypical) ideas of a ‘Gypsy life’. It is worth asking how this affected the respective perceptions of the two groups and whether it could even facilitate a certain solidarity. In her study on Polish DPs, Katarzyna Nowak also touches on Roma from Poland, whom she describes as being rather ‘on the fringes of the Polish [DP] community’.22Nowak, Polish displaced persons, 84 f. Future research should shed more light on this.
It should be noted that Sinti and Roma did not have their own representation or lobby group among the DPs. At the same time, however, Sinti and Roma were present in all national DP groups. How was this coexistence organised in the DP camps? Were there differences in the respective national DP groups? And if so, why?
Although neither UNRRA nor its successor organisation the IRO had a DP category ‚Gypsy‘,23Joskowicz, “Romani Refugees”, 761, 772. there were some DP camps that the IRO explicitly referred to as ‘Gypsy Camps’, such as the Broitzem DP camp in Braunschweig.24Arolsen Archives, Named lists of DPs registered after 1 May 1950, Gypsy camp Broitzem via Braunschweig (IRO supervision), online: https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/de/document/81972872 [accessed: 03/04/2025]. It is important to examine more closely who lived in these camps as DPs and received IRO support.
Otherwise, only isolated references to groups labelled as ‘Gypsies’ by UNRRA can be found. For example, ‘34 Hungarian gypsies (persecutees)’ are said to have been in Landshut in Bavaria in December 1946.25Archive of the Flossenbürg Concentration Camp Memorial, copies UN Archives, PAG 4/30.11.3.1/S 424, Box 13, UNRRA, District No. 3, HQ Regensburg, Field Operation Daily Summary, 16/17 December 1946, 19 December 1946. In the course of further digitisation of the globally scattered records on displaced persons, it will be possible to identify Sinti and Roma in various databases. Research on named individuals can then reveal life paths and possible emigration routes.
Joskowicz assumes that many IRO employees were aware of the extent of the Nazi persecution of Sinti and Roma.26Joskowicz, “Romani Refugees”, 775. This awareness of the genocide could be helpful and lead to recognition. At the same time, however, there are also known cases of discrimination.27Ibid, 773. There were even former high-ranking members of the NSDAP, SS (Schutzstaffel) or Gestapo who worked for the IRO for several years. So far, there has been no investigation of how this may have affected IRO support for Sinti and Roma.28Warnock and Bath, Discrimination against Roma and Sinti, 431.
However, it is known that even international organisations like the International Tracing Service (ITS), which were humanitarian organisations dedicated to helping survivors and their relatives, were not free from antigypsyist practices.29Ibid, 437. This also shows that regardless of wether Sinti and Roma remained in their country of origin after surviving Nazi persecution or not, wether they were recognised as DPs or not, they were confronted with antigypsyism everywhere.30Rosenhaft, Strangers in Their Own Land, https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/romani-holocaust-survivors-1945 [accessed: 03/04/2025].
