In Düsseldorf, a large city in Germany, there was a fenced detention camp from 1937 until the end of World War II, which was run by the city administration and guarded by a permanent police guard.
Prehistory and Founding of the Camp
In the north of Düsseldorf, there had been a ‘wild settlement’ on the site of a former French firing range since 1925. In the summer of 1933, around 1 200 people were living there in 325 dwellings, most of which they had built themselves. The ‘Heinefeld’, which was difficult to control, was regarded by the new National Socialist rulers as a ‘political trouble spot of the first order’ and a ‘meeting place for all kinds of anti-social elements’.1‚Zigeuner werden kaserniert‘, Düsseldorfer Lokal-Zeitung, 9 January 1937. In the course of clearing the Heinefeld, the Sinti living there—numbering 25 families in 1933—came into the sights of the Düsseldorf city administration. The plan to concentrate those families on the outskirts of the city and, if possible, to harass them into leaving was soon extended to all Sinti and Roma who lived on campsites or in other ‘wild settlements’.
The search for a site for a ‘gypsy camp’ continued until the end of 1936. Finally, the city acquired a 7 000 square metre plot of land on Höherweg, which was located outside a residential area. The city had to give the seller, Vereinigte Stahlwerke, a commitment that the planned facility would be under permanent police guard. In a very short space of time, five brick barracks with iron doors and barred windows were erected on 4 300 square metres, along with a building for sanitary facilities and barracks for the guards. The camp grounds were surrounded by a barbed wire fence and had only one entrance. The camp was ready for occupancy on 30 June 1937, and on 2 July 1937 all police stations were instructed to register all ‘gypsies’ living in their area for admission to the camp.
Everyday Life
The first Sinti inmates were herded from Heinefeld to the camp, followed by those who were living on campsites. If caravans were still available—in Heinefeld they had been summarily torched by SS men—they had to be placed on the camp grounds in a certain order. The average occupancy of the camp until May 1940 was around 200 men, women and children. Taking into account the fluctuation caused by further admissions or transfers from Höherweg to concentration camps, far more individuals than that had to suffer the camp regime.
The move to the camp marked a significant turning point for those affected. It was only possible to leave the camp during the day and with permission, and in the evening it was forbidden even to leave the barracks after 10 pm. The main person responsible for the rapidly deteriorating conditions was police constable Julius Arends (1887–1952), who had replaced the previous warden in August 1939 and was constantly present in the camp as a police guard until 5 March 1945. Arends organised morning roll calls, which were compulsory for everyone, and also checked attendance in the barracks at night. The guard, who was always armed, insulted the inmates, dealt out beatings, sometimes with a riding crop, and set his dog on the children, whom he generally forbade from playing on the grounds. It was not permitted to enter the camp from the outside. This even applied to relatives, further intensifying the isolation of the inmates.
In addition, there were regular raids and interrogations by officers from the ‘Office for Gypsy Affairs’ of the Düsseldorf criminal investigation department, to which Arends was subordinate. Detective chief constable Ernst Ludwig Stopfsack (1892–1966), the head of the ‘Office for Gypsy Affairs’, is said to have spoken Romanes and beat up people who did not give him the information he wanted.
Forced Labour and Deportations
Once they were sent to the camp, it was impossible for the inmates to work independently. Women and men were assigned to low-paid unskilled labour and sometimes led to the workplaces under guard. The names of those who did not turn up for work were recorded by the police supervisor and they were sent to concentration camps. Several young men from Höherweg were also sent to concentration camps in the summer of 1938 as part of the ‘Aktion Arbeitsscheu Reich’ [‘Operation Workshy’]. According to survivors, the conditions in the camp worsened again considerably after the October 1939 immobilisation, which was intended as preparation for the deportation planned by The Reich Security Main Office. On 16 May 1940, 130 women, men and children were taken from the camp on the basis of a list prepared by Stopfsack, transported to the assembly centre in Cologne-Deutz and deported to the General Government a few days later. The Racial Hygiene Research Unit, whose employees had carried out racial-biological surveys in Höherweg in 1937/38 and in the spring of 1940, had been involved in compiling the list.
After the May deportation, the camp was reduced in size and Arends made sure that the inmates did not come into contact with the ‘Aryan‘ families who were now housed in the immediate neighbourhood. The children were no longer allowed to attend school from June 1940 and now also had to perform forced labour, partly in agriculture, the older ones also in armaments production. The food shortage became increasingly dramatic, especially as Sinti did not receive any benefits from the welfare administration. According to survivors, several Sinti died of starvation in the camp, especially elderly inmates and young children. Another deportation followed on 10 March 1943, this time to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp. Six families comprising 42 people, mainly children and the elderly, were left behind. As they were denied access to air raid shelters, they were defenceless against the numerous bombing raids. The women and adolescent girls were all scheduled for forced sterilisation; one woman tried in vain to escape. Most of the women only escaped this procedure thanks to the liberation.
Reappraisal and Remembrance
After liberation, the few survivors returned to Düsseldorf and were forced to live in the former camp again under the most difficult of circumstances. The city of Düsseldorf did not allow caravans to be set up anywhere else in the city and forced Sinti to move to Höherweg until the end of the 1950s. In 1961, the city ordered all Sinti to move from there to a site on Jägerstraße (now Am Hackenbruch), where conditions were also catastrophic. After numerous protests, the construction of a housing estate for Sinti began in 1976, and this was occupied in 1983.
The artist Otto Pankok (1893–1966) was one of the few who protested against the inhuman conditions immediately after 1945. Since 1931, when he had had his studio in Heinefeld, Pankok had been friends with many Sinti, many of whom he painted and photographed. He campaigned for the Nazi victims to be recognised and compensated and denounced the continuing racism against Sinti in numerous letters to the authorities. In his book ‘Zigeuner’, published in 1947, he also described the persecution of the Düsseldorf Sinti, making him one of the first authors to report on the genocide.
Finally, the key agency in the reappraisal was the Düsseldorf Memorial Centre, founded in 1987, which included the victim group of Sinti and Roma in its very first permanent exhibition. An interview project carried out in 1990 created the basis for a publication commissioned by the memorial centre, which appeared in 1992, as well as a travelling exhibition on Otto Pankok and the Düsseldorf Sinti, which was shown for the first time in 1993.
Also in 1993, a memorial plaque was erected at the site of the former detention camp on Höherweg. Since 27 January 1997, a sculpture by Otto Pankok at Düsseldorf’s old Rhine harbour has formed the central memorial site in the city. The inscription reads: ‘In memory of the Sinti and Roma who were victims of genocide under National Socialism. This figure of the Sinti girl Ehra was created by the artist Otto Pankok (1893-1966) in memory of his Sinti friends from Düsseldorf, over 100 of whom were deported from the Höherweg camp and murdered. The girl Ehra herself was one of the few concentration camp survivors.’
In 2022, the memorial centre put on another exhibition about Otto Pankok and the Düsseldorf Sinti. For this presentation, the biographies of the individuals portrayed by Pankok were meticulously reconstructed. Since then, it has also become known to a wider public that Ehra is Ida Meinhardt (1921–1994), who—unlike her sister and father—survived the deportation of May 1940 and the subsequent years in camps and ghettos.
