The Roma (Gypsies)

From the earliest days of gathering and killing the Jews of Europe and beyond, the SS and the Einsatzgruppen had another, smaller “racial” group in their sites. Gypsies, often hated nomads of Europe, were also targeted for extinction. Many hundreds died alongside Jews at Babi Yar. In Lithuania over a thousand were locked into a synagogue by the Gestapo and simply abandoned to starve to death. Others were shot at places where they were found or were collected at concentration camps for their eventual transportation. In December, 1942 a decree ordered all German Gypsies to be deported to Auschwitz. In March, 1943 those living in Holland were also transported east. There a separate holding area was arranged for their numbers. Depending on schedules of trains arriving with Jewish prisoners, the Gypsies would be mobilized in large numbers to receive “special treatment” in the gas chambers. Unlike many arriving by train who went directly to their deaths, the quartered Gypsies knew well what lay in store for them and suffered the agonies of the wait and its inevitable conclusion.

“A People Uncounted,” a documentary about the Roma, the “Gypsies” of Europe was shown recently at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema. Two young Canadian men, director Aaron Yager and producer Marc Swenker, wanted to capture some of the experiences of the Roma people during the Holocaust. In the event meeting with and studying the plight of the Roma in eleven countries, they broadened their scope to include some of Roma history as well as their current political and economic conditions in Europe. These people, like the Jews, were marked out by Nazi ideology and hence policy, as a minority to be not only excluded from the “Aryan nation” but to be systematically murdered, eliminated altogether from the Aryan universe. Like the Jews the Roma experienced a true genocidal action against them during WWII, an estimated 500,000 dying during this period. Because their numbers were and are considerably smaller and because they had not succeeded the degree of integration into the larger European communities that Jews had in many countries preceding the war, their experiences though known, have not received world-wide attention, concern, and understanding.

Roma people migrated from northern India about 1,000 years ago, settling in relatively small numbers in most European countries. Because of their darker skins and non-Christian backgrounds, they were generally perceived as “Other” in their host countries. It is likely that in some locations centuries ago some integrated into local societies where their “differences” were not particularly threatening to the inhabitants. But many remained distinct and like the Jews they were variously tolerated and persecuted. Restrictions were imposed in many locales preventing them from owning land and from working in particular professions. Like the Jews, the limitations imposed upon them shaped the areas in which they could and did operate and solidified stereotypes about the kind of people that they were and are. Barred from the military and from professions, Jews in more urban settings developed particular skills in selling and in finance. As usury was forbidden to Christians in earlier ages, the lending of money offered the potential for wealth and thus power to some Jews. From these historical conditions developed many of the stereotypes of Jews which have currency even in today’s world.

Without land or stable jobs the Roma developed an itinerant style, moving from areas where there were few opportunities or considerable persecution, to places where they could find some tolerance or means of livelihood. One of the skills that they possessed and developed has traditionally been in the field of music. Because in so many places and eras their conditions have been desperate, however, some developed ways of taking or scamming what they needed to survive. Historically they have been seen and used as have Jews (also black people in the USA and to a certain extent in Canada as well) as a population upon which to vent frustrations and hatred, particularly during periods of economic or social strife. The vilification of Jews and Roma by the Nazis was consonant with much of European history. The historical hatreds and persecutions of these peoples led directly to the Holocaust and genocide.

In all of the places where the acts of killing took place an environment of intolerance toward Jews and Roma already was prevalent. Though the Nazis in some areas tried to mask their genocidal policies as simply “the deportation of certain groups to settlements further east,” locals “knew” in the sense of having at least an awareness that their often former neighbours and colleagues were being stripped of all civil rights and that they were being forcibly removed under deplorable conditions to at best questionable futures. This could only happen in places where historically these marked out and separated groups had always been considered “different” and in some ways “suspect,” not like “us.” In places where there were local and official resistances to Nazi policies, the situation of the Jews, for example, was markedly better. In other places the populous not only did not complain about the treatment of the Jews in their midst but rather turned a blind eye; in every country where the Holocaust took place there were people, even significant numbers of people who collaborated with the SS in the detention, transportation, and murder of Jews and of Roma.

The film incorporated several modalities. Old movies demonstrated stereotypical views of the Roma as dancers and singers leading a carefree, bohemian lifestyle, though with implications that they were also disreputable, dishonest, and sexually promiscuous. Professors, some Roma, gave overviews of the historical and social locations of these people. There were scenes of the housing facilities available for them in some of today’s modern European cities – usually at a far remove from their centres. A Roma man who recently moved with his family to Montreal described living in one of those units: each apartment had two bedrooms but was occupied by two families, often with parents and five or six children. The units had running water for brief periods twice a day. About 90% of the adults were unemployed. They simply were not employed by locals. “Skinhead”-type groups organized violent actions against them individually or sometimes in a co-ordinated fashion.

I enjoyed seeing the lovely faces of the Roma children as they scampered and played like kids everywhere. I was forcibly struck by the anguish of two former prisoners at Auschwitz who were interviewed on camera. A woman spoke of being taken with others from her labour camp to the gas chambers on two separate occasions toward the end of the war, but being reprieved because the SS had run out of the chemicals needed to kill them. The rest of her family was destroyed, however. She showed the camp registration number that had been tattooed onto her forearm. The number was preceded by a “Z” to indicate that she was of Roma parentage. On one occasion after the war her tattoo was observed by some people in a nearby town. Far from empathizing with her experience, they became angry and outraged, saying that all of the talk about concentration and death camps was a lie and that she and others had had themselves tattooed to create troubles. After having been through so much terror and suffering as well as losing her family to the Holocaust, she found this outright denial terribly disturbing.

A man told of his encounter with Dr Mengele at Auschwitz. Pictures were shown of several of the children upon whom Mengele had performed operations without anesthesia as part of his “experiments.” He had tried turning girls into boys and boys into girls. This man, as a child had been taken to Mengele’s lab, stripped and tied down tightly to a gurney. Mengele entered the room, put on a white jacket and yellow gloves. He approached the boy with a long, twisted piece of metal, rather like a corkscrew and proceeded to push this instrument into the boy’s groin. The boy felt as though it was going up into his body as far as his heart and would tear his heart out of his body. He saw Mengele’s face even as he was experiencing excruciating pain and knew that Mengele derived sexual pleasure from inflicting pain upon his subjects. In telling us of his suffering he was overcome with emotion as he momentarily relived the pain, the horror and the helplessness of his situation.

This film was a particularly affecting document of genocide, bringing the overall statistics of Nazi brutality into the concrete reality of the personal experience of a few people, people with whom the audience could easily identify.