M. Burleigh and W. Wippermann Persecutions of Different Minorities Persecutions of Siniti and Roma, Hereditary Ills, Asocials and Homosexuals Source: M. Burleigh and W. Wippermann, The Racial State, Germany 1933-1945 (Oxford, 1991), pp.113-122, 136-156, 167-176, 182-192. Part A, B, C, D, E, F, G Chapter Five The Persecution of Sinti and Roma, and Other Ethnic Minorities Sinti and Roma were called "Zigeuner" in Germany. The origins of this word, which has analogues in other languages ( zigenare in Swedish, cigan in Spanish), may be a matter of dispute, but the word's pejorative overtones are not. For this reason, those Sinti and Roma still living in Germany do not like being called "Zigeuner" 1 . The same applies to the equivalents in the English-speaking world, who object to the term "gypsy". This is a corruption of "Egyptian", the name by which Sinti and Roma were known in several countries from the medieval period onwards. As far as is known, concerning a history, which has never been written down, "Gypsies" had nothing to do with Egypt 2 . Sinti and Roma first came to Germany in the late fifteenth century. They were originally from the Punjab region of north India 3 . They became Christians in the course of their migrations through Persia, Asia Minor, and the Balkans, although they were nevertheless frequently accused of leading an "un-Christian" way of life. Their appearance, language, customs, and itinerant way of life ¯ determined by a mystical aversion to the uncleanliness of the soil ¯ further distinguished them from the settled population. Soon they were accused of being beggars, thieves, spies, and practitioners of harmful magic. 4 These manifold prejudices were both the cause and the justification for the terrible persecution which Sinti and Roma experienced in Germany and elsewhere throughout the entire early modern period. 5 In the nineteenth century, there was a temporary lull in indiscriminate persecution, connected in part with a Romantic interest in this European example of the "noble savage". 6 But Verdi apart, nowhere could "Gypsies" be described as equal citizens. When the Nazis came to power, they inherited State legislation, which in this area stood in obvious contradiction to Article 104 of the Weimar constitution, guaranteeing all Germans equality before the law . 7 The object of the resulting police harassment was to keep Sinti and Roma permanently on the move, paradoxically, as a means of forcing them to settle. The pace was set by Bavaria, where from 1899 the security police kept a central register on "Gypsies", which from 1911 contained copies of their fingerprints, and material culled from public registry offices. In 1926 the Bavarian police were further empowered by a Law for the Combating of Gypsies, Travellers, and the Workshy to send Sinti and Roma to workhouses for up to two years, if they could not prove regular paid employment. Sinti and Roma were therefore discriminated against solely and simply because they were "Gypsies". 8 FROM THE BAVARIAN LAW FOR THE COMBATING OF GYPSIES, TRAVELLERS, AND THE WORKSHY OF 16 JULY 1926 Article 1 Gypsies and persons who roam about in the manner of Gypsies ¯ "travellers" ¯ may only itinerant with wagons and caravans if they have permission from the police authorities responsible. This permission may only be granted for a maximum of one calendar year and is revocable at all times. The license permitting them to do so is to be presented on demand to the (police) officers responsible. Article 2 Gypsies and travellers may not itinerant with school-age children. Exceptions may be granted by the responsible police authorities, if adequate provision has been made for the education of the children. Article 3 Gypsies and travellers can only itinerant with horses, dogs, and animals, which serve commercial functions if they possess a license to do so from the responsible police authorities... Article 4 Gypsies and travellers may not possess firearms or ammunition unless they have been expressly permitted to do so by the responsible police authorities. Article 5 Gypsies and travellers may not roam about or camp in bands. The association of several single persons or several families, and the association of single persons with a family to which they do not belong, is to be regarded as constituting a band. A group of persons living together like a family is also to be regarded as a band. Article 6 Gypsies and travellers may only encamp or park their wagons and caravans on open-air sites designated by the local police authorities, and only for a period of time specified by the local police authorities. Article 9 Gypsies and travellers over sixteen years of age who are unable to prove regular employment may be sent to workhouses for up to two years by the responsible police authorities on the grounds of public security. The instructions to the police on how to implement the law laid bare the racial approach towards the "Gypsy question" which was beginning to be pursued: 9 The term Gypsy is generally understood, and requires no further elucidation. Racial science provides information on who is to be regarded as a Gypsy'. It should be noted that the Law simply overlooked the fact that the Sinti and Roma were originally from North India and belonged to the Indo-Germanic-speaking, or as Nazi racial anthropologist would have it, "Aryan" people. Naturally, the racial discrimination, which the law licensed was totally unconstitutional. It was finally abrogated by the US military government on 28 July 1947. 10 After 1933, the apparatus of police harassment and persecution was centralised (along with the police itself); policy was progressively radicalised; and any (limited) possibilities of legal redress were destroyed, along with the autonomy of the courts. In 1936 a Reich Central Office for the Fight against the Gypsy Nuisance was established, within the headquarters of the Reich Criminal Police in Berlin. 11 This agency took over and developed the harmful bureaucratic detritus already collected by their colleagues in the Bavarian security police, including 19,000 files on Sinti and Roma. The latter were immediately subjected to the regime's racial legislation, although they were never specified as objects of it. This was apparent in the application of the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Progeny of 14 July 1933 and Law against Dangerous Habitual Criminals promulgated on 24 November 1933. Sinti and Roma were sterilised without any legal basis whatsoever. 12 They were first mentioned expressly in a circular issued by the Reich and Prussian Ministry of the Interior on 26 November 1935. 13 It concerned "racially mixed marriages". Registry offices were instructed to request "testimonials of fitness to marry" only if as a consequence of the betrothed belonging to different races, progeny deleterious to German blood' were to be anticipated. This would be so in the cases of marriages between those of German blood and "Gypsies, Negroes, and their bastards". Although Sinti and Roma were not mentioned specifically in any of the regime's major racial legislative enactments, Globke and Stuckart's semi-official commentary on the Nuremberg Laws was of the opinion that the laws applied to "Gypsies" as well as Jews. 14 Like Jews, they were "carriers of alien blood", and therefore could not be permitted either to marry, or to have sexual relations, with those of "German blood". However, it would be incorrect to attribute the drive to persecute Sinti and Roma solely to a malevolently intolerant regime. Long before the Nazis came to power, there was much evidence of what might be called citizens' initiatives. The following is a letter from the residents of Seckbacherlandstrasse in Frankfurt to the Citizens' Committee (August 1930) 15 : The undersigned residents of Seckbacherlandstrasse Roetheneck, and the eastern part of Vereinstrasse, both owners and tenants, request most urgently that the citizens' committee raise objections with the municipal administration about the Gypsy nuisance in their immediate neighbourhood. Right opposite properties number 16 to 30, Gypsies have settled themselves for some time, who represa heavy burden the neighbourhood. The hygienic conditions in this area defy description. The settlement has neither a well nor a latrine and therefore every possible space is used as a latrine. On account of this, and through the depositing of bath- and washing-water on the open field, there are smells, which pollute the entire neighbourhood. The conditions have come to such a point that we are worried about the spread of contagious diseases. Also, with regard to sexual conduct, these people ¯ and even the children ¯ have no sense of decency; our children have to watch the Gypsy children playing with certain parts of their anatomy. What will this lead to? Almost daily there are fights and the neighbourhood has become so insecure that one has to worry about walking the streets alone after darkness. Because of the Gypsies our properties have greatly depreciated, and already in tenants have asked the house-owners for a rent rebate and surely court cases will soon follow concerning this question. From the points outlined above, you can see the miserable situation which landlords as well as tenants have to through the toleration of the Gypsy camp by the city of Frankfurt. Therefore we request you to cause the administration to alleviate the problem as quickly as possible, to prevent greater damage, particularly of a hygienic and health nature. Gypsies who refused to stay on designated sites were denied welfare payments, as this draft letter of the Mayor of Frankfurt am Main to the welfare authorities on 27 September 1930 concerning the Gypsy camp at Friedbergerlandstrasse makes plain 16 : Concerning this matter we would like to comment that the Gypsies have already completely left the site they were allocated on the Russengelaende, Friedbergerlandstrasse, corner of Berkersheimer Weg. The so-called Gypsy camp is at present completely empty. As we have already previously reported, we have no legal grounds to force the Gypsies into the designated camp. As the Gypsies have left the camp, they are not eligible for social security.' Throughout Germany in the Nazi period, both the citizenry and local authorities took it upon themselves to remove Sinti and Roma from private land, depositing them in ad hoc camps which gradually assumed coercive characteristics. For example, in Berlin prior to the 1936 Olympic Games, the authorities quite illegally rounded up about 600 Sinti and Roma, corralling them on an insalubrious wasteland near a sewage dump and a cemetery at Marzahn, a site which was particularly offensive to a people hypersensitive-sensitive about cleanliness. 17 The justification for this measure was that the Sinti and Roma might sully the clean image of the Olympic host city. Many of them succumbed to diseases. Thereafter, the Berlin welfare authorities unsuccessfully tried to regularise this anomaly of their own making (while offloading the attendant costs of medical care) by pressing for the site's reclassification as a concentration camp. This practice would be emulated in several other German towns. As yet the regime had still to determine who was a "Gypsy". Registering and classifying a group of victims was always necessary precondition for their systematic persecution. Since the Sinti and Roma had been Christian for centuries, the ecclesiastical records, which were used to discover converted Jews would shed little upon racial provenance. However, academic "science" came to the rescue in the form of Dr Robert Ritter, a juvenile psychologist working at the university of Tuebingen. 18 His specialism "criminal biology" was destined to become an academic growth area in Nazi Germany. In 1935 Ritter reorientated his research interests from proving that delinquency was the result of hereditary "feeble-mindedness" to research on Sinti and Roma. In a grant application that year, he stressed that his research would be of decisive importance for the racial-hygienic measures of the State concerning Gypsies'. 19 For once this was not a matter of calculated exaggeration. In 1936 Ritter became director of a research unit within the Ministry of Health, whose costs were partly defrayed by the Criminal Police and the Reich Main Security Office of the SS. The unit had one task: to locate and classify Germany's 30,000 Sinti and Roma to facilitate police measures against them. Ritter's working hypothesis was that the Sinti and Roma had certainly come from India and hence had once been "Aryans". However, in the course of their migrations westwards, they had interbred with "lesser races". 20 This applied to the majority of those Sinti and Roma living in Germany, 90 per cent of whom, he claimed, were part and not pure "Gypsies". Their racial characteristics inclined them towards an "asocial" and criminal way of life. Thus while he was prepared to permit the pure "Gypsies" further pursuance of their lifestyle under carefully controlled conditions, he advocated the resettlement in closed colonies and sterilisation of the more dangerous "part-Gypsies". Only these measures would stem the transmission of their criminal characteristics. Only following such a categorisation would the "pre-conditions" exist for a solution of the "Gypsy Question" on a Reich-wide basis. To support these contentions, Ritter and his assistants scoured the archives and police files in order to reconstruct each Sinti and Roma's genealogy. They also conducted interviews with the Sinti and Roma, threatening women with having their heads shaved, or men with the concentration camps, if they could not recall the names of their great-grandparents. This, incidentally, explains why Sinti and Roma detest being interviewed ¯ particularly by anthropologists, well-intentioned or otherwise ¯ and insist that it is for them alone to record their own history. Ritter's research unit was soon relocated to the Central Police Headquarters, and his findings began to percolate into government policy. This was no longer the concern of the individual Laender, but now came under the aegis of the Reich Criminal Police, with its subordinate Reich Central Office for the Fight against the Gypsy Nuisance. Both were part of the burgeoning Security Empire of Heinrich Himmler. Centralisation meant an end to the previous police practice of trying to shove Sinti and Roma out of their area. It became systematic. Already on 16 July 1937 Himmler instructed the Central Office to evaluate the findings of racial-biological research' on Sinti and Roma. 21 Doubtless he had the work of Ritter and his team in mind. The same point was made more explicitly in a circular on the Fight against the Gypsy Nuisance issued by Himmler on 8 December 1938. 22 Experience gained in the fight against the Gypsy nuisance, and knowledge derived from race-biological research, have shown that the proper method of attacking the Gypsy problem seems to be to treat it as a matter of race. Experience shows that part-Gypsies play the greatest role in Gypsy criminality. On the other hand, it has been shown that efforts to make the Gypsies settle have been unsuccessful, especially in the case of pure Gypsies, on account of their strong compulsion to wander. It has therefore become necessary to distinguish between pure and part-Gypsies in the final solution of the Gypsy question. To this end, it is necessary to establish the racial affinity of every Gypsy living in Germany and of every vagrant living a Gypsy-like existence. I therefore decree that all settled and non-settled Gypsies, and also all vagrants living a Gyspy-like existence, are to be registered with the Reich Criminal Police Office-Reich Central Office for the Fight against the Gypsy Nuisance. The police authorities will report (via the responsible Criminal Police offices and local offices) to the Reich Criminal Police Office-Reich Central Office for the Fight against the Gypys Nuisance all persons who by virtue of their looks and appearance, customs or habits, are to be regarded as Gypsies or part-Gypsies. Because a person considered to be a Gypsy or part-Gypsy, or a person living like a Gypsy, as a rule confirms the suspicion that marriage (in accordance with clause 6 of the first decron the implementation of the Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honour... or on the basis of stipulations in the law on Fitness to Marry) must not be contracted, in all cases the public registry officials must demand a testimony of fitness to marry from those who make such an application [to be married]. Instructions on how to execute this decree, issued by the Criminal Police on 1 March 1939, 23 said that the "requisite legal basis" for the prevention of "racial miscegenation" and for the general regulation of the Gypsies' way of life could only be established through a comprehensive "Gypsy Law". The imminence of such a law was announced on several occasions, but none was ever promulgated. Treatment of the Gypsy question is part of the National Socialist task of national regeneration. A solution can only be achieved if the philosophical perspectives of National Socialism are observed. Although the principle that the German nation respects the national identity of alien peoples is also assumed in the fight against the Gypsy Nuisance, nonetheless the aim of measures taken by the State to defend the homogeneity of the German nation must be the physical separation of Gypsydom from the German nation, the prevention of miscegenation, and finally the regulation of the way of life of pure and part-Gypsies. The necessary legal foundation can only be created through a Gypsy Law, which prevents further intermingling of blood, and which regulates all the most pressing questions, which go together with the existence of Gypsies in the living space of the German nation. A conference on racial policy organised by Heydrich took place in Berlin on 21 September 1939, which may have decided upon a "Final Solution" of the "Gypsy Question". 24 According to the scant minutes which have survived, four issues were decided: the concentration of Jews in towns; their relocation in Poland; the removal of 30,000 "Gypsies" to Poland; and the systematic deportation of Jews from German incorporated territories using good trains. An express letter sent by the Reich Main Security Office on 17 October 1939 to its local agents mentioned that the Gypsy Question will shortly be regulated throughout the territory of the Reich'. 25 Thenceforth, Sinti and Roma were confined to designated sites and encampments. Those who attempted to leave were sent to concentration camps. Many Sinti and Roma were actually in camps already, on account of activities deemed to be "criminal" or "asocial" References: 1 See Romani Rose, Buergerrechte fuer Sinti und Roma. Das Buch aum Rassismus in Deutschland (Heidelberg, 1987), pp.9ff. For a description of the present situation of Sinti and Roma in West Geramny see the article by Annelie Stankau in the Koelner Stadt-Anzeiger , 18 February 1989, reprinted and translated as 'Living at the Edges of Society: Life Remains Tough for the Modern Gypsy', in The German Tribune (1989), No. 1362, p.15. 2 According to another version, the term "Egyptian" refers to the Peloponnese, which in the later Middle Ages was known as "Little Egypt". There was apparently a Sinti and Roma settlement near the town of "Gyppe", or Methone as it is called today. 3 Ruediger Vossen, Zigeuner, Roma, Sinti, Gitanos, Gypsies zwischen Verfolgung und Romantisierung (Frankfurt am Main, 1983). 4 For collected contemporary chronicles see Reimer Gronemeyer, Zigeuner im Spiegel frueherer Chroniken ubd Abhandlungen. Quellen vom 15. Bis 18. Jahrhundert (Giessen, 1987). 5 See Joachim S. Hohmann, Geschichte der Zigeunerverfolgung in Deutschland (Frankfurt am Main, 1981), pp. 13ff. 6 See Hohmann, Geschichte der Zigeuneverfolgung , pp. 48ff.; on the persecution of Sinti and Roma in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, see Wolfgang Guenther, Zur preussichen Zigeunerpolitik seit 1871. Eine Untersuchung am Beispeil des Landkreises Neustadt am Ruebenberge und der Haupstadt Hannover (Hanover, 1895); Rainer Hehemann, Die 'Bekaempfung des Zigeunerunwesens' im Wilhelminischen Deutschland und in der Weimarer Republik 1871-1933 (Frankfurt am Main, 1987). 7 See the contemporary dissertation by Werner-Kurt Hoehne, 'Die Vereinbarkeit der deutschen Zigeunergesetze und Verordnungen mit dem Reichsrecht, insbesondere der Reichsverfassung' (University of Heidelberg, 1929). Hoehne came to the conclusion that the "Gypsy" legislation of the various Laender was not compatible with the constitution of the Weimar Republic. See also Hehemann, Die 'Bekaempfung des Zigeunerunwesens', and Bernhard Streck , ' Die "Bekaempfung des Zigeunerunwesens". Ein Strueck moderner Rechtsgeschichte', in Tilman Zuelch (ed.), In Auschwitz vergast, bis heute verfolgt. Zur Situation der Roma (Zigeuner) in Deutschland (Reinbeck, 1979), pp. 64-88. 8 Bavarian 'Gesetz zur Bekaempfung von Zigeunern, Landfahrern und Arbeitsscheuen vom 16 Juli 1926', Gesetz- und Verordnungsblatt fuer den Freistaat Bayern 1926, pp. 359ff. 9 'Ausfuehrungsbestimmungen zum (bayerischen) Zigeuner- und Arbeitsscheuen-Gesetz vom 16 Juli 1926', reprinted in Hoehne, 'Die Vereinbarkeit der deutschen Zigeunergesetze', pp. 146-53. See also the contemporary legal commentary by Hermann Reich, 'Das bayerische Zigeuner- und Arbeitsscheuengesetz', Juristische Rundschau, 2 (1926), pp. 834-7. 10 Streck, 'Die "Bekaempfung des Ziegeunerunwesens"', p.85. 11 The first moves towards this were made in 1936. See 'Runderlass des Reichsund Preussischen Ministers des Innern vom 5 Juni 1936, betr. "Bekaempfung der Zigeunerplage"', Ministerialblatt fuer die Preussisce Innere Verwaltung, 1, no. 17 (1936) p. 783. See also Michael Zimmermann, Verfolgt, vertrieben, vernichtet. Die nationalsozialistische Vernichtungspolitik gegen Sinti ubd Roma (Essen, 1989), pp. 23f. 12 For examples see Wolfgang Wippermann, Das Leben in Frankfurt zur NS-Zeit, vol. 2: Die nationalsozialistische Zigeunerverfolgung (Frankfurt am Main, 1986), pp. 66f.; Zimmermann, Verfolgt, vertrieben, vernichtet, pp. 19f. 13 'Runderlass des Reichs- und Preussichen Ministers des Innern vom 26 November 1935 ueber das "Verbot von Rassenmischehen"', Ministerialblatt fuer die innere Verwaltung, 49 (1935), pp. 1429-34. 14 Wilhelm Stuckart, Hans Globke, Kommentar zur deutschen Rassengesetzgebung (Munich, 1936), vol. 1, pp. 55f. 15 Reprinted in Wippermann, Das Leben in Franfurt, vol. 2, pp. 55f 16 Oberbuergermeister of Frankfurt am Main, draft letter dated 27 September 1930, reprinted in Wippermann, Das Leben in Frankfurt, vol. 2, pp. 55f. 17 For a detailed account see Ute Brucker-Boroujerdi, Wolfgang Wippermann, 'Gutachen ueber den Zwangscharakter des "Zigeunerlagers" Berlin-Marzahn in der NS-Zeit' (MS, Freie Universitaet, Berlin, 1988), and their 'Nationalsozialistische Zwangslager in Berlin III. Das "Zigeunerlager" Marzahn', in Wolfgang Ribbe (ed.), Berlin-Forschungen II (Berlin, 1987), pp. 189-201; Wippermann, 'Das "Zigeunerlager" Berlin-Marzahn 1936-1945', Pogrom. Zeitschrift fuer bedrohte Voelker, 18 (1987), pp. 77-80. 18 On Ritter see Benno Mueller-Hill, Murderous Science: Elimination by Scientific Selection of Jews, Gypsies, and Others, Germany 1933-1945 (Oxford, 1988); Ute Brucker-Boroujerdi, Wolfgang Wippermann, Die “Rassenhygienische und Erbbiologische Forschungsstelle” im Reichsgesundheitsamt', Bundesgesundheitsblatt, 32 (1989), pp. 13-19. This essay is largely based upon publications by Ritter, his personal file in the Berlin Document Centre and the so-called Forschungsakte Ritter' in the Bundesarchiv Koblenz, R 73/ 14.005. See also Zimmermann, Verfolgt vertrieben, vernichtet, and Reimar Gilsenbach, Die Verfolgung der Sinti ¯ ein Weg, der nach Auschwitz Fuehrte' and Wie Lolitschai zur Doktorwuerde kam', Beitraege zur nationalsozialistischen Gesundheits- und Sozialpolitik, vol. 6: Feinderklaerung und Praevention. Kriminalbiologie, Zigeunerforschung und Asozialenpolitik (Berlin, 1988), pp. 11- 41 and 101-34. 19 Bundesarchiv Koblenz R 73/ 14.005 20 For Ritter's working hypotheses see Robert Ritter, Ein Menschenschlag. Erbaertzliche und erbgeschichtliche Untersuchungen ueber die ñ durch 10 Geschlechterfolgen erforschten ñ Nachkommen von Vagabunden, Jauern und Raeubern' (Leipsig, 1937), Zigeuner und La', Der nichtsesschafte Mensch. Ein Beitrag zur Neugestaltung der Raum- und Menschenordnung im Grossdeutschen Reich (Munich, 1939), pp. 71-88, Zur Frage der Rassanbiologie und Rassenpyschologie der Zigeuner in Deutschland', Reichsgesundheitsblatt, 12 (1938), pp. 425ff., Die Zigeunerfrage und das Zigeunerbastardproblem', Fortschritte der Erbpathologie, 3 (Leipzig, 1939), pp. 1-10, Die Bestandsaufnahme der Zigeuner und Zigeunermischlinge in Deutschland', Der Oeffentliche Gesundheitsdienst (5 February 1941), 6, pp. 477-489, Arbeitsbericht' (MS), BDC, Ritter file, and in Bundesarchiv Koblenz BA ZSg 142/ 2.923. 21Letter from Himmler dated 16 July 1937 cited by Hans-Joachim Doering, Die Zigeuner im nationalsozialistischen Staat (Hamburg, 1964), p. 33. 22 Runderlass des Reichsfuehrers-SS und Chefs der Deutschen Polizei im Reichsministerium des Inneren vom 8 Dezember 1938, betr. “Bekaempfung der Zigeunerplage”', Ministerialblatt des Reichs- und Preussichen Ministers des Innern, 99, no. 51 (1938), 14 December 1938, p. 2105, partially reprinted in Wippermann, Das Leben in Frankfurt, vol. 2, pp. 70f. 23 Ausfuehrungsanweisungen des Reichskriminalpolizeiamt vom 1.3.1939 zum Runderlass des Reichsfuehrers-SS und Chefs der Deutschen Polizei im Reichsministerium des Innern vom 8 Dezember 1938', Deutsches Kriminalpolizeiblatt, 12 (1939), reprinted in Wippermann, Das Leben in Frankfurt, vol. 2, pp. 72-5. 24 Unfortunately the detailed minutes of this meeting have not been found. For what was discussed see Ritter's letter to the DFB dated 15 June1940, BA R 73/ 14.005, and the testimony of Adolf Wuerth in Mueller-Hill, Murderous Science , p. 145. 25 Schnellbrief des Reichssicherheitshauptamtes vom 17. Oktober 1939 an die Staatlichen Kriminalpolizei leit stellen, bez. “Zigeunererfassung”', Erlassammlung des Reichskriminalpolizeiamtes ¯ Vorbeugende Verbrechensbekaempfung, Institut fuer Zeitgeschichte, Munich, Dc 17.02, reprinted in Wippermann, Das Leben in Frankfurt, vol. 1 pp. 80f. Part B 26 . Many Sinti and Roma were taken into "protective custody" during the large-scale round-up of the "asocial" in 1938. 27 In October 1939 they were joined by "soothsayers", whom Himmler regarded as a potential threat to national morale. 28 In June 1940 the Reich Security Main Office forbade the release of Sinti and Roma serving determinate concentration camp or regular prison sentences. 29 At about this time, Adolf Eichmann made recommendation that the "Gypsy Question" be solved simultaneously with the "Jewish Question" by appending "three or four trucks" of Sinti and Roma to the trains taking Jews from Vienna to the General Government. 30 In fact, matters did not run so smoothly, although some 2,500 Sinti and Roma were deported to Poland from the western areas of the Reich between April and May 1940 as an alleged "security threat". 31 A few of them managed to survive on the loose as entertainers and musicians. Most of them either simply starved to death or were used by the SS as forced labour. Those who fell sick were shot. Some 80 per cent of those deported from Hamburg alone failed to return alive. Plans to follow up these modest numbers with the wholesale deportation of Germany's 30,000 Sinti and Roma met with the opposition of Hans Frank, Hitler's satrap in occupied Poland, 32 although 5,000 were deported from the Burgenland to the Lodz ghetto, to be subsequently gassed in Chelmno in January 1942. Major deportations of Sinti and Roma were halted so as to give priority to the deportation of Jews, whose homes were needed for ethnic German repatriates. For once, an itinerant way of life reprieved Sinti and Roma from persecution. This meant that the earlier short-term policy of corralling them in ad hoc camps became a long-term affair. Conditions in camps like Marzahn, and Lackenbach and Salzburg in Austria, were atrocious. 33 Those held in Lackenbach were subjected to beatings, solitary confinement, dietary deprivation, heavy manual labour, and such indignities as the shaving of their heads. the authorities' response to epidemic disease was: Massive loss of life in the restricted area only interests us in so far as it represents a threat to the non-Gypsy population.' 34 In the case of camps in towns or near villages, matters were made worse by the constant complaints from people living or working in their proximity that the Sinti and Roma were "spies" or a threat to the morals of the local population. Complaints made by "national comrades" were then used by local authorities to demand the Sinti and Roma's deportation. The Criminal Police responded by saying that a final decision in this case was pending. As in the case of the Jews, the invasion of the Soviet Union marked the transition from persecution to extermination. SS Einsatzgruppen and units of the regular army and police began shooting Sinti and Roma in Russia, Poland, and the Balkans. 35 Possibly as many as 250,000 Sinti and Roma died in these actions, which were legitimised with the old prejudice that the victims were "spies". Differences of opinion at the highest levels of government account for the final equivocations in the resolution of the "Gypsy Question". Himmler, encouraged by his SS Ancestral Heritage' organisation, wanted to keep a few token clans of pure Sinti, Roma, and Bohemian Lalleri alive on a reservation, as of form of ethnic curiosity. 36 This scheme was opposed by Martin Bormann ¯ as the spokesman of both Hitler and the ordinary NSDAP membership ¯ notwithstanding the very small number of people Himmler intended to keep alive. Himmler signed the order despatching Germany's Sinti and Roma to Auschwitz on 16 December 1942. 37 The "Final Solution" of the "Gypsy Question" had begun. The order sending Sinti and Roma to Auschwitz mentioned categories of exempt persons, which were ignored by Himmler's Criminal Police subordinates who carried out the deportations. This prompted Rudolf Hoess to remark later: They arrested many soldiers with high decorations on leave from the front, but whose father, mother, or grandfather were Gypsies or part-Gypsies. There was even a Party member of long standing among them, whose Gypsy grandfather had migrated to Leipzig. He himself had a big business there, and was a much decorated veteran of the First World War.' 38 The "B II e" camp at Auschwitz was about 1,000 m by 80 m size, a series of wooden barracks on waterlogged soil, from which both the gas chambers and crematoria were clearly visible. 39 Entire Sinti and Roma families were sent there, chiefly to minimise the likelihood of the regime's agents being knifed or torn apart while trying to separate extended families. The camp lasted for seventeen months. Outside attempts to have people released on the basis of categories of exemption were referred to the ubiquitous Robert Ritter. They were thus doomed to failure from the start. For example, the NSDAP in Magdeburg interceded on behalf of the German foster-parents of a seventeen-year-old Sintiza in Auschwitz. The Criminal Police eventually replied: According to the formal testimony of the racial-hygiene research unit of the Reich Ministry of Health, [the girl's] mother is classified as a part-Gypsy. The measures taken therefore apply to the girl too.' 40 Conditions in the camp continued to deteriorate, with outbreaks of typhus, smallpox, and the ulcerative condition called Noma. Twins and dwarves among the inmates were subjected to the attentions of Dr Josef Mengele; others fell victim to experiments conducted on behalf of the Luftwaffe, involving immersing the subject in freezing water. Beginning in April 1944, those fit for work were relocated to other camps, leaving behind women, children, and the elderly. On the night of 2-3 August 1944, the 2,987 who were issued with extra rations of bread and salami, and then driven under cover of darkness to the gas chambers. The vacant camp was strewn with broken pots and torn clothing, reflecting the fact that the Sinti and Roma fought to the end. A few children who had managed to conceal themselves were lured out next day by Mengele, who drove them in his own car to the gas chambers. Of the 23,000 people who had entered cam B II e, 20,078 had perished. The Sinti and Roma's conversion into a minorite fatale ran parallel with their physical extermination. As we have seen, the Nazis abandoned the idea of issuing a global Gypsy Law analogous to the anti-Semitic Nuremberg legislation. This omission resulted in grotesquely contradictory circumstances. While some Sinti and Roma were already imprisoned in concentration camps, others were more or less free to move about Germany, working or serving "their" Fatherland at the front. Various ordinances were issued to rectify these anomalies. They demonstrate that Nazi policy towards the Sinti and Roma was even more uncoordinated than policy towards the Jews. However, they also show that persecution of Sinti and Roma was similarly propelled by racial ideology. The Nazis endeavoured to bring the legal situation of Sinti and Roma into line with that of the Jews. Thus on 13 March 1942, the Reich Minister of Labour ordered that the special stipulations with regard to Jews in the field of welfare legislation... should be correspondingly applied in their present form to the Gypsies'. 41 Following an ordinance of the Reich Minister of Finance on 26 March 1942, "Gypsies" had to pay the same special taxes as Jews. 42 Similarly, the Reich Citizenship Law of 25 April 1943 deprived Jews and "Gypsies" of their already much curtailed right as German citizens. 43 The Reich leadership of the NSDAP ¯ Main Office for the Nation's Welfare ¯ has decreed the following through a letter dated 21 May 1942 to the leaders of the offices for the nation's welfare in the Gau leadership of the NSDAP: Further to my communication No. V 15/39 of 2 June 1939, I make known the following: At the instigation of the Reich Main Office of the SS, the Reich Minister of Labour has decreed, by the order of 13.3.1942 IIIb 4656/42, that full Gypsies, and part-Gypsies with predominant or equal parts of Gypsy blood, are to be equated with Jews with regard to labour legislation. Dependants of full or part-Gypsies with predominant or equal parts of German blood can therefore no longer be cared for by the NSV. Only part-Gypsies with predominantly German elements in their blood are still to be included in welfare schemes. 44 Discrimination against Sinti and Roma did not cease with the collapse of the Third Reich. In 1956, the Federal Court decided that they had only been subjected to racial persecution from the 1943 deportation order onwards. 45 This was only backdated to 1938 in the early 1960s, by which time many of the Nazis' victims were dead. Up to that point, the Sinti and Roma's "asocial characteristics" apparently legitimated "police and security measures" taken against them. This extraordinary claim was not unconnected with the fact that many of those responsible for "Gypsy affairs" in the Federal Republic had been similarly engaged in the Nazi period. 46 In 1953, Ritter's files and some 24,000 "racial testimonies" were given to a newly-founded "Travellers' Office" of the Bavarian Criminal Police, whose staff included one of Ritter's former SS associates, himself a former expert on the "Gypsy Question". Likewise, Ritter's research materials and findings were in evidence in many reports prepared by the Federal Republic's leading academic advisor on Sinti and Roma. He had acted as a character witness for Ritter in post-war denazification proceedings, testifying to Ritter's profound appreciation of the situation of the Gypsies'. This enabled Ritter to resume work as a child psychologist. Some of his female assistants and doctoral students ¯ whose work was carried out on children who were then deported ¯ passed upward in post-war academic and professional life, with no checks being made on precisely how they acquired their qualifications and titles. 47 The fact of Nazi genocide against Sinti and Roma was only officially acknowledged by Chancellor Helmut Schmidt in 1982, a fact which does not deter current deportations of eastern European "Gypsies". In the same month (November 1989) in which public agencies in West Germany were ostentatiously welcoming economic refugees from the GDR or further afield (including "ethnic German" Poles whose sole claim on Germany is that their parents had evinced a "positive" attitude towards the Nazi occupation of their country), the Hamburg police ejected several Sinti and Roma from their sanctuary within the former Neuengamme concentration camp and deported them to Yugoslavia. Rumanian Sinti and Roma fleeing the savagery of Iliescu's coal-miners are in turn being set upon by alienated working-class youths in both parts of Germany. Chapter Six The Persecution of the "Hereditary Ill", the "Asocial", and Homosexuals Immediately after the seizure of power, the National Socialists left no one in any doubt that they intended to translate their plans for selective "breeding" into reality. On 28 June 1933 Reich Minister of the Interior Frick established a Committee of Experts for Population and Racial Policy. 1 Its object was to make preparations for the promulgation of a law sanctioning sterilisation. A draft law permitting the sterilisation of those considered hereditarily ill had been prepared by the Prussian government in late 1932. This, however, insisted that either the person concerned or their guardian had to consent to the operation involved. In clause 12 of the Law for the Prevention of Progeny with Hereditary Diseases, which the National Socialists government issued on 14 July 1933, the voluntary principle was replaced by compulsion. 2 Moreover the range of sicknesses regarded as "hereditarily determined" was extended. Persons could now be compulsorily sterilised who were suffering from "congenital feeble-mindedness"; "schizophrenia"; "manic depression"; Huntington's chorea; "hereditary blindness", "hereditary deafness"; and "serious physical deformities". Sterilisation could also be enforced against chronic alcoholics. This catalogue of sicknesses was not without problems. As some physicians pointed out at the time, it was by no means certain that some of the sicknesses were hereditary. Moreover, some of the categories were so elastic as to be meaningless. When could a person be considered to be a "chronic alcoholic"? What did "congenital feeble-mindedness" mean? From the Law for the Prevention of Progeny with Hereditary Diseases of 14 July 1933: i. Anyone who has a hereditary illness can be rendered sterile by a surgical operation if, according to the experience of medical science, there is a strong probability that his/her progeny will suffer from serious hereditary defects of a physical or mental nature. ii. Anyone is hereditarily ill within the meaning of the law who suffers from one of the following illnesses: 1.Congenital feeble-mindedness 2.Schizophrenia 3.Manic depression 4.Hereditary epilepsy 5.Huntington's chorea 6.Hereditary blindness 7.Hereditary deafness 8.Serious physical deformities iii. In addition, anyone who suffers from chronic alcoholism can be sterilised. (7) i. Proceedings before the Hereditary Health Courts are not public. ii. The Hereditary Health Court has to make the necessary inquiries; it can call expert, and other, witnesses, as well as order the personal appearance and medical examination of the person to be sterilised, compelling him to do so in cases of non-appearance without adequate excuse. The provisions do so in cases of non-appearance without adequate excuse. The provisions concerning the conduct of civil hearings are to be applied correspondingly to the examination of and swearing in of witnesses and experts, as well as to the disqualification and rejection of members of the court. Physicians who appear as witnesses or medical experts obliged to testify without regard to professional confidentiality. Courts and administrative authorities, as well as hospital institutions are obliged to supply information to the Hereditary Health Court on request. (12) i. If the court finally decides upon sterilisation, the operation must be performed even if it is against the wishes of the person to be sterilised, unless that person was solely responsible for the application. The medical officer is responsible for requesting the necessary measures to be taken by the police authorities. In so far as other measures prove insufficient, the use of force is permissible. Reasons for the law Since the National Revolution public opinion has become increasingly preoccupied with questions of demographic policy and the continuing decline in the birth rate. However, it is not only the decline in population, which is a cause for serious concern but equally the increasingly evident genetic composition of our people. Whereas the hereditarily healthy families have for the most part adopted a policy of having only one or two children, countless numbers of inferiors and those suffering from hereditary conditions are reproducing unrestrainedly while their sick and asocial offspring burden the community... 3 Questions like these were to be "resolved" by so-called Hereditary Health Courts. These decided upon sterilisation in cases referred to them by physicians and those in charge of hospitals and asylums. A supplementary decree of 5 December 1933 made it compulsory for the latter to report their own patients and charges. 4 Attempts were made to lend the whole process an air of scientific objectivity through the use of intelligence tests. These contained questions designed to eke out the subject's educational abilities, e.g. simple arithmetic or "who was Bismarck?" Questions like what is the present form of government in Germany?' were rather harder to answer satisfactorily. Was one supposed to say "a terroristic dictatorship"? The intelligence tests were also designed to "test" the social and moral "outlook" of the person concerned: Why does one learn things?', Why does one save?', What are loy, piety, respect, modesty?', and so forth. If one to failed to give satisfactory answers, one would be categorised as "feeble-minded", a concept, which also embraced the dubious notion of "moral feeble-mindedness". That is to say, deviant attitudes constituted "feeble-mindedness". Here, those carrying out the tests usually differentiated, or in other words discriminated, between men and women. Women who had frequent changes of sexual partner were "morally feeble-minded", but men were not. The concept of "camouflaged" feeble-mindedness or schizophrenia was used to deal with those who got the answers right. Some 320,000-350,000 people were sterilised in accordance with these dubious criteria. 5 At least a hundred people died as a result of surgical incompetence, and many more still bear the mental scars of their private suffering. References: 26 On the Zigeunerlager' in Frankfurt see Wippermann, Das Leben in Frankfurt, vol. 2, pp. 28ff. On the camp at Marzahn, see Brucker-Boroujerdi, Wippermann, Nationalsozialistische Zwangslager in Berlin III'; for the Zigeunerlager' at Lackenbach see Erika Thurmer, Nationalsozialismus und Zigeuner in Oesterreich (Salzburg, 1983). 27 See Hans Buckheim, Die Aktion “Arbeitsscheu Reich”', Gutachten des Instituts fuer Zeitgeschichte, 2 (Munich, 1966), pp.196-201; Wol, “Ein Gebot nationaler Arbeitsdisziplin”. Die Aktion “Arbeitsscheu Reich” 1938', Beitraege zur nationalsozialistischen Gesundheits- und Sozialpolitik, 6 (Berlin, 1988), pp. 43-74. 28 Schnellbrief des Reichssicherheitshauptamtes vom 20. November 1939'. Erlassammlung des Reichskriminalpolizeiamtes ¯ Vorbeugende Verbrechensbekaempfung, Institut fuer Zeitgeschichte, Munich, Dc 17.02. 29 Schnellbrief des Reichssicherheitschauptamtes vom 18. Juni 1940, betr. “Haftpruefung der gemaess Erlass vom 1 Juni 1938festgenommenen Personen”', Erlassammlung des Reichskriminalpolizeiamtes ¯ Vorbeugende Verbrechensbekaempfung, Institut fuer Zeitgeschichte, Munich Dc 17.02. 30 See Donald Kenrick, Grattan Puxon, Sinti and Roma. Die Vernichtung eines Volks im NS-Staat (Goettingen, 1981), p. 67. 31 For a detailed discussion of the deportations see Wippermann, Das Leben in Frankfurt, vol. 2, pp. 82ff. See also Zimmermenn, Verfolgt, vertrichen, vernichtet, pp. 43ff. 32 Protokoll der Besprechung Heydrichs mit Seyss-Inquart und anderen SS-und Polizeifuehrern am 30. Januar 1940', Nuernberger Dokumente No. 5322, reprinted in Kurt Paetzold (ed.), Verfolgung, Vertreibung, Vernichtung. Dokumente des faschistischen Antisemitismus 1933 bis 1942 (Leipzig, 1983), pp. 258f. See also Zimmermann, Verfolgt, vertrieben, vernichtet, p. 48. 33 See note 17 above. 34 Michael Zimmermann, Von der Diskriminierung zum “Familienlager” Auschwitz. Die nationalsozialistische Ziegeunerfolgung', Dachauer Hefte, 5 (1989), p. 103. 35 See for example Bericht des Kommandeurs der 281. Sicherungsdivision vom 23. Juni 1942 ueber die Erschiessung von 127 Zigeunern in Nororschew durch die geheime Feldpolizei', Nuernberger Dokumente NOKW 2072, also Nuernberger Dokumente NOKW 2535, 2022, 802 and 1486; Schreiben der 339. Infanterie Division an die Befehlshaber rueckwaertigen Heeres-Gebiet Mitte vom 5. November 1941', Bundesarchiv Militaerarchiv Freiburg RH 26-339/5. For detailed accounts see Kenrick, Puxon, Sinti und Roma, pp. 93ff.; Helmut Krausnick, Die Truppen des Weltanschauungskrieges 1938-1942 (Frankfurt am Main, 1985), pp. 135ff.; Raul Hilberg, Die Vernichtung der europaeischen Juden. Die Gesamtgeschichte des Holocaust (Berlin, 1982), pp. 197ff.; Martin Gilbert, Atlas of the Holocaust (London, 1988). 36 Schreiben des Reichssicherheitshauptamtes vom 13. Oktober 1942, betr. “Zigeunerhaeuptlinge”, Erlassammlung des Reichskriminalpolizeiamtes ¯ Vorbeugende, Verbrechensbekaempfung', Institut fuer Zeitgeschichte, Munich, Dc 17.02, reprinted in Wippermann, Das Leben in Frankfurt, vol. 1, pp. 106f. See also Michael H. Kater, Das Ahnenerbe' der ss 1935-1945. Ein Beitrag zur Kulturpolitik des Dritten Reiches (Stuttgart, 1974), pp. 206f.; Thurner, Nationalsozialismus und Zigeuner in Oesterreich, pp. 143f. 37 The decree has not been found. See however Schnellbrief des Reichssicherheitshauptamtes vom 29. Januar 1943 betr. “Einweisung von Zigeunermischlingen, Rom-Zigeunern und balkanischen Zigeunern in ein Konzentrationlager”', Erlassammlung des Reichskriminalpolizeiamtes- Vorbeugende Verbrechensbekaempfung, Institut fuer Zeitgeschichte, Munich, Dc17.02, reprinted in Wippermann, Das Leben in Frankfurt, 1, pp. 109-14. 38 Martin Broszat (ed.), Rudolf Hoess, Kommandant in Auschwitz. Autobiographisch Aufzeichnungen ( Stuttgart, 1958), pp. 105f. 39 See the reports by Elisabeth Guttenberger, Das Zigeunerlager', in H.G.Adler, Hermann Langbein, Ella Lingens-Reiner, Auschwitz. Zeugnisse und Berichte (Frankfurt am Main, 1965), pp. 159ff.; Hermann Langbein, Der Auschwitz Prozess. Ein Dokumentation (Frankfurt am Main, 1965), pp. 106f.; Lucy Adelsberger, Auschwitz ñ Ein Tatsachenbricht (Berlin, 1965), also the accounts by Kenrick, Puxon, Sinti und Roma, pp. 106ff.;Bernhard Streck, Zigeuner in Auschwitz, Chronik des Lagers BIIe', in B. Streck, Mark Muenzel (eds.), Kumpania und Kontrolle. Moderne Behinderungen zigeunerischen Lebens (Giessen, 1981), pp. 69ff.; Zimmermann, Verfolgt, vertrieben, vernichtet, pp. 75ff. 40 Gilsenbach, Wie Lolitschai zur Doktorwuerde kam', p. 109. 41 Anordnung des Reichsarbeitsministers vom 14. Maerz 1942, betr, “Beschaeftigung von Zigeunern”', Reichsgesetzblatt 1942, Part 1, p. 138. 42 Dritte Verordnung des Reichsministers der Finanzen vom 26. Maerz 1942 zur Durchfuehrung der Verordnung ueber die Erhebung einer Sozialausgleichsabgabe vom 23. Maerz 1942', Reichsgesetzblatt 1943, Part 1, pp.268f. 43 'Zwoelfte Verordnung zum Reichbuergergesetz vom 25. April 1943', Reichsgesetezblatt 1943, Part 1, pp. 268f. 44 'Anordnung der Reichsleitung der NSDAP- Hauptamt fuer Volkswohlfahrt vom 21. Mai 1942, betr. Arbeitsrechtliche Gleichstellung von "Vollzigeunern und Zigeunermischlingen mit vorwiegend oder gleichem zigeunerischen Blutantiel" mit Juden', Erlassammlung des Reichskriminalpolizeiamtes, Institut fuer Zeitgeschichte, Munich, Dc 17.02. 45 'Urteil des Bundesgerichtshofes vom 7. Januar 1956', partly reprinted in Zuelch (ed.), In Auschwitz vergast, pp. 168f. 46 See Rose, Buergerrechte fuer Sinti und Roma, pp. 31ff. See also Mathias Winter, 'Kontinuitaeten in der deutschen Zigeunerforschung und Zigeunerpolitik, ' Beitraege zur nationalsozialistischen Gesundheits- und Sozialpolitik, 6 (Berlin, 1988), pp. 135ff. 47 Rose, Bergerrechte fuer Sinti und Roma, pp. 114ff. Chapter six 1. On the so-called hereditary ill', compulsory sterilisation and the murder of the sick (euthanasia'), see Alexander Mitscherlich, Fred Mielke (eds.), Medizin ohne Menschlichkeit. Dokumente des Nuernberger Aerzteprozsesses (Stuttgart, 1948, reprinted Frankfurt am Main, 1989); Klaus Doerner, Nationalsozialismus und Lebensvernichtung', Vierteljahreshefte fuer Zeitgeschichte , 15 (1968), pp. 121ff.; Karl Dietrich Erdmann, “Lebensunwertes Leben”. Totalitaere Lebensvernichtung und das Problem der Euthanasie', Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht , 26 (1975), pp. 215¯25; Lothar Gruchmann, “Euthanasie” und Justiz im Dritten Reich', Vierteljahreshefte fuer Zeitgeschichte , 220 (1971), pp. 235¯79; Kurt Nowak, Euthanasie un Sterilisierung im Dritten Reich. Die Konfrontation der evangelischen und katholischen Kirche mit dem Gesetz zurVerhuetung erbkranken Nachwuchses' und derEuthanasie' Aktion (Goettingen, 1987); Ernst Klee, Euthanasie' im NS-Staat. Die Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens' (Frankfurt am Main, 1983); Achim Thom, Horst Spaar (eds.), Medizin im Faschismus (East Berlin, 1985); Gisela Bock, Zwangssterilisation im Nationalsozialismus (Opladen, 1986); Heidrun Kaupen-Haas, Der Griff nach der Bevoelkerung (Noerdlingen, 1986); Christian Gansmueller, Die Erbgesundheitspolitik des Dritten Reiches (Cologne, 1987); Hans Walter Schmuhl, Rassenhygiene , Nationalsozialismus, Euthanasie (Goettingen, 1987); Goetz Aly et al., Aussonderung und Tod. Die klinische Hinrichtung der Unbrauchbaren. Beitraege zur nationalsozialistiscGesundheits- und Sozialpolitik (Berlin, 1987, 2nd edition), Vol. 1, and Reform und Gewissen. Euthanasie' im Dienst des Fortschritts. Beitraege zur nationalsozialistischen Gesundheits- und Sozialpolitik (Berlin, 1985), Vol. 2; Robert Jay Lifton, The Nazi Doctors: A Study in the Psychology of Evil (London, 1986); Benno Mueller-Hill, Murderous Science: Elimination by Scientific Selection of Jews, Gypsies, and Others, Germany 1933¯1945 (Oxford, 1988); Robert Proctor, Racial Hygiene: Medicine under the Nazis (Cambridge, Mass., 1988); Paul J. Weindling, Health, Race and German Politics Between National Unification and Nazism 1870¯1945 (Cambridge, 1989); Dorothea Sick, Euthanasie' im Nationalsozialismus am Beispiel des Kalmenhofs in Idstein im Taunus (Frankfurt am Main, 1983); Manfred Klueppel, Euthanasie' und Lebensvernichtung am Beispiel der Landesheilanstalten Haina und Merxhausen. Eine Chronik der Ereignisse 1933¯1945 (Kassel, 1984); Gerhard Kneuker, Wulf Steglich, Begegnungen mit der Euthanasie in Hadamar (Rehberg-Loccum, 1985); Dorothee Roer, Dieter Henkel (eds.), Psychiatrie im Nationalsozialismus (Kassel, 1989); Peter Chroust et al ., Soll nach Hadamar ueberfuehrt werden. Den Opfern der Euthanasiemorde 1939 bis 1945 (Frankfurt am Main, 1989) for an excellent catalogue of the memorial exhibition at Hadamar. For a moving biographical account of a victim of the euthanasia' programme see Hans-Ulrich Dapp, Emma Z. Ein Opfer der Euthanasie (Stuttgart, 1990). Michael Burleigh, Euthanasia in the Third Reich', Social History of Medicine (1991), 4 surveys this and other relevant literature. Helmuth Sorg, “Euthanasie' in den evangelischen Heilanstalten in Wuerttemberg im Dritten Reich' (unpublished M.A. thesis, Freie Universitaet, Berlin, 1987) is an excellent local study. 2. Gesetz zur Verhuetung erbkranken Nachwuchses vom 14.7.1933', Reichsgesetzblatt 1933 , Part 1, pp. 529ff.; see also the commentary on this by Arthur Guett, Ernst Ruedin, Falk Ruttke, Gesetz zur Verhuetung erbkranken Nachwuchses vom 14. Juli 1933 nebst Ausfuehrungsverordnungen (Munich, 1936). For the prehistory and content of the law see Michael Meixner et al. , Das Gesetz zur Verhuetung erbkranken Nachwuchses. Seine wissenschaftlichen und politischen Voraussetzungen und Folgewirkungen', in Achim Thom, Horst Spaar (eds.), Medizin im Faschismus (Berlin, 1985), pp. 152ff.; Joachim Mueller, Sterilisation und Gesetzgebung bis 1933 (Husum, 1985); Bock, Zwangssterilisation , pp. 55ff. 3. From Reichsgesetzblatt 1933 , Part 1, pp. 529ff. 4. Verordnung zur Ausfuehrung des Gesetzes zur Verhuetung erbkranken Nachwuchses vom 5. Dezember 1933', Reichsgesetzblatt 1933 , Part 1, pp. 1021ff. 5. Bock, Zwangssterilisation , pp. 230ff. Part C From an "intelligence test form" used to establish "mental and hereditary illnesses" from 1933: Intelligence Test Form Orientation (What is your name?) (What are you?) (How old are you?) (Where do you live?) (What year is it?) (Which month?) (What is the date?) (What day of the week is it?) (How long have you been here?) (Where is this place?) (Which building are you in now?) (Who brought you here?) (Who are the people around you?) (Who am I?) Educational ability (Home town/village) (Belonging to which province?) (Capital of Germany?) (Capital of France?) (Who was Luther?) (Who was Bismarck?) (What type of state do we have at present?) (Who discovered America?) (When is Christmas?) (What does Christmas mean?) (Further questions of a similar type) (How many days in the week?) (forwards and backwards) General knowledge (Where does the sun rise?) (Why is there day and night?) (Why does on build houses higher in towns than in the countryside?) (What does it mean to boil water?) (Why do children go to school?) (Why do courts exist?) (Types of money?) (What does it cost to send a letter?) (Prices of foodstuffs?) Differences between: (Mistake ¯ lie?) (Loan ¯ gift?) (Parsimony ¯ saving?) (Lawyer ¯ public prosecutor?) (Stairs ¯ ladder?) (Pond ¯ stream?) Special questions concerning working life Make a sentence using the following three words: Hunter ¯ Hare ¯ Field Soldier ¯ War ¯ Fatherland Spring ¯ Meadow ¯ Flowers School ¯ Education ¯ Life 6 The Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Progeny was not only applied to people who were in no sense either ill or "hereditarily ill", but was also radicalised. In September 1934 Hitler advised the Reich Physicians' Leader Dr Wagner that pregnancies could be terminated in the case of hereditarily ill women, or women who had become pregnant by a hereditarily ill partner'. 7 The question of abortion on "eugenic grounds" had also been both debated, and in some cases practised, in the Weimar Republic, despite the fact that it was prohibited by clause 218 of the law. The advent of the National Socialist regime at first represented no difference of policy. On the contrary, measures to combat infractions of the law carrying out abortions on "hereditarily ill" women. The Nazi leadership took note of this. On 26 June 1935 they promulgated the Law amending the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Progeny. 8 This sanctioned abortions within the first six months of pregnancy (!), in the case of women who had been categorised as "hereditarily ill" by the Hereditary Health Courts. From the Law amending the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Progeny of 26 June 1935: The government of the Reich has decided upon the following law, which hereby takes effect: Individual clauses The Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Progeny of 14 July 1933 (Reichsgesetzblatt 1, p. 529) will be amended as follows: In c.9 sentence 1, instead of "emergency period of one month", insert "emergency period of fourteen days". Following c.10a insert: If, by virtue of the law, a Hereditary Health Court has decided upon the sterilisation of a woman who is pregnant at the time the operation is carried out, the pregnancy may be terminated, with the consent of the woman concerned, unless the foetus is already capable of independent life, or unless the termination of the pregnancy entails a serious danger to either the life or health of the woman herself. The foetus is to be regarded as being incapable of independent life if the termination takes place before the completion of the sixth month of pregnancy. In c. 11 paragraph 1, sentences 1 and 3 and paragraph 2 the words "and termination of pregnancy" are to be inserted after the word "sterilisation". Clause 14 is to be interpreted as follows: Sterilisation, or the termination of a pregnancy, as well as the removal of the gonads, which are not in accordance with the stipulations of the law, are authorised and to be carried out only if a physician has decided in accordance with the dictates of medical skill that this would forestall a grave threat to the life or health of the person concerned, and only with that person's consent. Removal of the gonads of a man can be performed only with his consent, and only if this has been recommended by the medical officers of the courts or administrative authorities as being necessary to free him from a degenerate sexual drive which might result in further infringements of paragraphs 175 to 178, 183, 223 to 226 of the Penal Code. Recommendations for castration in criminal trials or custody proceedings remain unaffected. Berlin the 26th June 1935 The Fuehrer and Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler The Reich Minister of the Interior Frick The Reich Minister of Justice Dr Guertner 9 The precise relationship between these racially-motivated measures and the so-called "euthanasia" program has yet to be established. Permission for the destruction of worthless life' had been demanded by the lawyer Karl Binding and the psychiatrist Alfred Hoche in their eponymous book published in 1920. 10 This sparked off an animated public discussion. Their inhuman demands, expressed in a commensurately inhuman and utilitarian language, were not categorically or clearly refuted by physicians, theologians, and lawyers. This suggests how widespread subscription to selective breeding and racial extermination, albeit in the guise of "eugenics" rather than the ideology of a particular political party, had become in the Weimar Republic. It is also suggested by the apparent lack of public reaction to Hitler's espousal of the most extreme elements in the "eugenic" case. In the course of a speech to the Nuremberg Party rally on 5 August 1929, Hitler declared that If Germany was to get a million children a year and was to remove 700,000-800,000 of the weakest people, then the final result might even be an increase in strength'. 11 It was already obvious from these words that what Hitler envisaged had nothing whatsoever to do with "euthanasia", if that is taken to mean painlessly ending the life of a terminally ill person either at their own request or with the consent of their relatives. Hence, throughout what follows the word "euthanasia" is employed as a cosmetic term for murder. The question of compulsory sterilisation continued to occupy the foreground in the years immediately after the Nazis came to power. However, Hitler held to his plans for a "euthanasia" program. According to the testimony of the Reich Physicians' Leader Dr Wagner, Hitler told him in 1935 that in the event of war he would take up the question of euthanasia and enforce it', because such a problem would be more easily solved in war-time'. 12 This is not the only evidence that the National Socialists planned to solve the problem of the asylums in a radical way' in the course of a war which would be one of racial extermination. The "euthanasia" program was finally precipitated by the Knauer case in the winter of 1938-9. 13 A man called Knauer petitioned Hitler asking that his deformed child, who was in a clinic at the university of Leipzig, be killed. Hitler sent Brandt, the physician to his retinue, to investigate, with powers to authorise the child's death if the circumstances warranted it. Brandt, and the Head of the Chancellery of the Fuehrer, Philipp Bouhler, who wished to enlarge the scope of his agency beyond answering letters to Hitler, were then authorised to deal with further requests in a similar way. Brandt and Bouhler formed and ad hoc group called the Reich Committee for the Scientific Registration of Serious Hereditarily- and Congenitally-based Illnesses consisting of officials from the Chancellery of the Fuehrer, representatives of the Reich Ministry of the Interior, and carefully selected physicians. 14 This committee constituted the clearing-hofor reports on deformed births sent in by physicians and midwives throughout the Reich. The reports, ostensibly designed to clarify scientific questions in the field of congenital deformities', were then forwarded to three paediatricians (Professor Heinze, Werner Catel and Dr Ernst Wentzler), who marked the forms with a "+" or "¯ " according to whether the child was to die or survive. The children concerned were subsequently transferred to special "paediatric clinics" where they were either starved to death or given lethal injections. Their deaths provided research "material" for a number of university-based psychiatrists and neurologists because, as one professor put it, thanks to the program [i.e. "euthanasia"], a rapid anatomical and histological clarification can be achieved'. In the course of this initial "children's euthanasia" program, at least 5,200 infants, children, and adolescents were killed. In the summer of 1939, Hitler instructed Dr Leonardo Conti, a Nazi medical-bureaucratic pluralist with positions in both the State and Party hierarchies, to organise a "euthanasia" program for adults. 15 His unwelcome involvement was soon short-circuited by Bouhler and his deputy Viktor Brack, who reasserted control from the Chancellery of the Fuehrer. In the autumn, Brack and Bouhler organised a series of meetings to determine both the scope of the projected program and the most suitable methods to be adopted. The argument that more hospital beds would be needed for a coming war apparently enabled university-based scientists to overlook the fact that the program had no legal basis whatsoever. Their involvement in turn lent murder a spurious air of scientific "respectability". The question of "how" was resolved by the Head of the Reich Criminal Police, Arthur Nebe, who set the Criminal Technical Institute to work devising the most efficient method of killing. The question of "who" was worked out by the steering-group, which arrived at a global figure of "65,000-70,000" persons to be affected by "rationalisation", arrived at in the following way: The number is arrived at through a calculation on the basis of a ratio of 1000:10:5:1. That means out of 1,000 people 10 require psychiatric treatment; of these 5 in residential form. And of these, one patient will come under the program. If one applies this to the population of the Greater German Reich, then one must reckon with 65,000-70,000 cases. 16 With the question of "who" resolved in this impersonal global manner, the processes were inaugurated which determined the individual patients who were to die. The Reich Ministry of the Interior despatched forms to all asylums and clinics to be completed for each patient. These supplied details about the latter's race, state of health, and capacity to work. The completed forms were then centrally processed and duplicated, and sent in batches of 150 to expert "assessors". 17 The "assessors", whose number increased, marked the forms with a red "+" if the patient was to be killed or a blue "¯ "if he or she was to survive. Doubtful cases, marked with a "?", were resolved by higher "assessors", whose number included the medical layman Viktor Brack. Some of the "assessors", who were paid on a piece-work basis, regarded the form-filling clerical work as a worthwhile end in itself, with one, Dr Josef Schreck, congratulating himself on having processed 15,000 forms "very conscientiously" within nine months. The "assessors" never saw the patients. "Form 1" of 1941 is reproduced below: Form 1 File number: Name of the asylum: in... Christian and surname of the patient: Place of birth: Date of birth: Last residence: Place: District: Marital status: Confession: Race (1): Address of closest relatives: Regular visits, and from whom? Name and address of legal guardian: Person responsible for the costs of care: Duration of stay in this asylum: Duration of stay in other asylums: Where and for how long: Ill since when Twin: yes/no Mentally ill relatives: Diagnosis: Predominantly bed-ridden: yes/no very disturbed: yes/no under restraint: yes/no Incurable physical illness: yes/no war wounds: yes/no In the case of schizophrenia: final stage good recovery In the case of feeble-mindedness: debility imbecility In the case of epilepsy: psychological changes average frequency of attacks In the case of geriatric illnesses: serious confusion incontinence Therapy (Insulin, malaria, etc.) lasting results: yes/no Committed under paragraph 51, 42b Penal Code etc. by: Crime: Previous offences: Nature of activities: (Exact description of work and capacity to work e.g. agricultural labour, does not achieve much ¯ metal workshop, good skilled worker ¯ no vague descriptions like housework, but more precisely, like, for example, cleaning the rooms. Always state whether the person is constantly, frequently, or temporarily occupied.) Can anticipate early release: Remarks: This space is to be left blank Place, date: Signature of the medical director or his representative German or related blood, Jew, part-Jew I or II Grade, Negro (half-caste), Gypsy (part-Gypsy) etc. 18 The following is taken from the guidelines issued by Bouhler and Brandt concerning the assessment of the "hereditarily ill" of March 1941: Elimination of all those who are unable to perform productive tasks even within the asylums, and not only those who are mentally dead. War veterans who either distinguished themselves at the front or were wounded or decorated are to be excluded. Decisions concerning distinguished service at the front or decorations are to be made by Herr Jennerwein (Brack). Cases like these, which occur in our asylums are to be deferred until Herr Jennerwein has made his decision on the basis of documentary records. Otherwise, war service is no protection from inclusion in the action. In the case of geriatrics, the greatest restraint: inclusion only in drastic circumstances, e.g. criminality or asocial behaviour. In the latter cases, the records are to be consulted and photocopies of extracts are to be made available. The senile do not include patients with psychoses which themselves come within the scope of the action like schizophrenia, epilepsy etc., or who have merely grown old. In special cases of senility the evidence will be submitted to Herr Jennerwein. Only Reich Germans shall be included in the action, therefore no Poles. The intention is to collect together all Poles in purely Polish asylums in the eastern provinces. Czechs with German citizenship in asylums outside the Protectorate can be included. Czechs with Czech citizenship should be pushed into the Protectorate. In cases where it is impossible to establish citizenship, this is to be established wherever possible by our representatives. In cases where it is still not possible to establish citizenship, the case is to be deferred until a final discussion with Secretary of State Frank. 19 In the course of October 1939 the ever-widening circle of those involved in the "euthanasia" program received authorisation from Hitler in the form of a laconic and informal note on his personal writing paper. Backdated, symbolically to 1 September 1939, the document read: Reich Leader Bouhler and Dr. med. Brandt are charged with responsibility to extend the powers of specific doctors in such a way that, after the most careful assessment of their condition, those suffering from illnesses deemed to be incurable may be granted a mercy death.' 20 In fact, before the official "euthanasia" program got under way, ad hoc measures had been adopted in occupied Poland. Between 29 September and 1 November 1939, SS units shot about 4,000 mental patients in asylums in the region of Bromberg. 21 In October, the Gauleiter of Pomerania, Franz Schwede-Coburg, traded the asylums in his territory for the SS and Wehrmacht to use as barracks in return for an SS unit being deployed to shoot the inmates in discreet forest clearings. Finally, during December 1939 and January 1940, the SS Special Commando Lange gassed 1,558 patients from Polish asylums in specially adapted vans in order to make rfor military and SS barracks. The SS charged 10RMs for each person thus disposed of. The official "euthanasia" program, which commenced shortly afterwards, acquired a complex organisational "front" designed to cover the wires leading back to the Chancellery of the Fuehrer and hence to Hitler. Department II of the Chancellery formed a Reich Association of Asylums which operated from the Columbus-Haus on Potsdamer Platz, and then from April 1940 from a villa on Tiergartenstrasse 4, from which the program took its code name "Aktion T-4". 22 Several of the leading bureaucrats involved used false names (e.g. Brack called himself "Jennerwein" after a famous nineteenth-century poacher) or wrote down false job descriptions in hotel registers when inspecting out of the way asylums. The operational side of the program was dealt with by the Community Foundation for the Encouragement of Asylums, which hired personnel and dealt with property contracts, and a phoney company called the Community Patients Transport Service Ltd (Gekrat) run by Brack's cousin, which acquired postal vans to move patients to the asylums chosen for killing. Postal vans would be relatively unobtrusive in remote areas, and they could be repaired in a nation wide network of depots. References: 6 Reichsgesetzblatt 1933 , Part 1, pp. 1032ff. 7 Bock, Zwangssterilisation , pp. 97ff. 8 Gesetz zur Aenderung des Gesetzes zur Verhuetung erbkranken Nachwuchses vom 26.6.1935', Reichsgesetzblatt 1935 , Part 1, p. 196. 9 Ibid. 10 Karl Binding, Alfred Hoche, Die Freigabe der Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens. Ihr Mass und ihre Form (Leipzig, 1920). 11 Hitler's speech to the Nuremberg Party Rally on 5 August 1929, cited by Bock, Zwangssterilisation , p. 24. 12 See Klee, Euthanasie', p. 52 and Johannes Tuchel (ed.), Kein Recht auf Leben'. Beitraege und Dokumente zur Entrechtung und Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens' im Nationalsozialismus (Berlin, 1984). 13 Klee, Euthanasie' , pp. 78f. 14 Ibid. , pp. 82ff. On the following see also Goetz Aly (ed.), Aktion T¯4 1939¯1945. Die Euthanasie' Zentrale in der Tiergartenstrasse 4 (Berlin, 1987). 15 Klee, Euthanasie' , pp. 100f. 16 J. Noakes, G. Pridham (eds.), Nazism 1919¯1945: A Documentary Reader (Exeter, 1988), Vol. 3, p. 1010. 17 Klee, Euthanasie' , pp. 115ff. 18 Questionnaire 1 dated 1941, reprinted from Tuchel (ed.), Kein Recht auf Leben', p. 57. See also Ernst Klee (ed.), Dokumente zur Euthanasie' (Frankfurt am Main, 1985). 19 Reprinted from Tuchel (ed.), Kein Recht auf Leben', pp. 64f. 20 Noakes, Pridham (eds.), Nazism 1919¯1945: A Documentary Reader, Vol. 3, p. 1021. 21 See Goetz Aly, Der saubere und schmutzige Fortschritt', Beitraege zur nationalsozialistischen Gesundheits- und Sozialpolitik , 2 (Berlin, 1985), pp. 9¯78; Klee, Euthanasie' , pp. 95ff. 22 See above all Goetz Aly (ed.), Aktion T¯4 1939¯1945 , p. 11¯20. Back to the top